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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Relations, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poor Relations
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: February 9, 2012 [EBook #38816]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR RELATIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images available at the Interent
+Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+[Illustration: image of the book's cover]
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+SYLVIA & MICHAEL
+
+PLASHERS MEAD
+
+SYLVIA SCARLETT
+
+Harper & Brothers _Publishers_
+
+
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+By COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+Author of "SYLVIA SCARLETT" "SYLVIA AND MICHAEL"
+ETC.
+
+[Illustration: colophon]
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+Published February, 1920
+
+B-U
+
+THIS THEME IN C MAJOR WITH VARIATIONS IS INSCRIBED TO THE ROMANTIC AND
+MYSTERIOUS MAJOR C BY ONE WHO WAS PRIVILEGED TO SERVE UNDER HIM DURING
+MORE THAN TWO YEARS OF WAR
+
+CAPRI, APRIL 30, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+
+
+
+_Poor Relations_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+There was nothing to distinguish the departure of the _Murmania_ from
+that of any other big liner leaving New York in October for Liverpool or
+Southampton. At the crowded gangways there was the usual rain of
+ultimate kisses, from the quayside the usual gale of speeding
+handkerchiefs. Ladies in blanket-coats handed over to the arrangement of
+their table-stewards the expensive bouquets presented by friends who, as
+the case might be, had been glad or sorry to see them go. Middle-aged
+gentlemen, who were probably not at all conspicuous on shore, at once
+made their appearance in caps that they might have felt shy about
+wearing even during their university prime. Children in the first
+confusion of settling down ate more chocolates from the gift boxes lying
+about the cabins than they were likely to be given (or perhaps to want)
+for some time. Two young women with fresh complexions, short skirts, tam
+o' shanters, brightly colored jumpers, and big bows to their shoes were
+already on familiar terms with one of the junior ship's officers, and
+their laughter (which would soon become one of those unending oceanic
+accompaniments that make land so pleasant again) was already competing
+with the noise of the crew. Everybody boasted aloud that they fed you
+really well on the _Murmania_, and hoped silently that perhaps the sense
+of being imprisoned in a decaying hot-water bottle (or whatever more or
+less apt comparison was invented to suggest atmosphere below decks)
+would pass away in the fresh Atlantic breezes. Indeed it might be said,
+except in the case of a few ivory-faced ladies already lying back with
+the professional aloofness of those who are a prey to chronic headaches,
+that outwardly optimism was rampant.
+
+It was not surprising, therefore, that John Touchwood, the successful
+romantic playwright and unsuccessful realistic novelist, should on
+finding himself hemmed in by such invincible cheerfulness surrender to
+his own pleasant fancies of home. This was one of those moments when he
+was able to feel that the accusation of sentimentality so persistently
+laid against his work by superior critics was rebutted out of the very
+mouth of real life. He looked round at his fellow passengers as though
+he would congratulate them on conforming to his later and more
+profitable theory of art; and if occasionally he could not help seeing a
+stewardess with a glance of discreet sympathy reveal to an inquirer the
+ship's provision for human weakness, he did not on this account feel
+better disposed toward morbid intrusions either upon art or life, partly
+because he was himself an excellent sailor and partly because after all
+as a realist he had unquestionably not been a success.
+
+"Time for a shave before lunch, steward?" he inquired heartily.
+
+"The first bugle will go in about twenty minutes, sir."
+
+John paused for an instant at his own cabin to extract from his suitcase
+the particular outrage upon conventional headgear (it was a deerstalker
+of Lovat tweed) that he had evolved for this voyage; and presently he
+was sitting in the barber shop, wondering at first why anybody should be
+expected to buy any of the miscellaneous articles exposed for sale at
+such enhanced prices on every hook and in every nook of the little
+saloon, and soon afterward seriously considering the advantage of a pair
+of rope-soled shoes upon a heeling deck.
+
+"Very natty things those, sir," said the barber. "I laid in a stock once
+at Gib., when we did the southern rowt. Shave you close, sir?"
+
+"Once over, please."
+
+"Skin tender?"
+
+"Rather tender."
+
+"Yes, sir. And the beard's a bit strong, sir. Shave yourself, sir?"
+
+"Usually, but I was up rather early this morning."
+
+"Safety razor, sir?"
+
+"If you think such a description justifiable--yes--a safety."
+
+"They're all the go now, and no mistake ... safety bicycles, safety
+matches, safety razors ... they've all come in our time ... yes, sir,
+just a little bit to the right--thank you, sir! Not your first crossing,
+I take it?"
+
+"No, my third."
+
+"Interesting place, America. But I am from Wandsworth myself. Hair's
+getting rather thin round the temples. Would you like something to
+brisken up the growth a bit? Another time? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
+Parting on the left's it, I think?"
+
+"No grease," said John as fiercely as he ever spoke. The barber seemed
+to replace the pot of brilliantine with regret.
+
+"What would you like then?" He might have been addressing a spoilt
+child. "Flowers-and-honey? Eau-de-quinine? Or perhaps a friction? I've
+got lavingder, carnation, wallflower, vilit, lilerk...."
+
+"Bay rum," John declared, firmly.
+
+The barber sighed for such an unadventurous soul; and John, who could
+not bear to hurt even the most superficial emotions of a barber, changed
+his mind and threw him into a smiling bustle of gratification.
+
+"Rather strong," John said, half apologetically; for while the friction
+was being administered the barber had explained in jerks how every time
+he went ashore in New York or Liverpool he was in the habit of searching
+about for some novel wash or tonic or pomade, and John did not want to
+make him feel that his enterprise was unappreciated.
+
+"Strong is it? Well, that's a good fault, sir."
+
+"Yes, I suppose it is."
+
+"What took my fancy was the natural way it smelled."
+
+"Yes, indeed, painfully natural," John agreed.
+
+He stood up and confronted himself in the barber's mirror; regarding the
+fair, almost florid man, rather under six feet in height, with sanguine
+blue eyes and full, but clearly cut, lips therein reflected, he came to
+the comforting conclusion that he did not look his forty-two years and
+nine months; indeed, while his muffled whistle was shaping rather than
+uttering the tune of _Nancy Lee_, he nearly asked the barber to guess
+his age. However, he decided not to risk it, pulled down the lapels of
+his smoke-colored tweed coat, put on his deerstalker, tipped the barber
+sufficiently well to secure a parting caress from the brush, promised to
+meditate the purchase of the rope-soled shoes, and stepped jauntily in
+the direction of the luncheon bugle. If John Touchwood had not been a
+successful romantic playwright and an unsuccessful realistic novelist,
+he might have found in the spectacle of the first lunch of an Atlantic
+voyage an illustration of human madness and the destructive will of the
+gods. As it was, his capacity for rapidly covering the domestic offices
+of the brain with the crimson-ramblers of a lush idealism made him
+forget the base fabric so prettily if obviously concealed. As it was, he
+found an exhilaration in all this berserker greed, in the cries of
+inquisitive children, in the rumpled appearance of women whom the bugle
+had torn from their unpacking with the urgency of the last trump, in the
+acrid smell of pickles, and in the persuasive gesture with which the
+glistening stewards handed the potatoes while they glared angrily at one
+another over their shoulders. If a cynical realist had in respect of
+this lunch observed to John that a sow's ear was poor material for a
+silk purse, he would have contested the universal truth of the proverb,
+for at this moment he was engaged in chinking the small change of
+sentimentality in just such a purse.
+
+"How jolly everybody is," he thought, swinging round to his neighbor, a
+gaunt woman in a kind of draggled mantilla, with an effusion of
+good-will that expressed itself in a request to pass her the pickled
+walnuts. John fancied an impulse to move away her chair when she
+declined his offer; but of course the chair was fixed, and the only sign
+of her distaste for pickles or conversation was a faint quiver, which to
+any one less rosy than John might have suggested abhorrence, but which
+struck him as merely shyness. It was now that for the first time he
+became aware of a sickly fragrance that was permeating the atmosphere, a
+fragrance that other people, too, seemed to be noticing by the way in
+which they were looking suspiciously at the stewards.
+
+"Rather oppressive, some of these flowers," said John to the gaunt lady.
+
+"I don't see any flowers at our end of the table," she replied.
+
+And then with an emotion that was very nearly horror John realized that,
+though the barber was responsible, he must pay the penalty in a
+vicarious mortification. His first impulse was to snatch a napkin and
+wipe his hair; then he decided to leave the table immediately, because
+after all nobody _could_ suspect him, in these as yet unvexed waters, of
+anything but repletion; finally, hoping that the much powdered lady
+opposite swathed in mauve chiffons was getting the discredit for the
+fragrance, he stayed where he was. Nevertheless, the exhilaration had
+departed; his neighbors all seemed dull folk; and congratulating himself
+that after this first confused lunch he might reasonably expect to be
+put at the captain's table in recognition of the celebrity that he could
+fairly claim, John took from his pocket a bundle of letters which had
+arrived just before he had left his hotel and busied himself with them
+for the rest of the meal.
+
+His success as a romantic playwright and his failure--or, as he would
+have preferred to think of it in the satisfaction of fixing the guilty
+fragrance upon the lady in mauve chiffons, his comparative failure--as a
+realistic novelist had not destroyed John's passion for what he called
+"being practical in small matters," and it was in pursuit of this that
+having arranged his letters in two heaps which he mentally labeled as
+"business" and "pleasure" he began with the former, as a child begins
+(or ought to begin) his tea with the bread and butter and ends it with
+the plumcake. In John's case, fresh from what really might be described
+as a triumphant production in New York, the butter was spread so thickly
+that "business" was too forbidding a name for such pleasantly nutritious
+communications. His agent had sent him the returns of the second week;
+and playing to capacity in one of the largest New York theaters is
+nearer to a material paradise than anything outside the Mohammedan
+religion. Then there was an offer from one of the chief film companies
+to produce his romantic drama of two years ago, that wonderful riot of
+color and Biblical phraseology, _The Fall of Babylon_. They ventured to
+think that the cinematographer would do his imagination more justice
+than the theater, particularly as upon their dramatic ranch in
+California they now had more than a hundred real camels and eight real
+elephants. John chuckled at the idea of a few animals compensating for
+the absence of his words, but nevertheless ... the entrance of
+Nebuchadnezzar, yes, it should be wonderfully effective ... and the
+great grass-eating scene, yes, that might positively be more impressive
+on the films ... with one or two audiences it had trembled for a moment
+between the sublime and the ridiculous. It was a pity that the offer had
+not arrived before he was leaving New York, but no doubt he should be
+able to talk it over with the London representatives of the firm. Hullo
+here was Janet Bond writing to him ... charming woman, charming
+actress.... He wandered for a few minutes rather vaguely in the maze of
+her immense handwriting, but disentangled his comprehension at last and
+deciphered:
+
+THE PARTHENON THEATRE.
+
+Sole Proprietress: Miss Janet Bond.
+
+_October 10, 1910._
+
+DEAR MR. TOUCHWOOD,--I wonder if you have forgotten our talk at Sir
+Herbert's that night? I'm so hoping not. And your scheme for a real
+Joan of Arc? Do think of me this winter. Your picture of the scene with
+Gilles de Rais--you see I followed your advice and read him up--has
+_haunted_ me ever since. I can hear the horses' hoofs coming nearer and
+nearer and the cries of the murdered children. I'm so glad you've had a
+success with _Lucrezia_ in New York. I don't _think_ it would suit me
+from what I read about it. You know how _particular_ my public is.
+That's why I'm so anxious to play the Maid. When will _Lucrezia_ be
+produced in London, and where? There are many rumours. Do come and see
+me when you get back to England, and I'll tell you who I've thought of
+to play Gilles. I _think_ you'll find him very intelligent. But of
+course everything depends on your inclination, or should I say
+inspiration? And then that wonderful speech to the Bishop! How does it
+begin? "Bishop, thou hast betrayed thy holy trust." Do be a little
+flattered that I've remembered that line. It needn't _all_ be in blank
+verse, and I think little Truscott would be so good as the Bishop. You
+see how _enthusiastic_ I am and how I _believe_ in the idea. All good
+wishes.
+
+Yours sincerely and hopefully,
+
+JANET BOND.
+
+John certainly was a little flattered that Miss Bond should have
+remembered the Maid's great speech to the Bishop of Beauvais, and the
+actress's enthusiasm roused in him an answering flame, so that the cruet
+before him began to look like the castelated walls of Orleans, and while
+his gaze was fixed upon the bowl of salad he began to compose _Act II._
+_Scene I_--_Open country. Enter Joan on horseback. From the summit of a
+grassy knoll she searches the horizon._ So fixedly was John regarding
+his heroine on top of the salad that the head steward came over and
+asked anxiously if there was anything the matter with it. And even when
+John assured him that there was nothing he took it away and told one of
+the under-stewards to remove the caterpillar and bring a fresh bowl.
+Meanwhile, John had picked up the other bundle of letters and begun to
+read his news from home.
+
+65 HILL ROAD,
+
+St. John's Wood, N.W.,
+
+_October 10_.
+
+DEAR JOHN,--We have just read in the _Telegraph_ of your great success
+and we are both very glad. Edith writes me that she did have a letter
+from you. I dare say you thought she would send it on to us but she
+didn't, and of course I understand you're busy only I should have liked
+to have had a letter ourselves. James asks me to tell you that he is
+probably going to do a book on the Cymbalist movement in literature. He
+says that the time has come to take a final survey of it. He is also
+writing some articles for the _Fortnightly Review_. We shall all be so
+glad to welcome you home again.
+
+Your affectionate sister-in-law,
+
+BEATRICE TOUCHWOOD.
+
+"Poor Beatrice," thought John, penitently. "I ought to have sent her a
+line. She's a good soul. And James ... what a plucky fellow he is!
+Always full of schemes for books and articles. Wonderful really, to go
+on writing for an audience of about twenty people. And I used to grumble
+because my novels hadn't world-wide circulations. Poor old James ... a
+good fellow."
+
+He picked up the next letter; which he found was from his other
+sister-in-law.
+
+HALMA HOUSE,
+
+198 Earl's Court Square, S.W.,
+
+_October 9_.
+
+DEAR JOHN,--Well, you've had a hit with _Lucrezia_, lucky man! If you
+sent out an Australian company, don't you think I might play lead? I
+quite understand that you couldn't manage it for me either in London or
+America, but after all you _are_ the author and you surely have _some_
+say in the cast. I've got an understudy at the Parthenon, but I can't
+stand Janet. Such a selfish actress. She literally doesn't think of any
+one but herself. There's a chance I may get a decent part on tour with
+Lambton this autumn. George isn't very well, and it's been rather
+miserable this wet summer in the boarding house as Bertram and Viola
+were ill and kept away from school. I would have suggested their going
+down to Ambles, but Hilda was so very unpleasant when I just hinted at
+the idea that I preferred to keep them with me in town. Both children
+ask every day when you're coming home. You're quite the favourite uncle.
+George was delighted with your success. Poor old boy, he's had another
+financial disappointment, and your success was quite a consolation.
+
+ELEANOR.
+
+"I wish Eleanor was anywhere but on the stage," John sighed. "But she's
+a plucky woman. I _must_ write her a part in my next play. Now for
+Hilda."
+
+He opened his sister's letter with the most genial anticipation, because
+it was written from his new country house in Hampshire, that county
+house which he had coveted for so long and to which the now faintly
+increasing motion of the _Murmania_ reminded him that he was fast
+returning.
+
+AMBLES,
+
+Wrottesford, Hants,
+
+_October 11_.
+
+MY DEAR JOHN,--Just a line to congratulate you on your new success. Lots
+of money in it, I suppose. Dear Harold is quite well and happy at
+Ambles. Quite the young squire! I had a little coolness with
+Eleanor--entirely on her side of course, but Bertram is really such a
+_bad_ influence for Harold and so I told her that I did not think you
+would like her to take possession of your new house before you'd had
+time to live in it yourself. Besides, so many children all at once would
+have disturbed poor Mama. Edith drove over with Frida the other day and
+tells me you wrote to her. I should have liked a letter, too, but you
+always spoil poor Edith. Poor little Frida looks very peaky. Much love
+from Harold who is always asking when you're coming home. Mama is very
+well, I'm glad to say.
+
+Your affectionate sister,
+
+HILDA CURTIS.
+
+"She might have told me a little more about the house," John murmured to
+himself. And then he began to dream about Ambles and to plant
+old-fashioned flowers along its mellow red-brick garden walls. "I shall
+be in time to see the colouring of the woods," he thought. The
+_Murmania_ answered his aspiration with a plunge, and several of the
+rumpled ladies rose hurriedly from table to prostrate themselves for the
+rest of the voyage. John opened a fourth letter from England.
+
+THE VICARAGE,
+
+Newton Candover, Hants,
+
+_October 7_.
+
+MY DEAREST JOHN,--I was so glad to get your letter, and so glad to hear
+of your success. Laurence says that if he were not a vicar he should
+like to be a dramatic author. In fact, he's writing a play now on a
+Biblical subject, but he fears he will have trouble with the Bishop, as
+it takes a very broad view of Christianity. You know that Laurence has
+recently become very broad? He thinks the village people like it, but
+unfortunately old Mrs. Paxton--you know who I mean--the patroness of the
+living--is so bigoted that Laurence has had a great deal of trouble with
+her. I'm sorry to say that dear little Frida is looking thin. We think
+it's the wet summer. Nothing but rain. Ambles was looking beautiful when
+we drove over last week, but Harold is a little bumptious and Hilda does
+not seem to see his faults. Dear Mama was looking _very_ well--better
+than I've seen her for ages. Frida sends such a lot of love to dearest
+Uncle John. She never stops talking about you. I sometimes get quite
+jealous for Laurence. Not really, of course, because family affection is
+the foundation of civil life. Laurence is out in the garden speaking to
+a man whose pig got into our conservatory this morning. Much love.
+
+Your loving sister,
+
+EDITH.
+
+John put the letter down with a faint sigh: Edith was his favorite
+sister, but he often wished that she had not married a parson. Then he
+took up the last letter of the family packet, which was from his
+housekeeper in Church Row.
+
+39 CHURCH ROW,
+
+_Hampstead, N.W._
+
+DEAR SIR,--This is to inform you with the present that everythink is
+very well at your house and that Maud and Elsa is very well as it leaves
+me at present. We as heard nothink from Emily since she as gone down to
+Hambles your other house, and we hope which is Maud, Elsa and myself you
+wont spend all your time out of London which is looking lovely at
+present with the leaves beginning to turn and all. With dutiful respects
+from Maud, Elsa and self, I am,
+
+Your obedient servant,
+
+MARY WORFOLK.
+
+"Dear old Mrs. Worfolk. She's already quite jealous of Ambles ...
+charming trait really, for after all it means she appreciates Church
+Row. Upon my soul, I feel a bit jealous of Ambles myself."
+
+John began to ponder the pleasant heights of Hampstead and to think of
+the pale blue October sky and of the yellow leaves shuffling and
+slipping along the quiet alleys in the autumn wind; to think, too, of
+his library window and of London spread out below in a refulgence of
+smoke and gold; to think of the chrysanthemums in his little garden and
+of the sparrows' chirping in the Virginia-creeper that would soon be all
+aglow like a well banked-up fire against his coming. Five delightful
+letters really, every one of them full of good wishes and cordial
+affection! The _Murmania_ swooped forward, and there was a faint tingle
+of glass and cutlery. John gathered up his correspondence to go on deck
+and bless the Atlantic for being the pathway to home. As he rose from
+the table he heard a voice say:
+
+"Yes, my dear thing, but I've never been a poor relation yet, and I
+don't intend to start now."
+
+The saloon was empty except for himself and two women opposite, the
+climax of whose conversation had come with such a harsh fitness of
+comment upon the letters he had just been reading. John was angry with
+himself for the dint so easily made upon the romantic shield he upheld
+against life's onset; he felt that he had somehow been led into an
+ambush where all his noblest sentiments had been massacred; five bells
+sounded upon the empty saloon with an almost funereal gravity; and, when
+the two women passed out, John, notwithstanding the injured regard of
+his steward, sat down again and read right through the family letters
+from a fresh standpoint. The fact of it was that there had turned out to
+be very few currants in the cake, for the eating of which he had
+prepared himself with such well-buttered bread. Few currants? There was
+not a single one, unless Mrs. Worfolk's antagonism to the idea of Ambles
+might be considered a gritty shred of a currant. John rose at once when
+he had finished his letters, put them in his pocket, and followed the
+unconscious disturbers of his hearth on deck. He soon caught sight of
+them again where, arm in arm, they were pacing the sunlit starboard side
+and apparently enjoying the gusty southwest wind. John wondered how long
+it would be before he was given a suitable opportunity to make their
+acquaintance, and tried to regulate his promenade so that he should
+always meet them face to face either aft or forward, but never amidships
+where heavily muffled passengers reclined in critical contemplation of
+their fellow-travellers over the top of the last popular novel. "Some
+men, you know," he told himself, "would join their walk with a mere
+remark about the weather. They wouldn't stop to consider if their
+company was welcome. They'd be so serenely satisfied with themselves
+that they'd actually succeed ... yes, confound them ... they'd bring it
+off! Yet, after all, I suppose in a way that without vanity I might
+presume they _would_ be rather interested to meet me. Because, of
+course, there's no doubt that people _are_ interested in authors. But,
+it's no good ... I can't do that ... this is really one of those moments
+when I feel as if I was still seventeen years old ... shyness, I suppose
+... yet the rest of my family aren't shy."
+
+This took John's thoughts back to his relations, but to a much less
+complacent point of view of them than before that maliciously apposite
+remark overheard in the saloon had lighted up the group as abruptly and
+unbecomingly as a magnesium flash. However inconsistent he might appear,
+he was afraid that he should be more critical of them in future. He
+began to long to talk over his affairs with that girl and, looking up at
+this moment, he caught her eyes, which either because the weather was so
+gusty or because he was so ready to hang decorations round a simple fact
+seemed to him like calm moorland pools, deep violet-brown pools in
+heathery solitudes. Her complexion had the texture of a rose in
+November, the texture that gains a rare lucency from the grayness and
+moisture by which one might suppose it would be ruined. She was wearing
+a coat and skirt of Harris tweed of a shade of misty green, and with her
+slim figure and fine features she seemed at first glance not more than
+twenty. But John had not passed her another half-dozen times before he
+had decided that she was almost a woman of thirty. He looked to see if
+she was wearing a wedding ring and was already enough interested in her
+to be glad that she was not. This relief was, of course, not at all due
+to any vision of himself in a more intimate relationship; but merely
+because he was glad to find that her personality, of which he was by now
+more definitely aware than of her beauty (well, not beauty, but charm,
+and yet perhaps after all he was being too grudging in not awarding her
+positive beauty) would be her own. There was something distinctly
+romantic in this beautiful young woman of nearly thirty leading her own
+life unimpeded by a loud-voiced husband. Of course, the husband might
+have had a gentle voice, but usually this type of woman seemed a prey to
+bluffness and bigness, as if to display her atmosphere charms she had
+need of a rugged landscape for a background. He found himself glibly
+thinking of her as a type; but with what type could she be classified?
+Surely she was attracting him by being exceptional rather than typical;
+and John soothed his alarmed celibacy by insisting that she appealed to
+him with a hint of virginal wisdom which promised a perfect intercourse,
+if only their acquaintanceship could be achieved naturally, that is to
+say, without the least suggestion of an ulterior object. _She had never
+been a poor relation yet, and she did not intend to start being one
+now._ Of course, such a woman was still unmarried. But how had she
+avoided being a poor relation? What was her work? Why was she coming
+home to England? And who was her companion? He looked at the other woman
+who walked beside her with a boyish slouch, wore gold pince-nez, and had
+a tight mouth, not naturally tight, but one that had been tightened by
+driving and riding. It was absurd to walk up and down forever like this;
+the acquaintance must be made immediately or not at all; it would never
+do to hang round them waiting for an opportunity of conversation. John
+decided to venture a simple remark the next time he met them face to
+face; but when he arrived at the after end of the promenade deck they
+had vanished, and the embarrassing thought occurred to him that perhaps
+having divined his intention they had thus deliberately snubbed him. He
+went to the rail and leaned over to watch the water undulating past; a
+sudden gust caught his cap and took it out to sea. He clapped his hand
+too late to his head; a fragrance of carnations breathed upon the salt
+windy sunlight; a voice behind him, softly tremulous with laughter,
+murmured:
+
+"I say, bad luck."
+
+John commended his deerstalker to the care of all the kindly Oceanides
+and turned round: it was quite easy after all, and he was glad that he
+had not thought of deliberately letting his cap blow into the sea.
+
+"Look, it's actually floating like a boat," she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, it was shaped like a boat," John said; he was thinking how absurd
+it was now to fancy that swiftly vanishing, utterly inappropriate piece
+of concave tweed should only a few seconds ago have been worn the other
+way round on a human head.
+
+"But you mustn't catch cold," she added. "Haven't you another cap?"
+
+John did possess another cap, one that just before he left England he
+had bought about dusk in the Burlington Arcade, one which in the velvety
+bloom of a July evening had seemed worthy of summer skies and seas, but
+which in the glare of the following day had seemed more like the shreds
+of barbaric attire that are brought back by travelers from exotic lands
+to be taken out of a glass case and shown to visitors when the
+conversation is flagging on Sunday afternoons in the home counties. Now
+if John's plays were full of fierce hues, if his novels had been sepia
+studies of realism which the public considered painful and the critics
+described as painstaking, his private life had been of a mild uniform
+pink, a pinkishness that recalled the chaste hospitality of the best
+spare bedroom. Never yet in that pink life had he let himself go to the
+extent of wearing a cap, which, even if worn afloat by a colored
+prizefighter crossing the Atlantic to defend or challenge supremacy,
+would have created an amused consternation, but which on the head of a
+well-known romantic playwright must arouse at least dismay and possibly
+panic. Yet this John (he had reached the point of regarding himself with
+objective surprise), the pinkishness of whose life, though it might be a
+protest against cynicism and gloom, was eternally half-way to a blush,
+went off to his cabin with the intention of putting on that cap. With
+himself for a while he argued that something must be done to imprison
+the smell of carnations, that a bowler hat would look absurd, that he
+really must not catch cold; but all the time this John knew perfectly
+well that what he really wanted was to give a practical demonstration of
+his youth. This John did not care a damn about his success as a romantic
+playwright, but he did care a great deal that these two young women
+should vote him a suitable companion for the rest of the voyage.
+
+"Why, it's really not so bad," he assured himself, when before the
+mirror he tried to judge the effect. "I rather think it's better than
+the other one. Of course, if I had seen when I bought it that the checks
+were purple and not black I dare say I shouldn't have bought it--but, by
+Jove, I'm rather glad I didn't notice them. After all, I have a right to
+be a little eccentric in my costume. What the deuce does it matter to me
+if people do stare? Let them stare! I shall be the last of the lot to
+feel seasick, anyway."
+
+John walked defiantly back to the promenade deck, and several people who
+had not bothered to remark the well-groomed florid man before now asked
+who he was, and followed his progress along the deck with the easily
+interested gaze of the transatlantic passenger.
+
+For the rest of the voyage John never knew whether the attention his
+entrance into the saloon always evoked was due to his being the man who
+wore the unusual cap or to his being the man who had written _The Fall
+of Babylon_; nor, indeed, did he bother to make sure, for he was
+fortified during the rest of the voyage by the company of Miss Doris
+Hamilton and Miss Ida Merritt and thoroughly enjoyed himself.
+
+"Now am I attributing to Miss Hamilton more discretion than she's really
+got?" he asked himself on the last night of the passage, a stormy night
+off the Irish coast, while he swayed before the mirror in the creaking
+cabin. John was accustomed, like most men with clear-cut profiles, to
+take advice from his reflection, and perhaps it was his dramatic
+instinct that led him usually to talk aloud to this lifelong friend.
+"Have I in fact been too impulsive in this friendship? Have I? That's
+the question. I certainly told her a lot about myself, and I think she
+appreciated my confidence. Yet suppose that she's just an ordinary young
+woman and goes gossiping all over England about meeting me? I really
+must remember that I'm no longer a nonentity and that, though Miss
+Hamilton is not a journalist, her friend is, and, what is more,
+confessed that the sole object of her visit to America had been to
+interview distinguished men with the help of Miss Hamilton. The way she
+spoke about her victims reminded me of the way that fellow in the
+smoking-saloon talked about the tarpon fishing off Florida ... famous
+American statesmen, financiers, and architects existed quite
+impersonally for her to be caught just like tarpon. Really when I come
+to think of it I've been at the end of Miss Merritt's rod for five days,
+and as with all the others the bait was Miss Hamilton."
+
+John's mistrust in the prudence of his behavior during the voyage had
+been suddenly roused by the prospect of reaching Liverpool next day. The
+word positively exuded disillusionment; it was as anti-romantic as a
+notebook of Herbert Spencer. He undressed and got into his bunk; the
+motion of the ship and the continual opening and shutting of cabin doors
+all the way along the corridor kept him from sleep, and for a long time
+he lay awake while the delicious freedom of the seas was gradually
+enslaved by the sullen, prosaic, puritanical, bilious word--Liverpool.
+He had come down to his cabin, full of the exhilaration of a last quick
+stroll up and down the spray-whipped deck; he had come down from a long
+and pleasant talk all about himself where he and Miss Hamilton had sat
+in the lee of some part of a ship's furniture the name of which he did
+not know and did not like to ask, a long and pleasant talk, cozily
+wrapped in two rugs glistening faintly in the starlight with salty rime;
+he had come down from a successful elimination of Miss Merritt, his
+whole personality marinated in freedom, he might say; and now the mere
+thought of Liverpool was enough to disenchant him and to make him feel
+rather like a man who was recovering from a brilliant, a too brilliant
+revelation of himself provoked by champagne. He began to piece together
+the conversation and search for indiscretions. To begin with, he had
+certainly talked a great deal too much about himself; it was not
+dignified for a man in his position to be so prodigally frank with a
+young woman he had only known for five days. Suppose she had been
+laughing at him all the time? Suppose that even now she was laughing at
+him with Miss Merritt? "Good heavens, what an amount I told her," John
+gasped aloud. "I even told her what my real circulation was when I used
+to write novels, and I very nearly told her how much I made out of _The
+Fall of Babylon_, though since that really was a good deal, it wouldn't
+have mattered so much. And what did I say about my family? Well, perhaps
+that isn't so important. But how much did I tell her of my scheme for
+_Joan of Arc_? Why, she might have been my confidential secretary by the
+way I talked. My confidential secretary? And why not? I am entitled to a
+secretary--in fact my position demands a secretary. But would she accept
+such a post? Now don't let me be impulsive."
+
+John began to laugh at himself for a quality in which as a matter of
+fact he was, if anything, deficient. He often used to chaff himself,
+but, of course, always without the least hint of ill-nature, which is
+perhaps why he usually selected imaginary characteristics for genial
+reproof.
+
+"Impulsive dog," he said to himself. "Go to sleep, and don't forget that
+confidential secretaries afloat and confidential secretaries ashore are
+very different propositions. Yes, you thought you were being very clever
+when you bought those rope-soled shoes to keep your balance on a
+slippery deck, but you ought to have bought a rope-soled cap to keep
+your head from slipping."
+
+This seemed to John in the easy optimism that prevails upon the borders
+of sleep an excellent joke, and he passed with a chuckle through the
+ivory gate.
+
+The next day John behaved helpfully and politely at the Customs, and
+indeed continued to be helpful and polite until his companions of the
+voyage were established in a taxi at Euston. He had carefully written
+down the Hamiltons' address with a view to calling on them one day, but
+even while he was writing the number of the square in Chelsea he was
+thinking about Ambles and trying to decide whether he should make a dash
+across London to Waterloo on the chance of catching the 9:05 P.M. or
+spend the night at his house in Church Row.
+
+"I think perhaps I'd better stay in town to-night," he said. "Good-by.
+Most delightful trip across--see you both again soon, I hope. You don't
+advise me to try for the 9:05?" he asked once more, anxiously.
+
+Miss Hamilton laughed from the depths of the taxi; when she laughed, for
+the briefest moment John felt an Atlantic breeze sweep through the
+railway station.
+
+"_I_ recommend a good night's rest," she said.
+
+So John's last thought of her was of a nice practical young woman; but,
+as he once again told himself, the idea of a secretary was absurd.
+Besides, did she even know shorthand?
+
+"Do you know shorthand?" he turned round to shout as the taxi buzzed
+away; he did not hear her answer, if answer there was.
+
+"Of course I can always write," he decided, and without one sigh he
+busied himself with securing his own taxi for Hampstead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+"I've got too many caps, Mrs. Worfolk," John proclaimed next morning to
+his housekeeper. "You can give this one away."
+
+"Yes, sir. Who would you like it given to?"
+
+"Oh, anybody, anybody. Tramps very often ask for old boots, don't they?
+Some tramp might like it."
+
+"Would you have any erbjections if I give it to my nephew, sir?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"It seems almost too perky for a tramp, sir; and my sister's boy--well,
+he's just at the age when they like to dress theirselves up a bit. He's
+doing very well, too. His employers is extremely satisfied with the way
+he's doing. Extremely satisfied, his employers are."
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it."
+
+"Yes, sir. Well, it's been some consolation to my poor sister, I mean to
+say, after the way her husband behaved hisself, and it's to be hoped
+Herbert'll take fair warning. Let me see, you _will_ be having lunch at
+home I think you said?"
+
+John winced: this was precisely what he would have avoided by catching
+the 9:05 at Waterloo last night.
+
+"I shan't be in to lunch for a few days, Mrs. Worfolk, no--er--nor to
+dinner either as a matter of fact. No--in fact I'll be down in the
+country. I must see after things there, you know," he added with an
+attempt to suggest as jovially as possible a real anxiety about his new
+house.
+
+"The country, oh yes," repeated Mrs. Worfolk grimly; John saw the
+beech-woods round Ambles blasted by his housekeeper's disapproval.
+
+"You wouldn't care to--er--come down and give a look round yourself,
+Mrs. Worfolk? My sister, Mrs. Curtis--"
+
+"Oh, I should prefer not to intrude in any way, sir. But if you insist,
+why, of course--"
+
+"Oh no, I don't insist," John hurriedly interposed.
+
+"No, sir. Well, we shall all have to get used to being left alone
+nowadays, and that's all there is to it."
+
+"But I shall be back in a few days, Mrs. Worfolk. I'm a Cockney at
+heart, you know. Just at first--"
+
+Mrs. Worfolk shook her head and waddled tragically to the door.
+
+"There's nothing else you'll be wanting this morning, sir?" she turned
+to ask in accents that seemed to convey forgiveness of her master in
+spite of everything.
+
+"No, thank you, Mrs. Worfolk. Please send Maud up to help me pack. Good
+heavens," he added to himself when his housekeeper had left the room,
+"why shouldn't I be allowed a country house? And I suppose the next
+thing is that James and Beatrice and George and Eleanor will all be
+offended because I didn't go tearing round to see them the moment I
+arrived. One's relations never understand that after the production of a
+play one requires a little rest. Besides, I must get on with my new
+play. I absolutely _must_."
+
+John's tendency to abhor the vacuum of success was corrected by the
+arrival of Maud, the parlor-maid, whose statuesque anemia and impersonal
+neatness put something in it. Before leaving for America he had
+supplemented the rather hasty preliminary furnishing of his new house by
+ordering from his tailor a variety of country costumes. These Maud, with
+feminine intuition superimposed on what she would have called her
+"understanding of valeting," at once produced for his visit to Ambles;
+John in the prospect of half a dozen unworn peat-perfumed suits of tweed
+flung behind him any lingering doubt about there being something in
+success, and with the recapture of his enthusiasm for what he called
+"jolly things" was anxious that Maud should share in it.
+
+"Do you think these new things are a success, Maud?" he asked, perhaps a
+little too boisterously. At any rate, the parlor-maid's comprehension of
+valeting had apparently never been so widely stretched, for a faint
+coralline blush tinted her waxen cheeks.
+
+"They seem very nice, sir," she murmured, with a slight stress upon the
+verb.
+
+John felt that he had trespassed too far upon the confines of Maud's
+humanity and retreated hurriedly. He would have liked to explain that
+his inquiry had merely been a venture into abstract esthetics and that
+he had not had the least intention of extracting her opinion about these
+suits _on him_; but he felt that an attempt at explanation would
+embarrass her, and he hummed instead over a selection of ties, as a bee
+hums from flower to flower in a garden, careless of the gardener who
+close at hand is potting up plants.
+
+"I will take these ties," he announced on the last stave of _A Fine Old
+English Gentleman_.
+
+Maud noted them gravely.
+
+"And I shall have a few books. Perhaps there won't be room for them?"
+
+"There won't be room for them, not in your dressing-case, sir."
+
+"Oh, I know there won't be room in that," said John, bitterly.
+
+His dressing-case might be considered the medal he had struck in honor
+of _The Fall of Babylon_: he had passed it every morning on his way to
+rehearsals and, dreaming of the triumph that might soon be his, had
+vowed he would buy it were such a triumph granted. It had cost £75, was
+heavy enough when empty to strain his wrist and when full to break his
+back, and it contained more parasites of the toilet table and the
+writing desk than one could have supposed imaginable. These parasites
+each possessed an abode of such individual shape that leaving them
+behind made no difference to the number of really useful articles, like
+pajamas, that could be carried in the cubic space lined with blue
+corded silk on which they looked down like the inconvenient houses of a
+fashionable square. Therefore wherever John went, the fittings went too,
+a glittering worthless mob of cut-glass, pigskin, tortoiseshell and
+ivory.
+
+"But in my portmanteau," John persisted. "Won't there be room there?"
+
+"I might squeeze them in," Maud admitted. "It depends what boots you're
+wanting to take with you, sir."
+
+"Never mind," he sighed. "I can make a separate parcel of them."
+
+"There's the basket what we were going to use for the cat, sir."
+
+"No, I should prefer a brown paper parcel," he decided. It would be
+improper for the books out of which the historical trappings of his
+_Joan of Arc_ were to be manufactured to travel in a lying-in hospital
+for cats.
+
+John left Maud to finish the packing and went downstairs to his library.
+This double room of fine proportions was, as one might expect from the
+library of a popular writer, the core--the veritable omphalos of the
+house; with its fluted pilasters, cream-colored panels and
+cherub-haunted ceiling, the expanse of city and sky visible from three
+sedate windows at the south end and the glimpse of a busy Hampstead
+street caught from those facing north, not to speak of the prismatic
+rows of books, it was a room worthy of art's most remunerative triumphs,
+the nursery of inspiration, and, save for a slight suggestion that the
+Muses sometimes drank afternoon tea there, the room of an indomitable
+bachelor. When John stepped upon the wreaths, ribbons, and full-blown
+roses of the threadbare Aubusson rug that floated like gossamer upon a
+green carpet of Axminster pile as soft as some historic lawn, he was
+sure that success was not a vacuum. In his now optimistic mood he hoped
+ultimately to receive from Ambles the kind of congratulatory benediction
+that the library at Church Row always bestowed upon his footsteps.
+Indeed, if he had not had such an ambition for his country house, he
+could scarcely have endured to quit even for a week this library, where
+fires were burning in two grates and where the smoke of his Partaga was
+haunting, like a complacent ghost, the imperturbable air. John possessed
+another library at Ambles, but he had not yet had time to do more than
+hurriedly stock it with the standard works that he felt no country house
+should be without. His library in London was the outcome of historical
+research preparatory to writing his romantic plays; and since all works
+of popular historical interest are bound with a much more lavish
+profusion of color and ornament even than the works of fiction to which
+they most nearly approximate, John's shelves outwardly resembled rather
+a collection of armor than a collection of books. There were, of course,
+many books the insides of which were sufficiently valuable to excuse
+their dingy exterior; but none of these occupied the line, where romance
+after romance of exiled queens, confession after confession of
+morganatic wives, memoir after memoir from above and below stairs,
+together with catch-penny alliterative gatherings as of rude regents and
+libidinous landgraves flashed in a gorgeous superficiality of gilt and
+text. In order to amass the necessary material for a play about Joan of
+Arc John did not concern himself with original documents. He assumed,
+perhaps rightly, that a Camembert cheese is more palatable and certainly
+more portable than a herd of unmilked cows. To dramatize the life of
+Joan of Arc he took from his shelves _Saints and Sinners of the
+Fifteenth Century_ ... but a catalogue is unnecessary: enough that when
+the heap of volumes chosen stood upon his desk it glittered like the
+Maid herself before the walls of Orleans.
+
+"After all," as John had once pointed out in a moment of exasperation to
+his brother, James, the critic, "Shakespeare didn't sit all day in the
+reading-room of the British Museum."
+
+An hour later the playwright, equipped alike for country rambles and
+poetic excursions, was sitting in a first-class compartment of a London
+and South-Western railway train; two hours after that he was sitting in
+the Wrottesford fly swishing along between high hazel hedges of
+golden-brown.
+
+"I shall have to see about getting a dog-cart," he exclaimed, when after
+a five minutes' struggle to let down the window with the aid of a strap
+that looked like an Anglican stole he had succeeded in opening the door
+and nearly falling head-long into the lane.
+
+"You have to let down the window _before_ you get out," said the driver
+reproachfully, trying to hammer the frameless window back into place and
+making such a noise about it that John could not bear to accentuate by
+argument the outrage that he was offering to this morning of exquisite
+decline, on which earth seemed to be floating away into a windless
+infinity like one of her own dead leaves. No, on such a morning
+controversy was impossible, but he should certainly take immediate steps
+to acquire a dog-cart.
+
+"For it's like being jolted in a badly made coffin," he thought, when he
+was once more encased in the fly and, having left the high road behind,
+was driving under an avenue of sycamores bordered by a small stream, the
+water of which was stained to the color of sherry by the sunlight
+glowing down through the arches of tawny leaves overhead. To John this
+avenue always seemed the entrance to a vast park surrounding his country
+house; it was indeed an almost unfrequented road, grass-grown in the
+center and lively with rabbits during most of the day, so that his
+imagination of ancestral approaches was easily stimulated and he felt
+like a figure in a painting by Marcus Stone. It was lucky that John's
+sanguine imagination could so often satisfy his ambition; prosperous
+playwright though he was, he had not yet made nearly enough money to buy
+a real park. However, in his present character of an eighteenth-century
+squire he determined, should the film version of _The Fall of Babylon_
+turn out successful, to buy a lawny meadow of twenty acres that would
+add much to the dignity and seclusion of Ambles, the boundaries of which
+at the back were now overlooked by a herd of fierce Kerry cows who
+occupied the meadow and during the summer had made John's practice
+shots with a brassy too much like big-game shooting to be pleasant or
+safe. After about a mile the avenue came to an end where a narrow curved
+bridge spanned the stream, which now flowed away to the left along the
+bottom of a densely wooded hillside. The fly crossed over with an
+impunity that was surprising in face of a printed warning that
+extraordinary vehicles should avoid this bridge, and began to climb the
+slope by a wide diagonal track between bushes of holly, the green of
+which seemed vivid and glossy against the prevailing brown. The noise of
+the wheels was deadened by the heavy drift of beech leaves, and the
+stillness of this russet world, except for the occasional scream of a
+jay or the flapping of disturbed pigeons, demanded from John's
+illustrative fancy something more remote and Gothic than the eighteenth
+century.
+
+"Malory," he said to himself. "Absolute Malory. It's almost impossible
+not to believe that Sir Gawaine might not come galloping down through
+this wood."
+
+Eager to put himself still more deeply in accord with the romantic
+atmosphere, John tried this time to open the door of the fly with the
+intention of walking meditatively up the hill in its wake; the door
+remained fast; but he managed to open the window, or rather he broke it.
+
+"I've a jolly good mind to get a motor," he exclaimed, savagely.
+
+Every knight errant's horse in the neighborhood bolted at the thought,
+and by the time John had reached the top of the hill and emerged upon a
+wide stretch of common land dotted with ancient hawthorns in full
+crimson berry he was very much in the present. For there on the other
+side of the common, flanked by shelving woods of oak and beech and
+backed by rising downs on which a milky sky ruffled its breast like a
+huge swan lazily floating, stood Ambles, a solitary, deep-hued,
+Elizabethan house with dreaming chimney-stacks and tumbled mossy roofs
+and garden walls rising from the heaped amethysts of innumerable
+Michaelmas daisies.
+
+"My house," John murmured in a paroxysm of ownership.
+
+The noise of the approaching fly had drawn expectant figures to the
+gate; John, who had gratified affection, curiosity and ostentation by
+sending a wireless message from the _Murmania_, a telegram from
+Liverpool yesterday, and another from Euston last night to announce his
+swift arrival, had therefore only himself to thank for perceiving in the
+group the black figure of his brother-in-law, the Reverend Laurence
+Armitage. He drove away the scarcely formed feeling of depression by
+supposing that Edith could not by herself have trundled the
+barrel-shaped vicarage pony all the way from Newton Candover to Ambles,
+and, finding that the left-hand door of the fly was unexpectedly
+susceptible to the prompting of its handle, he alighted with such
+rapidity that not one of his smiling relations could have had any
+impression but that he was bounding to greet them. The two sisters were
+so conscious of their rich unmarried brother's impulsive advance that
+each incited her own child to responsive bounds so that they might meet
+him half-way along the path to the front door, in the harborage of which
+Grandma (whose morning nap had been interrupted by a sudden immersion in
+two shawls, and a rapid swim with Emily, the maid from London, acting as
+lifebuoy down the billowy passages and stairs of the old house) rocked
+in breathless anticipation of the filial salute.
+
+"Welcome back, my dear Johnnie," the old lady panted.
+
+"How are you, mother? What, another new cap?"
+
+Old Mrs. Touchwood patted her head complacently. "We bought it at
+Threadgale's in Galton. The ribbons are the new hollyhock red."
+
+"Delightful!" John exclaimed. "And who helped you to choose it? Little
+Frida here?"
+
+"Nobody _helped_ me, Johnnie. Hilda accompanied me into Galton; but she
+wanted to buy a sardine-opener for the house."
+
+John had not for a moment imagined that his mother had wanted any
+advice about a cap; but inasmuch as Frida, in what was intended to be a
+demonstrative welcome, prompted by her mother, was rubbing her head
+against his ribs like a calf against a fence, he had felt he ought to
+hook her to the conversation somehow. John's concern about Frida was
+solved by the others' gathering round him for greetings.
+
+First Hilda offered her sallow cheek, patting while he kissed it her
+brother on the back with one hand, and with the other manipulating
+Harold in such a way as to give John the impression that his nephew was
+being forced into his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"He feels you're his father now," whispered Hilda with a look that was
+meant to express the tender resignation of widowhood, but which only
+succeeded in suggesting a covetous maternity. John doubted if Harold
+felt anything but a desire to escape from being sandwiched between his
+mother's crape and his uncle's watch chain, and he turned to embrace
+Edith, whose cheeks, soft and pink as a toy balloon, were floating
+tremulously expectant upon the glinting autumn air.
+
+"We've been so anxious about you," Edith murmured. "And Laurence has
+such a lot to talk over with you."
+
+John, with a slight sinking that was not altogether due to its being
+past his usual luncheon hour, turned to be welcomed by his
+brother-in-law.
+
+The vicar of Newton Candover's serenity if he had not been a tall and
+handsome man might have been mistaken for smugness; as it was, his
+personality enveloped the scene with a ceremonious dignity that was not
+less than archidiaconal, and except for his comparative youthfulness (he
+was the same age as John) might well have been considered
+archiepiscopal.
+
+"Edith has been anxious about you. Indeed, we have all been anxious
+about you," he intoned, offering his hand to John, for whom the sweet
+damp odors of autumn became a whiff of pious women's veils, while the
+leaves fluttering gently down from the tulip tree in the middle of the
+lawn lisped like the India-paper of prayer-books.
+
+"I've got an air-gun, Uncle John," ejaculated Harold, who having for
+some time been inhaling the necessary breath now expelled the sentence
+in a burst as if he had been an air-gun himself. John hailed the
+announcement almost effusively; it reached him with the kind of relief
+with which in childhood he had heard the number of the final hymn
+announced; and a robin piping his delicate tune from the garden wall was
+welcome as birdsong in a churchyard had been after service on Sundays
+handicapped by the litany.
+
+"Would you like to see me shoot at something?" Harold went on, hastily
+cramming his mouth with slugs.
+
+"Not now, dear," said Hilda, hastily. "Uncle John is tired. And don't
+eat sweets just before lunch."
+
+"Well, it wouldn't tire him to see me shoot at something. And I'm not
+eating sweets. I'm getting ready to load."
+
+"Let the poor child shoot if he wants to," Grandma put in.
+
+Harold beamed ferociously through his spectacles, took a slug from his
+mouth, fitted it into the air-gun, and fired, bringing down two leaves
+from an espalier pear. Everybody applauded him, because everybody felt
+glad that it had not been a window or perhaps even himself; the robin
+cocked his tail contemptuously and flew away.
+
+"And now I must go and get ready for lunch," said John, who thought a
+second shot might be less innocuous, and was moreover really hungry. His
+bedroom, dimity draped, had a pleasant rustic simplicity, but he decided
+that it wanted living in: the atmosphere at present was too much that of
+a well-recommended country inn.
+
+"Yes, it wants living in," said John to himself. "I shall put in a good
+month here and break the back of Joan of Arc."
+
+"What skin is this, Uncle John?" a serious voice at his elbow inquired.
+John started; he had not observed Harold's scout-like entrance.
+
+"What skin is that, my boy?" he repeated in what he thought was the
+right tone of avuncular jocularity and looking down at Harold, who was
+examining with myopic intensity the dressing-case. "That is the skin of
+a white elephant."
+
+"But it's brown," Harold objected.
+
+John rashly decided to extend his facetiousness.
+
+"Yes, well, white elephants turn brown when they're shot, just as
+lobsters turn red when they're boiled."
+
+"Who shot it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know--probably some friend of the gentleman who keeps the
+shop where I bought it."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Well, I can't exactly say when--but probably about three years ago."
+
+"Father used to shoot elephants, didn't he?"
+
+"Yes, my boy, your father used to shoot elephants."
+
+"Perhaps he shot this one."
+
+"Perhaps he did."
+
+"Was he a friend of the gentleman who keeps the shop where you bought
+it?"
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," said John.
+
+"Wouldn't you?" said Harold, skeptically. "My father was an asplorer.
+When I'm big I'm going to be an asplorer, too; but I sha'n't be friends
+with shopkeepers."
+
+"Confounded little snob," John thought, and began to look for his
+nailbrush, the address of whose palatial residence of pigskin only Maud
+knew.
+
+"What are you looking for, Uncle John?" Harold asked.
+
+"I'm looking for my nailbrush, Harold."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"To clean my nails."
+
+"Are they dirty?"
+
+"Well, they're just a little grubby after the railway journey."
+
+"Mine aren't," Harold affirmed in a lofty tone. Then after a minute he
+added: "I thought perhaps you were looking for the present you brought
+me from America."
+
+John turned pale and made up his mind to creep unobserved after lunch
+into the market town of Galton and visit the local toyshop. It would be
+an infernal nuisance, but it served him right for omitting to bring
+presents either for his nephew or his niece.
+
+"You're too smart," he said nervously to Harold. "Present time will be
+after tea." The sentence sounded contradictory somehow, and he changed
+it to "the time for presents will be five o'clock."
+
+"Why?" Harold asked.
+
+John was saved from answering by a tap at the door, followed by the
+entrance of Mrs. Curtis.
+
+"Oh, Harold's with you?" she exclaimed, as if it were the most
+surprising juxtaposition in the world.
+
+"Yes, Harold's with me," John agreed.
+
+"You mustn't let him bother you, but he's been so looking forward to
+your arrival. _When_ is Uncle coming, he kept asking."
+
+"Did he ask _why_ I was coming?"
+
+Hilda looked at her brother blankly, and John made up his mind to try
+that look on Harold some time.
+
+"Have you got everything you want?" she asked, solicitously.
+
+"He hasn't got his nailbrush," said Harold.
+
+Hilda assumed an expression of exaggerated alarm.
+
+"Oh dear, I hope it hasn't been lost."
+
+"No, no, no, it'll turn up in one of the glass bottles. I was just
+telling Harold that I haven't really begun my unpacking yet."
+
+"Uncle John's brought me a present from America," Harold proclaimed in
+accents of greedy pride.
+
+Hilda seized her brother's hand affectionately.
+
+"Now you oughtn't to have done that. It's spoiling him. It really is.
+Harold never expects presents."
+
+"What a liar," thought John. "But not a bigger one than I am myself," he
+supplemented, and then he announced aloud that he must go into Galton
+after lunch and send off an important telegram to his agent.
+
+"I wonder ..." Hilda began, but with an arch look she paused and seemed
+to thrust aside temptation.
+
+"What?" John weakly asked.
+
+"Why ... but no, he might bore you by walking too slowly. Harold," she
+added, seriously, "if Uncle John is kind enough to take you into Galton
+with him, will you be a good boy and leave your butterfly net at home?"
+
+"If I may take my air-gun," Harold agreed.
+
+John rapidly went over in his mind the various places where Harold might
+be successfully detained while he was in the toyshop, decided that the
+risk would be too great, pulled himself together, and declined the
+pleasure of his nephew's company on the ground that he must think over
+very carefully the phrasing of the telegram he had to send, a mental
+process, he explained, that Harold might distract.
+
+"Another day, darling," said Hilda, consolingly.
+
+"And then I'll be able to take my fishing-rod," said Harold.
+
+"He is so like his poor father," Hilda murmured.
+
+John was thinking sympathetically of the distant Amazonian tribe that
+had murdered Daniel Curtis, when there was another tap at the door, and
+Frida crackling loudly in a clean pinafore came in to say that the bell
+for lunch was just going to ring.
+
+"Yes, dear," said her aunt. "Uncle John knows already. Don't bother him
+now. He's tired after his journey. Come along, Harold."
+
+"He can have my nailbrush if he likes," Harold offered.
+
+"Run, darling, and get it quickly then."
+
+Harold rushed out of the room and could be heard hustling his cousin all
+down the corridor, evoking complaints of "Don't, Harold, you rough boy,
+you're crumpling my frock."
+
+The bell for lunch sounded gratefully at this moment, and John, without
+even washing his hands, hurried downstairs trying to look like a hungry
+ogre, so anxious was he to avoid using Harold's nailbrush.
+
+The dining-room at Ambles was a long low room with a large open
+fireplace and paneled walls; from the window-seats bundles of drying
+lavender competed pleasantly with the smell of hot kidney-beans upon the
+table, at the head of which John took his rightful place; opposite to
+him, placid as an untouched pudding, sat Grandmama. Laurence said grace
+without being invited after standing up for a moment with an expression
+of pained interrogation; Edith accompanied his words by making with her
+forefinger and thumb a minute cruciform incision between two of the
+bones of her stays, and inclined her head solemnly toward Frida in a
+mute exhortation to follow her mother's example. Harold flashed his
+spectacles upon every dish in turn; Emily's waiting was during this meal
+of reunion colored with human affection.
+
+"Well, I'm glad to be back in England," said John, heartily.
+
+An encouraging murmur rippled round the table from his relations.
+
+"Are these French beans from our own garden?" John asked presently.
+
+"Scarlet-runners," Hilda corrected. "Yes, of course. We never trouble
+the greengrocer. The frosts have been so light ..."
+
+"I haven't got a bean left," said Laurence.
+
+John nearly gave a visible jump; there was something terribly suggestive
+in that simple horticultural disclaimer.
+
+"Our beans are quite over," added Edith in the astonished voice of one
+who has tumbled upon a secret of nature. She had a habit of echoing many
+of her husband's remarks like this; perhaps "echoing" is a bad
+description of her method, for she seldom repeated literally and often
+not immediately. Sometimes indeed she would wait as long as half an hour
+before she reissued in the garb of a personal philosophical discovery
+or of an exegitical gloss the most casual remark of Laurence, a habit
+which irritated him and embarrassed other people, who would look away
+from Edith and mutter a hurried agreement or ask for the salt to be
+passed.
+
+"I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that beans were a favorite dish
+of poor Papa, though I myself always liked peas better."
+
+"I like peas," Harold proclaimed.
+
+"I like peas, too," cried Frida excitedly.
+
+"Frida," said her father, pulling out with a click one of the graver
+tenor stops in his voice, "we do not talk at table about our likes and
+dislikes."
+
+Edith indorsed this opinion with a grave nod at Frida, or rather with a
+solemn inclination of the head as if she were bowing to an altar.
+
+"But I like new potatoes best of all," continued Harold. "My gosh, all
+buttery!"
+
+Laurence screwed up his eye in a disgusted wince, looked down his nose
+at his plate, and drew a shocked cork from his throat.
+
+"Hush," said Hilda. "Didn't you hear what Uncle Laurence said, darling?"
+
+She spoke as one speaks to children in church when the organ begins; one
+felt that she was inspired by social tact rather than by any real
+reverence for the clergyman.
+
+"Well, I do like new potatoes, and I like asparagus."
+
+Frida was just going to declare for asparagus, too, when she caught her
+father's eye and choked.
+
+"Evidently the vegetable that Frida likes best," said John, riding
+buoyantly upon the gale of Frida's convulsions, "is an artichoke."
+
+It is perhaps lucky for professional comedians that rich uncles and
+judges rarely go on the stage; their occupation might be even more
+arduous if they had to face such competitors. Anyway, John had enough
+success with his joke to feel much more hopeful of being able to find
+suitable presents in Galton for Harold and Frida; and in the silence of
+exhaustion that succeeded the laughter he broke the news of his having
+to go into town and dispatch an urgent telegram that very afternoon,
+mentioning incidentally that he might see about a dog-cart, and, of
+course, at the same time a horse. Everybody applauded his resolve except
+his brother-in-law who looked distinctly put out.
+
+"But you won't be gone before I get back?" John asked.
+
+Laurence and Edith exchanged glances fraught with the unuttered
+solemnities of conjugal comprehension.
+
+"Well, I _had_ wanted to have a talk over things with you after lunch,"
+Laurence explained. "In fact, I have a good deal to talk over. I should
+suggest driving you in to Galton, but I find it impossible to talk
+freely while driving. Even our poor old pony has been known to shy. Yes,
+indeed, poor old Primrose often shies."
+
+John mentally blessed the aged animal's youthful heart, and said, to
+cover his relief, that old maids were often more skittish than young
+ones.
+
+"Why?" asked Harold.
+
+Everybody felt that Harold's question was one that should not be
+answered.
+
+"You wouldn't understand, darling," said his mother; and the dining-room
+became tense with mystery.
+
+"Of course, if we could have dinner put forward half an hour," said
+Laurence, dragging the conversation out of the slough of sex, "we could
+avail ourselves of the moon."
+
+"Yes, you see," Edith put in eagerly, "it wouldn't be so dark with the
+moon."
+
+Laurence knitted his brow at this and his wife hastened to add that an
+earlier dinner would bring Frida's bed-time much nearer to its normal
+hour.
+
+"The point is that I have a great deal to talk over with John," Laurence
+irritably explained, "and that," he looked as if he would have liked to
+add "Frida's bed-time can go to the devil," but he swallowed the impious
+dedication and crumbled his bread.
+
+Finally, notwithstanding that everybody felt very full of roast beef and
+scarlet-runners, it was decided to dine at half-past six instead of
+half-past seven.
+
+"Poor Papa, I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "always liked to dine
+at half-past three. That gave him a nice long morning for his patients
+and time to smoke his cigar after dinner before he opened the dispensary
+in the evening. Supper was generally cold unless he anticipated a night
+call, in which case we had soup."
+
+All were glad that the twentieth century had arrived, and they smiled
+sympathetically at the old lady, who, feeling that her anecdote had
+scored a hit, embarked upon another about being taken to the Great
+Exhibition when she was eleven years old, which lasted right through the
+pudding, perhaps because it was trifle, and Harold did not feel inclined
+to lose a mouthful by rash interruptions.
+
+After lunch John was taken all over the house and all round the garden
+and congratulated time after time upon the wisdom he had shown in buying
+Ambles: he was made to feel that property set him apart from other men
+even more definitely than dramatic success.
+
+"Of course, Daniel was famous in his way," Hilda said. "But what did he
+leave me?"
+
+John, remembering the £120 a year in the bank and the collection of
+stuffed humming birds at the pantechnicon, the importation of which to
+Ambles he was always dreading, felt that Hilda was not being
+ungratefully rhetorical.
+
+"And of course," Laurence contributed, "a vicar feels that his
+glebe--the value of which by the way has just gone down another £2 an
+acre--is not his own."
+
+"Yes, you see," Edith put in, "if anything horrid happened to Laurence
+it would belong to the next vicar."
+
+Again the glances of husband and wife played together in mid-air like
+butterflies.
+
+"And so," Laurence went on, "when you tell us that you hope to buy this
+twenty-acre field we all realize that in doing so you would most
+emphatically be consolidating your property."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure you're wise to buy," said Hilda, weightily.
+
+"It would make Ambles so much larger, wouldn't it?" suggested Edith.
+"Twenty acres, you see ... well, really, I suppose twenty acres would be
+as big as from...."
+
+"Come, Edith," said her husband. "Don't worry poor John with comparative
+acres--we are all looking at the twenty-acre field now."
+
+The fierce little Kerry cows eyed the prospective owner peacefully,
+until Harold hit one of them with a slug from his air-gun, when they all
+began to career about the field, kicking up their heels and waving their
+tails.
+
+"Don't do that, my boy," John said, crossly--for him very crossly.
+
+A short cut to Galton lay across this field, which John, though even
+when they were quiet he never felt on really intimate terms with cows,
+had just decided to follow.
+
+"Darling, that's such a cruel thing to do," Hilda expostulated. "The
+poor cow wasn't hurting you."
+
+"It was looking at me," Harold protested.
+
+"There is a legend about Francis of Assisi, Harold," his Uncle Laurence
+began, "which will interest you and at the same time...."
+
+"Sorry to interrupt," John broke in, "but I must be getting along. This
+telegram.... I'll be back for tea."
+
+He hurried off and when everybody called out to remind him of the short
+cut across the twenty-acre field he waved back cheerfully, as if he
+thought he was being wished a jolly walk; but he took the long way
+round.
+
+It was a good five miles to Galton in the opposite direction from the
+road by which he had driven up that morning; but on this fine autumn
+afternoon, going down hill nearly all the way through a foreground of
+golden woods with prospects of blue distances beyond, John enjoyed the
+walk, and not less because even at the beginning of it he stopped once
+or twice to think how jolly it would be to see Miss Hamilton and Miss
+Merritt coming round the next bend in the road. Later on, he did not
+bother to include Miss Merritt, and finally he discovered his fancy so
+steadily fixed upon Miss Hamilton that he was forced to remind himself
+that Miss Hamilton in such a setting would demand a much higher standard
+of criticism than Miss Hamilton on the promenade deck of the _Murmania_.
+Nevertheless, John continued to think of her; and so pleasantly did her
+semblance walk beside him and so exceptionally mild was the afternoon
+for the season of the year that he must have strolled along the greater
+part of the way. At any rate, when he saw the tower of Galton church he
+was shocked to find that it was already four o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The selection of presents for children is never easy, because in order
+to extract real pleasure from the purchase it is necessary to find
+something that excites the donor as much as it is likely to excite the
+recipient. In John's case this difficulty was quadrupled by having to
+find toys with an American air about them, and on top of that by the
+narrowly restricted choice in the Galton shops. He felt that it would be
+ridiculous, even insulting, to produce for Frida as typical of New
+York's luxurious catering for the young that doll, the roses of whose
+cheeks had withered in the sunlight of five Hampshire summers, and whose
+smile had failed to allure as little girls those who were now
+marriageable young women. Nor did he think that Harold would accept as
+worthy of American enterprise those more conspicuous portions of a
+diminutive Uhlan's uniform fastened to a dog's-eared sheet of cardboard,
+the sword belonging to which was rusting in the scabbard and the gilt
+lancehead of which no longer gave the least illusion of being metal.
+Finally, however, just as the clock was striking five he unearthed from
+a remote corner of the large ironmonger's shop, to which he had turned
+in despair from the toys offered him by the two stationers, a toboggan,
+and not merely a toboggan but a Canadian toboggan stamped with the image
+of a Red Indian.
+
+"It was ordered for a customer in 1895," the ironmonger explained.
+"There was heavy snow that year, you may remember."
+
+If it had been ordered by Methuselah when he was still in his 'teens
+John would not have hesitated.
+
+"Well, would you--er--wrap it up," he said, putting down the money.
+
+"Hadn't the carrier better bring it, sir?" suggested the ironmonger.
+"He'll be going Wrottesford way to-morrow morning."
+
+Obviously John could not carry the toboggan five miles, but just as
+obviously he must get the toboggan back to Ambles that night: so he
+declined the carrier, and asked the ironmonger to order him a fly while
+he made a last desperate search for Frida's present. In the end, with
+twilight falling fast, he bought for his niece twenty-nine small china
+animals, which the stationer assured him would enchant any child between
+nine and eleven, though perhaps less likely to appeal to ages outside
+that period. A younger child, for instance, might be tempted to put them
+in its mouth, even to swallow them if not carefully watched, while an
+older child might tread on them. Another advantage was that when the
+young lady for whom they were intended grew out of them, they could be
+put away and revived to adorn her mantelpiece when she had reached an
+age to appreciate the possibilities of a mantelpiece. John did not feel
+as happy about these animals as he did about the toboggan: there was not
+a single buffalo among them, and not one looked in the least
+distinctively American, but the stationer was so reassuring and time was
+going by so rapidly that he decided to risk the purchase. And really
+when they were deposited in a cardboard box among cotton-wool they did
+not look so dull, and perhaps Frida would enjoy guessing how many there
+were before she unpacked them.
+
+"Better than a Noah's Ark," said John, hopefully.
+
+"Oh yes, much better, sir. A much more suitable present for a young
+lady. In fact Noah's Arks are considered all right for village treats,
+but they're in very little demand among the gentry nowadays."
+
+When John was within a quarter of a mile from Ambles he told the driver
+of the fly to stop. Somehow he must creep into the house and up to his
+room with the toboggan and the china animals; it was after six, and the
+children would have been looking out for his return since five. Perhaps
+the cows would have gone home by now and he should not excite their
+nocturnal apprehensions by dragging the toboggan across the twenty-acre
+field. Meanwhile, he should tell the fly to wait five minutes before
+driving slowly up to the house, which would draw the scent and enable
+him with Emily's help to reach his room unperceived by the backstairs. A
+heavy mist hung upon the meadow, and the paper wrapped round the
+toboggan, which was just too wide to be carried under his arm like a
+portfolio, began to peel off in the dew with a swishing sound that would
+inevitably attract the curiosity of the cows were they still at large;
+moreover, several of the china animals were now chinking together and,
+John could not help feeling with some anxiety, probably chipping off
+their noses.
+
+"I must look like a broken-down Santa Claus with this vehicle," he said
+to himself. "Where's the path got to now? I wonder why people wiggle so
+when they make a path? Hullo! What's that?"
+
+The munching of cattle was audible close at hand, a munching that was
+sometimes interrupted by awful snorts.
+
+"Perhaps it's only the mist that makes them do that," John tried to
+assure himself. "It seems very imprudent to leave valuable cows out of
+doors on a damp night like this."
+
+There was a sound of heavy bodies moving suddenly in unison.
+
+"They've heard me," thought John, hopelessly. "I wish to goodness I knew
+something about cows. I really must get the subject up. Of course, they
+_may_ be frightened of _me_. Good heavens, they're all snorting now.
+Probably the best thing to do is to keep on calmly walking; most animals
+are susceptible to human indifference. What a little fool that nephew of
+mine was to shoot at them this afternoon. I'm hanged if he deserves his
+toboggan."
+
+The lights of Ambles stained the mist in front; John ran the last fifty
+yards, threw himself over the iron railings, and stood panting upon his
+own lawn. In the distance could be heard the confused thudding of hoofs
+dying away toward the far end of the twenty-acre meadow.
+
+"I evidently frightened them," John thought.
+
+A few minutes later he was calling down from the landing outside his
+bedroom that it was time for presents. In the first brief moment of
+intoxication that had succeeded his defeat of the cattle John had
+seriously contemplated tobogganing downstairs himself in order to
+"surprise the kids" as he put it. But from his landing the staircase
+looked all wrong for such an experiment and he walked the toboggan down,
+which lamplight appeared to him a typical product of the bear-haunted
+mountains of Canada.
+
+Everybody was waiting for him in the drawing-room; everybody was
+flatteringly enthusiastic about the toboggan and seemed anxious to make
+it at home in such strange surroundings; nobody failed to point out to
+the lucky boy the extreme kindness of his uncle in bringing back such a
+wonderful present all the way from America--indeed one almost had the
+impression that John must often have had to wake up and feed it in the
+night.
+
+"The trouble you must have taken," Hilda exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, I did take a good deal of trouble," John admitted. After all, so
+he had--a damned sight more trouble than any one there suspected.
+
+"When will it snow?" Harold asked. "To-morrow?"
+
+"I hope not--I mean, it might," said John. He must keep up Harold's
+spirits, if only to balance Frida's depression, about whose present he
+was beginning to feel very doubtful when he saw her eyes glittering with
+feverish anticipation while he was undoing the string. He hoped she
+would not faint or scream with disappointment when it was opened, and he
+took off the lid of the box with the kind of flourish to which waiters
+often treat dish-covers when they wish to promote an appetite among the
+guests.
+
+"How sweet," Edith murmured.
+
+John looked gratefully at his sister; if he had made his will that night
+she would have inherited Ambles.
+
+"Ah, a collection of small china animals," said Laurence, choosing a cat
+to set delicately upon the table for general admiration. John wished he
+had not chosen the cat that seemed to suffer with a tumor in the region
+of the tail and disinclined in consequence to sit still.
+
+"Yes, I was anxious to get her a Noah's Ark," John volunteered, seeming
+to suggest by his tone how appropriate such a gift would have been to
+the atmosphere of a vicarage. "But they've practically given up making
+Noah's Arks in America, and you see, these china animals will serve as
+toys now, and later on, when Frida is grown-up, they'll look jolly on
+the mantelpiece. Those that are not broken, of course."
+
+The animals had all been taken out of their box by now, but a few paws
+and ears were still adhering to the cotton-wool.
+
+"Frida is always very light on her toys," said Edith, proudly.
+
+"Not likely to put them in her mouth," said John, heartily. "That was
+the only thing that made me hesitate when I first saw them in Fifth
+Avenue. But they don't look quite so edible here."
+
+"Frida never puts anything in her mouth," Edith generalized, primly.
+"And she's given up biting her nails since Uncle John came home, haven't
+you, dear?"
+
+"That's a good girl," John applauded; he did not believe in Frida's
+sudden conquest of autophagy, but he was anxious to encourage her in
+every way at the moment.
+
+Yes, the gift-horses had shown off their paces better than he had
+expected, he decided. To be sure, Frida did not appear beside herself
+with joy, but at any rate she had not burst into tears--she had not
+thrust the present from her sight with loathing and begged to be taken
+home. And then Harold, who had been staring at the animals through his
+glasses, like the horrid little naturalist that he was, said:
+
+"I've seen some animals like them in Mr. Goodman's shop."
+
+John hoped a blizzard would blow to-morrow, that Harold would toboggan
+recklessly down the steepest slope of the downs behind Ambles, and that
+he would hit an oak tree at the bottom and break his glasses. However,
+none of these dark thoughts obscured the remote brightness with which he
+answered:
+
+"Really, Harold. Very likely. There is a considerable exportation of
+china animals from America nowadays. In fact I was very lucky to find
+any left in America."
+
+"Let's go into Gallon to-morrow and look at Mr. Goodman's animals,"
+Harold suggested.
+
+John had never suspected that one day he should feel grateful to his
+brother-in-law; but when the dinner-bell went at half-past six instead
+of half-past seven solely on his account, John felt inclined to shake
+him by the hand. Nor would he have ever supposed that he should one day
+welcome the prospect of one of Laurence's long confidential talks. Yet
+when the ladies departed after dessert and Laurence took the chair next
+to himself as solemnly as if it were a fald-stool, he encouraged him
+with a smile.
+
+"We might have our little talk now," and when Laurence cleared his
+throat John felt that the conversation had been opened as successfully
+as a local bazaar. Not merely did John smile encouragingly, but he
+actually went so far as to invite him to go ahead.
+
+Laurence sighed, and poured himself out a second glass of port.
+
+"I find myself in a position of considerable difficulty," he announced,
+"and should like your advice."
+
+John's mind went rapidly to the balance in his passbook instead of to
+the treasure of worldly experience from which he might have drawn.
+
+"Perhaps before we begin our little talk," said Laurence, "it would be
+as well if I were to remind you of some of the outstanding events and
+influences in my life. You will then be in a better position to give me
+the advice and help--ah--the moral help, of which I stand in
+need--ah--in sore need."
+
+"He keeps calling it a little talk," John thought, "but by Jove, it's
+lucky we did have dinner early. At this rate he won't get back to his
+vicarage before cock-crow."
+
+John was not deceived by his brother-in-law's minification of their
+talk, and he exchanged the trim Henry Clay he had already clipped for a
+very large Upman that would smoke for a good hour.
+
+"Won't you light up before you begin?" he asked, pushing a box of
+commonplace Murillos toward his brother-in-law, whose habit of biting
+off the end of a cigar, of letting it go out, of continually knocking
+off the ash, of forgetting to remove the band till it was smoldering,
+and of playing miserable little tunes with it on the rim of a
+coffee-cup, in fact of doing everything with it except smoke it
+appreciatively, made it impossible for John, so far as Laurence was
+concerned, to be generous with his cigars.
+
+"I think you'll find these not bad."
+
+This was true; the Murillos were not actually bad.
+
+"Thanks, I will avail myself of your offer. But to come back to what I
+was saying," Laurence went on, lighting his cigar with as little
+expression of anticipated pleasure as might be discovered in the
+countenance of a lodging-house servant lighting a fire. "I do not
+propose to occupy your time by an account of my spiritual struggles at
+the University."
+
+"You ought to write a novel," said John, cheerfully.
+
+Laurence looked puzzled.
+
+"I am now occupied with the writing of a play, but I shall come to that
+presently. Novels, however...."
+
+"I was only joking," said John. "It would take too long to explain the
+joke. Sorry I interrupted you. Cigar gone out? Don't take another. It
+doesn't really matter how often those Murillos go out."
+
+"Where am I?" Laurence asked in a bewildered voice.
+
+"You'd just left Oxford," John answered, quickly.
+
+"Ah, yes, I was at Oxford. Well, as I was saying, I shall not detain you
+with an account of my spiritual struggles there.... I think I may
+almost without presumption refer to them as my spiritual progress ...
+let it suffice that I found myself on the vigil of my ordination after a
+year at Cuddesdon Theological College a convinced High Churchman. This
+must not be taken to mean that I belonged to the more advanced or what I
+should prefer to call the Italian party in the Church of England. I did
+not."
+
+Laurence here paused and looked at John earnestly; since John had not
+the remotest idea what the Italian party meant and was anxious to avoid
+being told, he said in accents that sought to convey relief at hearing
+his brother-in-law's personal contradiction of a charge that had for
+long been whispered against him:
+
+"Oh, you didn't?"
+
+"No, I did not. I was not prepared to go one jot or one tittle beyond
+the Five Points."
+
+"Of the compass, you mean," said John, wisely. "Quite so."
+
+Then seeing that Laurence seemed rather indignant, he added quickly,
+"Did I say the compass? How idiotic! Of course, I meant the law."
+
+"The Five Points are the Eastward Position...."
+
+"It was the compass after all," John thought. "What a fool I was to
+hedge."
+
+"The Mixed Chalice, Lights, Wafer Bread, and Vestments, but _not_ the
+ceremonial use of Incense."
+
+"And those are the Five Points?"
+
+Laurence inclined his head.
+
+"Which you were not prepared to go beyond, I think you said?" John
+gravely continued, flattering himself that he was re-established as an
+intelligent listener.
+
+"In adhering to these Five Points," Laurence proceeded, "I found that I
+was able to claim the support of a number of authoritative English
+divines. I need only mention Bishop Ken and Bishop Andrews for you to
+appreciate my position."
+
+"Eastward, I think you said," John put in; for his brother-in-law had
+paused again, and he was evidently intended to say something.
+
+"I perceive that you are not acquainted with the divergences of opinion
+that unhappily exist in our national Church."
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth--and I know you'll excuse my frankness--I
+haven't been to church since I was a boy," John admitted. "But I know I
+used to dislike the litany very much, and of course I had my favorite
+hymns--we most of us have--and really I think that's as far as I got.
+However, I have to get up the subject of religion very shortly. My next
+play will deal with Joan of Arc, and, as you may imagine, religion plays
+an important part in such a theme--a very important part. In addition to
+the vision that Joan will have of St. Michael in the first act, one of
+my chief unsympathetic characters is a bishop. I hope I'm not hurting
+your feelings in telling you this, my dear fellow. Have another cigar,
+won't you? I think you've dipped the end of that one in the
+coffee-lees."
+
+Laurence assured John bitterly that he had no reason to be particularly
+fond of bishops. "In fact," he went on, "I'm having a very painful
+discussion with the Bishop of Silchester at this moment, but I shall
+come to that presently. What I am anxious, however, to impress upon you
+at this stage in our little talk is the fact that on the vigil of my
+ordination I had arrived at a definite theory of what I could and could
+not accept. Well, I was ordained deacon by the Bishop of St. Albans and
+licensed to a curacy in Plaistow--one of the poorest districts in the
+East End of London. Here I worked for three years, and it was here that
+fourteen years ago I first met Edith."
+
+"Yes, I seem to remember. Wasn't she working at a girls' club or
+something? I know I always thought that there must be a secondary
+attraction."
+
+"At that time my financial position was not such as to warrant my
+embarking upon matrimony. Moreover, I had in a moment of what I should
+now call boyish exaltation registered a vow of perpetual celibacy.
+Edith, however, with that devotion which neither then nor at any crisis
+since has failed me expressed her willingness to consent to an
+indefinite engagement, and I remember with gratitude that it was just
+this consent of hers which was the means of widening the narrow--ah--the
+all too narrow path which at that time I was treading in religion. My
+vicar and I had a painful dispute upon some insignificant doctrinal
+point; I felt bound to resign my curacy, and take another under a man
+who could appreciate and allow for my speculative temperament. I became
+curate to St. Thomas's, Kensington, and had hopes of ultimately being
+preferred to a living. I realized in fact that the East End was a
+cul-de-sac for a young and--if I may so describe myself without being
+misunderstood--ambitious curate. For three years I remained at St.
+Thomas's and obtained a considerable reputation as a preacher. You may
+or may not remember that some Advent Addresses of mine were reprinted in
+one of the more tolerant religious weeklies and obtained what I do not
+hesitate to call the honor of being singled out for malicious abuse by
+the _Church Times_. Eleven years ago my dear father died and by leaving
+me an independence of £417 a year enabled me not merely to marry Edith,
+but very soon afterwards to accept the living of Newton Candover. I will
+not detain you with the history of my financial losses, which I hope I
+have always welcomed in the true spirit of resignation. Let it suffice
+that within a few years owing to my own misplaced charity and some bad
+advice from a relative of mine on the Stock Exchange my private income
+dwindled to £152, while at the same time the gross income of Newton
+Candover from £298 sank to the abominably low nett income of £102--a
+serious reflection, I think you will agree, upon the shocking financial
+system of our national Church. It may surprise you, my dear John, to
+learn that such blows from fate not only did not cast me down into a
+state of spiritual despair and intellectual atrophy, but that they
+actually had the effect of inciting me to still greater efforts."
+
+John had been fumbling with his check book when Laurence began to talk
+about his income; but the unexpected turn of the narrative quietened
+him, and the Upman was going well.
+
+"You may or may not come across a little series of devotional
+meditations for the Man in the Street entitled Lamp-posts. They have a
+certain vogue, and I may tell you in confidence that under the pseudonym
+of The Lamplighter I wrote them. The actual financial return they
+brought me was slight. Barabbas, you know, was a publisher. Ha-ha! No,
+although I made nothing, or rather practically nothing out of them for
+my own purse, by leading me to browse among many modern works of
+theology and philosophy I began to realize that there was a great deal
+of reason for modern indifference and skepticism. In other words, I
+discovered that, in order to keep the man in the street a Christian,
+Christianity must adapt itself to his needs. Filled with a reverent
+enthusiasm and perhaps half-consciously led along such a path by your
+conspicuous example of success, I have sought to embody my theories in a
+play, the protagonist of which is the apostle Thomas, whom when you read
+the play you will easily recognize as the prototype of the man in the
+street. And this brings me to the reason for which I have asked you for
+this little talk. The fact of the matter is that in pursuing my studies
+of the apostle Thomas I have actually gone beyond his simple rugged
+agnosticism, and I now at forty-two years of age after eighteen years as
+a minister of religion find myself unable longer to accept in any
+literal sense of the term whatever the Virgin Birth."
+
+Laurence poured himself out a third glass of port and waited for John to
+recover from his stupefaction.
+
+"But I don't think I'm a very good person to talk to about these
+abstruse divine obstetrics," John protested. "I really haven't
+considered the question. I know of course to what you refer, but I think
+this is essentially an occasion for professional advice."
+
+"I do not ask for advice upon my beliefs," Laurence explained. "I
+recognize that nobody is able to do anything for them except myself.
+What I want you to do is to let Edith, myself, and little Frida stay
+with you at Ambles--of course we should be paying guests and you could
+use our pony and trap and any of the vicarage furniture that you thought
+suitable--until it has been decided whether I am likely or not to have
+any success as a dramatist. I do not ask you to undertake the Quixotic
+task of trying to obtain a public representation of my play about the
+apostle Thomas. I know that Biblical subjects are forbidden by the Lord
+Chamberlain, surely a monstrous piece of flunkeyism. But I have many
+other ideas for plays, and I'm convinced that you will sympathize with
+my anxiety to be able to work undisturbed and, if I may say so, in close
+propinquity to another playwright who is already famous."
+
+"But why do you want to leave your own vicarage?" John gasped.
+
+"My dear fellow, owing to what I can only call the poisonous behavior of
+Mrs. Paxton, my patron, to whom while still a curate at St. Thomas's,
+Kensington, I gave an abundance of spiritual consolation when she
+suffered the loss of her husband, owing as I say to her poisonous
+behavior following upon a trifling quarrel about some alterations I made
+in the fabric of _my_ church without consulting her, I have been subject
+to ceaseless inquisition and persecution. There has been an outcry in
+the more bigoted religious press about my doctrine, and in short I have
+thought it best and most dignified to resign my living. I am therefore,
+to use a colloquialism,--ah--at a loose end."
+
+"And Edith?" John asked.
+
+"My poor wife still clings with feminine loyalty to those accretions to
+faith from which I have cut myself free. In most things she is at one
+with me, but I have steadily resisted the temptation to intrude upon the
+sanctity of her intimate beliefs. She sees my point of view. Of her
+sympathy I can only speak with gratitude. But she is still an
+old-fashioned believer. And indeed I am glad, for I should not like to
+think of her tossed upon the stormy seas of doubt and exposed to
+the--ah--hurricanes of speculation that surge through my own brains."
+
+"And when do you want to move in to Ambles?"
+
+"Well, if it would be convenient, we should like to begin gradually
+to-morrow. I have informed the Bishop that I will--ah--be out in a
+fortnight."
+
+"But what about Hilda?" John asked, doubtfully. "She is really looking
+after Ambles for me, you know."
+
+"While we have been having our little talk in the dining-room Edith has
+been having her little talk with Hilda in the drawing-room, and I think
+I hear them coming now."
+
+John looked up quickly to see the effect of that other little talk, and
+determined to avoid for that night at least anything in the nature of
+little talks with anybody.
+
+"Laurence dear," said Edith mildly, "isn't it time we were going?"
+
+John knew that not Hilda herself could have phrased more aptly what she
+was feeling; he was sure that in her opinion it was indeed high time
+that Edith and Laurence were going.
+
+Laurence went over to the window and pulled aside the curtains to
+examine the moon.
+
+"Yes, my dear, I think we might have Primrose harnessed. Where is
+Frida?"
+
+"She is watching Harold arrange the animals that John gave her. They are
+playing at visiting the Natural History Museum."
+
+John was aware that he had not yet expressed his own willingness for the
+Armitage family to move into Ambles; he was equally aware that Hilda was
+trying to catch his eye with a questioning and indignant glance and that
+he had already referred the decision to her. At the same time he could
+not bring himself to exalt Hilda above Edith who was the younger and he
+was bound to admit the favorite of his two sisters; moreover, Hilda was
+the mother of Harold, and if Harold was to be considered tolerable in
+the same house as himself, he could not deny as much of his forbearance
+to Laurence.
+
+"Well, I suppose you two girls have settled it between you?" he said.
+
+Hilda, who did not seem either surprised or elated at being called a
+girl, observed coldly that naturally it was for John to decide, but that
+if the vicarage family was going to occupy Ambles extra furniture would
+be required immediately.
+
+"My dear," said Laurence. "Didn't you make it clear to Hilda that as
+much of the vicarage furniture as is required can be sent here
+immediately? John and I had supposed that you were settling all these
+little domestic details during your little talk together."
+
+"No, dear," Edith said, "we settled nothing. Hilda felt, and of course I
+can't help agreeing with her, that it is really asking too much of John.
+She reminded me that he has come down here to work."
+
+The last icicle of opposition melted from John's heart; he could not
+bear to think of Edith's being lectured all the way home by her husband
+under the light of a setting moon. "I dare say we can manage," he said,
+"and really, you know Hilda, it will do the rooms good to be lived in. I
+noticed this afternoon a slight smell of damp coming from the
+unfurnished part of the house."
+
+"Apples, not damp," Hilda snapped. "I had the apples stored in one of
+the disused rooms."
+
+"All these problems will solve themselves," said Laurence, grandly. "And
+I'm sure that John cannot wish to attempt them to-night. Let us all
+remember that he may be tired. Come along, Edith. We have a long day
+before us to-morrow. Let us say good-night to Mama."
+
+Edith started: it was the first time in eleven years of married life
+that her husband had adopted the Touchwood style of addressing or
+referring to their mother, and it seemed to set a seal upon his more
+intimate association with her family in the future. If any doubts still
+lingered about the forthcoming immigration of the vicarage party to
+Ambles they were presently disposed of once and for all by Laurence.
+
+"What are you carrying?" he asked Frida, when they were gathered in the
+hall before starting.
+
+"Uncle John's present," she replied.
+
+"Do not bother. Uncle John has invited us to stay here, and you do not
+want to expose your little animals to the risk of being chipped. No
+doubt Harold will look after them for you in the interim--the short
+interim. Come, Edith, the moon is not going to wait for us, you know. I
+have the reins. Gee-up, Primrose!"
+
+"Fond as I am of Edith," Hilda said, when the vicarage family was out of
+hearing. "Fond as I am of Edith," she repeated without any trace of
+affection in accent or expression, "I do think this invasion is an
+imposition upon your kindness. But clergymen are all alike; they all
+become dictatorial and obtuse; they're too fond of the sound of their
+own voices."
+
+"Laurence is perhaps a little heavy," John agreed, "a little suave and
+heavy like a cornflour shape, but we ought to do what we can for Edith."
+
+He tactfully offered Hilda a share in his own benevolence, in which she
+ensconced herself without hesitation.
+
+"Well, I suppose we shall have to make the best of it. Indeed the only
+thing that _really_ worries me is what we are to do with the apples."
+
+"Oh, Harold will soon eat them up," said John; though he had not the
+slightest intention of being sarcastic, Hilda was so much annoyed by
+this that she abandoned all discussion of the vicarage and talked so
+long about Harold's inside and with such a passionate insistence upon
+what he required of sweet and sour to prevent him from dropping before
+her very eyes, that John was able fairly soon to plead that the hour was
+late and that he must go to bed.
+
+In his bedroom, which was sharp-scented with autumnal airs and made him
+disinclined for sleep, John became sentimental over Edith and began to
+weave out of her troubles a fine robe for his own good-nature in which
+his sentimentality was able to show itself off. He assured himself of
+Edith's luck in having Ambles as a refuge in the difficult time through
+which she was passing and began to visualize her past life as nothing
+but a stormy prelude to a more tranquil present in which he should be
+her pilot. That Laurence would be included in his beneficence was
+certainly a flaw in the emerald of his bounty, a fly in the amber of his
+self-satisfaction; but, after all, so long as Edith was secure and happy
+such blemishes were hardly perceptible. He ought to think himself lucky
+that he was in a position to help his relations; the power of doing kind
+actions was surely the greatest privilege accorded to the successful
+man. And what right had Hilda to object? Good gracious, as if she
+herself were not dependent enough upon him! But there had always been
+visible in Hilda this wretched spirit of competition. It had been in
+just the same spirit that she had married Daniel Curtis; she had not
+been able to endure her younger sister's engagement to the tall handsome
+curate and had snatched at the middle-aged explorer in order to be
+married simultaneously and secure the best wedding presents for herself.
+But what had Daniel Curtis seen in Hilda? What had that myopic and
+taciturn man found in Hilda to gladden a short visit to England between
+his life on the Orinoco and his intended life at the back of the
+uncharted Amazons? And had his short experience of her made him so
+reckless that nothing but his spectacles were found by the rescuers?
+What mad impulse to perpetuate his name beyond the numerous beetles,
+flowers, monkeys, and butterflies to which it was already attached by
+many learned societies had led him to bequeath Harold to humanity? Was
+not his collection of humming birds enough?
+
+"I'm really very glad that Edith is coming to Ambles," John murmured.
+"Very glad indeed. It will serve Hilda right." He began to wonder if he
+actually disliked Hilda and to realize that he had never really forgiven
+her for refusing to be interested in his first published story. How well
+he remembered that occasion--twenty years ago almost to a day. It had
+been a dreary November in the time when London really did have fogs,
+and when the sense of his father's approaching death had added to the
+general gloom. James had been acting as his father's partner for more
+than a year and had already nearly ruined the practice by his
+inexperience and want of affability. George and himself were both in the
+city offices--George in wool, himself in dog-biscuits. George did not
+seem to mind the soul-destroying existence and was full of financial
+ambition; but himself had loathed it and cared for nothing but
+literature. How he had pleaded with that dry old father, whose cynical
+tormented face on its pillow smeared with cigar ash even now vividly
+haunted his memory; but the fierce old man had refused him the least
+temporary help and had actually chuckled with delight amidst all his
+pain at the thought of how his family would have to work for a living
+when he should mercifully be dead. Was it surprising, when that morning
+he had found at the office a communication from a syndicate of
+provincial papers to inform him of his story's being accepted, that he
+should have arrived home in the fog, full of hope and enthusiasm? And
+then he had been met with whispering voices and the news of his father's
+death. Of course he had been shocked and grieved, even disappointed that
+it was too late to announce his success to the old man; but he had not
+been able to resist telling Hilda, a gawky, pale-faced girl of eighteen,
+that his story had been taken. He could recall her expression in that
+befogged gaslight even now, her expression of utter lack of interest,
+faintly colored with surprise at his own bad taste. Then he had gone
+upstairs to see his mother, who was bathed in tears, though she had been
+warned at least six months ago that her husband might die at any moment.
+He had ventured after a few formal words of sympathy to lighten the
+burden of her grief by taking the auspicious communication from his
+pocket, where it had been cracking nervously between his fingers, and
+reading it to her. He had been sure that she would be interested because
+she was a great reader of stories and must surely derive a grateful
+wonder from the contemplation of her own son as an author. But she was
+evidently too much overcome by the insistency of grief and by the
+prospect of monetary difficulties in the near future to grasp what he
+was telling her; it had struck him that she had actually never realized
+that the stories she enjoyed were written by men and women any more than
+it might have struck another person that advertisements were all written
+by human beings with their own histories of love and hate.
+
+"You mustn't neglect your office work, Johnnie," was what she had said.
+"We shall want every halfpenny now that Papa is gone. James does his
+best, but the patients were more used to Papa."
+
+After these two rebuffs John had not felt inclined to break his good
+news to James, who would be sure to sneer, or to George, who would only
+laugh; so he had wandered upstairs to the old schoolroom, where he had
+found Edith sitting by a dull fire and dissuading little Hugh from
+throwing coals at the cat. As soon as he had told Edith what had
+happened she had made a hero of him, and ever afterwards treated him
+with admiration as well as affection. Had she not prophesied even that
+he would be another Dickens? That was something like sisterly love, and
+he had volunteered to read her the original rough copy, which,
+notwithstanding Hugh's whining interruptions, she had enjoyed as much as
+he had enjoyed it himself. Certainly Edith must come to Ambles; twenty
+years were not enough to obliterate the memory of that warm-hearted girl
+of fifteen and of her welcome praise.
+
+But Hugh? What malign spirit had brought Hugh to his mind at a moment
+when he was already just faintly disturbed by the prospect of his
+relations' increasing demands upon his attention? Hugh was only
+twenty-seven now and much too conspicuously for his own good the
+youngest of the family; like all children that arrive unexpectedly after
+a long interval, he had seemed the pledge of his parents' renewed youth
+on the very threshold of old age, and had been spoiled, even by his
+cross-grained old father, in consequence: as for his mother, though it
+was out of her power to spoil him extravagantly with money, she gave him
+all that she did not spend on caps for herself. John determined to make
+inquiries about Hugh to-morrow. Not another penny should he have from
+him, not another farthing. If he could not live on what he earned in the
+office of Stephen Crutchley, who had accepted the young spendthrift out
+of regard for their lifelong friendship, if he could not become a
+decent, well-behaved architect, why, he could starve. Not another penny
+... and the rest of his relations agreed with John on this point, for if
+to him Hugh was a skeleton in the family cupboard, to them he was a
+skeleton at the family feast.
+
+John expelled from his mind all misgivings about Hugh, hoped it would be
+a fine day to-morrow so that he could really look round the garden and
+see what plants wanted ordering, tried to remember the name of an
+ornamental shrub recommended by Miss Hamilton, turned over on his side,
+and went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Early next morning John dreamed that he was buying calico in an immense
+shop and that in a dreamlike inconsequence the people there, customers
+and shopmen alike, were abruptly seized with a frenzy of destruction so
+violent that they began to tear up all the material upon which they
+could lay their hands; indeed, so loud was the noise of rent cloth that
+John woke up with the sound of it still in his ears. Gradually it was
+borne in upon a brain wrestling with actuality that the noise might have
+emanated from the direction of a small casement in his bedroom looking
+eastward into the garden across a steep penthouse which ran down to
+within two feet of the ground. Although the noise had stopped some time
+before John had precisely located its whereabouts and really before he
+was perfectly convinced that he was awake, he jumped out of bed and
+hurried across the chilly boards to ascertain if after all it had only
+been a relic of his dream. No active cause was visible; but the moss,
+the stonecrop and the tiles upon the penthouse had been clawed from top
+to bottom as if by some mighty tropical cat, and John for a brief
+instant savored that elated perplexity which generally occurs to heroes
+in the opening paragraphs of a sensational novel.
+
+"It's a very old house," he thought, hopefully, and began to grade his
+reason to a condition of sycophantic credulity. "And, of course,
+anything like a ghost at seven o'clock in the morning is rare--very
+rare. The evidence would be unassailable...."
+
+After toadying to the marvelous for a while, he sought a natural
+explanation of the phenomenon and honestly tried not to want it to prove
+inexplicable. The noise began again overhead; a fleeting object darkened
+the casement like the swift passage of a bird and struck the penthouse
+below; there was a slow grinding shriek, a clatter of broken tiles and
+leaden piping; a small figure stuck all over with feathers emerged from
+the herbaceous border and smiled up at him.
+
+"Good heavens, my boy, what in creation are you trying to do?" John
+shouted, sternly.
+
+"I'm learning to toboggan, Uncle John."
+
+"But didn't I explain to you that tobogganing can only be carried out
+after a heavy snowfall?"
+
+"Well, it hasn't snowed yet," Harold pointed out in an offended voice.
+
+"Listen to me. If it snows for a month without stopping, you're never to
+toboggan down a roof. What's the good of having all those jolly hills at
+the back of the house if you don't use them?"
+
+John spoke as if he had brought back the hills from America at the same
+time as he was supposed to have brought back the toboggan.
+
+"There's a river, too," Harold observed.
+
+"You can't toboggan down a river--unless, of course, it gets frozen
+over."
+
+"I don't want to toboggan down the river, but if I had a Canadian canoe
+for the river I could wait for the snow quite easily."
+
+John, after a brief vision of a canoe being towed across the Atlantic by
+the _Murmania_, felt that he was being subjected to the lawless
+exactions of a brigand, but could think of nothing more novel in the way
+of defiance than:
+
+"Go away now and be a good boy."
+
+"Can't I ..." Harold began.
+
+"No, you can't. If those chickens' feathers...."
+
+"They're pigeons' feathers," his nephew corrected him.
+
+"If those feathers stuck in your hair are intended to convey an
+impression that you're a Red Indian chief, go and sit in your wigwam
+till breakfast and smoke the pipe of peace."
+
+"Mother said I wasn't to smoke till I was twenty-one."
+
+"Not literally, you young ass. Why, good heavens, in my young days such
+an allusion to Mayne Reid would have been eagerly taken up by any boy."
+
+Something was going wrong with this conversation, John felt, and he
+added, lamely:
+
+"Anyway, go away now."
+
+"But, Uncle John, I...."
+
+"Don't Uncle John me. I don't feel like an uncle this morning. Suppose
+I'd been shaving when you started that fool's game. I might have cut my
+head off."
+
+"But, Uncle John, I've left my spectacles on one of the chimneys. Mother
+said that whenever I was playing a rough game I was to take off my
+spectacles first."
+
+"You'll have to do without your spectacles, that's all. The gardener
+will get them for you after breakfast. Anyway, a Red Indian chief in
+spectacles is unnatural."
+
+"Well, I'm not a Red Indian any longer."
+
+"You can't chop and change like that. You'll have to be a Red Indian now
+till after breakfast. Don't argue any more, because I'm standing here in
+bare feet. Go and do some weeding in the garden. You've pulled up all
+the plants on the roof."
+
+"I can't read without my spectacles."
+
+"Weed, not read!"
+
+"Well, I can't weed, either. I can't do anything without my spectacles."
+
+"Then go away and do nothing."
+
+Harold shuffled off disconsolately, and John rang for his shaving water.
+
+At breakfast Hilda asked anxiously after her son's whereabouts; and
+John, the last vestige of whose irritation had vanished in the smell of
+fried bacon and eggs, related the story of the morning's escapade as a
+good joke.
+
+"But he can't see anything without his spectacles," Hilda exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, he'll find his way to the breakfast table all right," John
+prophesied.
+
+"These bachelors," murmured Hilda, turning to her mother with a wry
+little laugh. "Hark! isn't that Harold calling?"
+
+"No, no, no, it's the pigeons," John laughed. "They're probably fretting
+for their feathers."
+
+"It's to be hoped," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that he's not fallen into
+the well by leaving off his spectacles like this. I never could abide
+wells. And I hate to think of people leaving things off suddenly. It's
+always a mistake. I remember little Hughie once left off his woollen
+vests in May and caught a most terrible cold that wouldn't go away--it
+simply wouldn't go."
+
+"How is Hugh, by the way?" John asked.
+
+"The same as ever," Hilda put in with cold disapproval. She was able to
+forget Harold's myopic wanderings in the pleasure of crabbing her
+youngest brother.
+
+"Ah, you're all very hard on poor Hughie," sighed the old lady. "But
+he's always been very fond of his poor mother."
+
+"He's very fond of what he can get out of you," Hilda sneered.
+
+"And it's little enough he can, poor boy. Goodness knows I've little
+enough to spare for him. I wish you could have seen your way to do
+something for Hughie, Johnnie," the old lady went on.
+
+"John has done quite enough for him," Hilda snapped, which was perfectly
+true.
+
+"He's had to leave his rooms in Earl's Court," Mrs. Touchwood lamented.
+
+"What for? Getting drunk, I suppose?" John inquired, sternly.
+
+"No, it was the drains. He's staying with his friend, Aubrey Fenton,
+whom I cannot pretend to like. He seems to me a sad scapegrace. Poor
+little Hughie. I wish everything wasn't against him. It's to be hoped he
+won't go and get married, poor boy, for I'm sure his wife wouldn't
+understand him."
+
+"Surely he's not thinking of getting married," exclaimed John in
+dismay.
+
+"Why no, of course not," said the old lady. "How you do take anybody up,
+Johnnie. I said it's to be hoped he won't get married."
+
+At this moment Emily came in to announce that Master Harold was up on
+the roof shouting for dear life. "Such a turn as it give Cook and I,
+mum," she said, "to hear that garshly voice coming down the chimney.
+Cook was nearly took with the convolsions, and if it had of been after
+dark, mum, she says she's shaw she doesn't know what she wouldn't of
+done, she wouldn't, she's that frightened of howls. That's the one thing
+she can't ever be really comfortable for in the country, she says, the
+howls and the hearwigs."
+
+"I'm under the impression," John declared, solemnly, "that I forbade
+Harold to go near the roof. If he has disobeyed my express commands he
+must suffer for it by the loss of his breakfast. He has chosen to go
+back on the roof: on the roof he shall stay."
+
+"But his breakfast?" Hilda almost whispered. She was so much awed by her
+brother's unusually pompous phraseology that he began to be impressed by
+it himself and to feel the first faint intimations of the pleasures of
+tyranny: he began to visualize himself as the unbending ruler of all his
+relations.
+
+"His breakfast can be sent up to him, and I hope it will attract every
+wasp in the neighborhood."
+
+This to John seemed the most savage aspiration he could have uttered:
+autumnal wasps disturbed him as much as dragons used to disturb
+princesses.
+
+"Harold likes wasps," said Hilda. "He observes their habits."
+
+This revelation of his nephew's tastes took away John's last belief in
+his humanity, and the only retort he could think of was a suggestion
+that he should go at once to a boarding-school.
+
+"Likes wasps?" he repeated. "The child must be mad. You'll tell me next
+that he likes black beetles."
+
+"He trained a black beetle once to eat something. I forget what it was
+now. But the poor boy was so happy about his little triumph. You ought
+to remember, John, that he takes after his father."
+
+John made up his mind at this moment that Daniel Curtis must have
+married Hilda in a spirit of the purest empirical science.
+
+"Well, he's not to go training insects in my house," John said, firmly.
+"And if I see any insects anywhere about Ambles that show the slightest
+sign of having been encouraged to suppose themselves on an equal with
+mankind I shall tread on them."
+
+"I'm afraid the crossing must have upset you, Johnnie," said old Mrs.
+Touchwood, sympathetically. "You seem quite out of sorts this morning.
+And I don't like the idea of poor little Harold's balancing himself all
+alone on a chimney. It was never any pleasure to me to watch tight-rope
+dancers or acrobats. Indeed, except for the clowns, I never could abide
+circuses."
+
+Hilda quickly took up the appeal and begged John to let the gardener
+rescue her son.
+
+"Oh, very well," he assented. "But, once for all, it must be clearly
+understood that I've come down to Ambles to write a new play and that
+some arrangement must be concluded by which I have my mornings
+completely undisturbed."
+
+"Of course," said Hilda, brightening at the prospect of Harold's
+release.
+
+"Of course," John echoed, sardonically, within himself. He did not feel
+that the sight of Harold's ravening after his breakfast would induce in
+him the right mood for Joan of Arc. So he left the breakfast table and
+went upstairs to his library. Here he found that some "illiterate oaf,"
+as he characterized the person responsible, had put in upside down upon
+the shelves the standard works he had hastily amassed. Instead of
+setting his ideas in order, he had to set his books in order: and after
+a hot and dusty morning with the rows of unreadable classics he came
+downstairs to find that the vicarage party had arrived just in time for
+lunch, bringing with them as the advance guard of their occupation a
+large clothes basket filled with what Laurence described as "necessary
+odds and ends that might be overlooked later."
+
+"It's my theory of moving," he added. "The small things first."
+
+He enunciated this theory so reverently that his action acquired from
+his tone a momentous gravity like the captain of a ship's when he orders
+the women and children into the boats first.
+
+The moving of the vicarage party lasted over a fortnight, during which
+John found it impossible to settle down to Joan of Arc. No sooner would
+he have worked himself up to a suitable frame of mind in which he might
+express dramatically and poetically the maid's reception of her heavenly
+visitants than a very hot man wearing a green baize apron would appear
+in the doorway of the library and announce that a chest of drawers had
+hopelessly involved some vital knot in the domestic communications. It
+was no good for John to ask Hilda to do anything: his sister had taken
+up the attitude that it was all John's fault, that she had done her best
+to preserve his peace, that her advice had been ignored, and that for
+the rest of her life she intended to efface herself.
+
+"I'm a mere cipher," she kept repeating.
+
+On one occasion when a bureau of sham ebony that looked like a blind
+man's dream of Cologne Cathedral had managed to wedge all its pinnacles
+into the lintel of the front door, John observed to Laurence he had
+understood that only such furniture from the vicarage as was required to
+supplement the Ambles furniture would be brought there.
+
+"I thought this bureau would appeal to you," Laurence replied. "It
+seemed to me in keeping with much of your work."
+
+John looked up sharply to see if he was being chaffed; but his
+brother-in-law's expression was earnest, and the intended compliment
+struck more hardly at John's self-confidence than the most malicious
+review.
+
+"Does my work really seem like gimcrack gothic?" he asked himself.
+
+In a fit of exasperation he threw himself so vigorously into the
+business of forcing the bureau into the house that when it was inside it
+looked like a ruined abbey on the afternoon of a Bank Holiday.
+
+"It had better be taken up into the garrets for the present," he said,
+grimly. "It can be mended later on."
+
+The comparison of his work to that bureau haunted John at his own
+writing-table for the rest of the morning; thinking of the Bishop of
+Silchester's objection to Laurence, he found it hard to make the various
+bishops in his play as unsympathetic as they ought to be for dramatic
+contrast; then he remembered that after all it had been due to the
+Bishop of Silchester's strong action that Laurence had come to Ambles:
+the stream of insulting epithets for bishops flowed as strongly as ever,
+and he worked in a justifiable pun upon the name of Pierre Cauchon, his
+chief episcopal villain.
+
+"I wonder, if I were allowed to, whether I would condemn Laurence to be
+burnt alive. Wasn't there a Saint Laurence who was grilled? I really
+believe I would almost grill him, I really do. There's something
+exceptionally irritating to me about that man's whole personality. And
+I'm not at all sure I approve of a clergyman's giving up his beliefs.
+One might get a line out of that, by the way--something about a
+weathercock and a church steeple. I don't think a clergyman ought to
+surrender so easily. It's his business not to be influenced by modern
+thought. This passion for realism is everywhere.... Thank goodness, I've
+been through it and got over it and put it behind me forever. It's a
+most unprofitable creed. What was my circulation as a realist? I once
+reached four thousand. What's four thousand? Why, it isn't half the
+population of Galton. And now Laurence Armitage takes up with it after
+being a vicar for ten years. Idiot! Religion isn't realistic: it never
+was realistic. Religion is the entertainment of man's spirituality just
+as the romantic drama is the entertainment of his mentality. I don't
+read Anatole France for my representation of Joan of Arc. What business
+has Laurence to muddle his head with--what's his name--Colonel
+Ingoldsby--Ingersoll--when he ought to be thinking about his Harvest
+Festival? And then he has the effrontery to compare my work with that
+bureau! If that's all his religion meant to him--that ridiculous piece
+of gimcrack gothic, no wonder it wouldn't hold together. Why, the green
+fumed oak of a sentimental rationalism would be better than that.
+Confound Laurence! I knew this would happen when he came. He's taken my
+mind completely off my own work. I can't write a word this morning."
+
+John rushed away from his manuscript and weeded furiously down a
+secluded border until the gardener told him he had weeded away the
+autumn-sown sweet-peas that were coming along nicely and standing the
+early frosts a treat.
+
+"I'm not even allowed to weed my own garden now," John thought, burking
+the point at issue; and his disillusionment became so profound that he
+actually invited Harold to go for a walk with him.
+
+"Can I bring my blow-pipe?" asked the young naturalist, gleefully.
+
+"You don't want to load yourself up with soap and water," said John.
+"Keep that till you come in."
+
+"My South American blow-pipe, Uncle John. It's a real one which father
+sent home. It belonged to a little Indian boy, but the darts aren't
+poisoned, father told mother."
+
+"Don't you be too sure," John advised him. "Explorers will say
+anything."
+
+"Well, can I bring it?"
+
+"No, we'll take a non-murderous walk for a change. I'm tired of being
+shunned by the common objects of the countryside."
+
+"Well, shall I bring _Ants_, _Bees_, and _Wasps_?"
+
+"Certainly not. We don't want to go trailing about Hampshire like two
+jam sandwiches."
+
+"I mean the book."
+
+"No, if you want to carry something, you can carry my cleek and six golf
+balls."
+
+"Oh, yes, and then I'll practice bringing eggs down in my mouth from
+very high trees."
+
+John liked this form of exercise, because at the trifling cost of making
+one ball intolerably sticky it kept Harold from asking questions; for
+about two hundred yards he enjoyed this walk more than any he had ever
+taken with his nephew.
+
+"But birds' nesting time won't come till the spring," Harold sighed.
+
+"No," said John, regretfully: there were many lofty trees round Ambles,
+and with his mouth full of eggs anything might happen to Harold.
+
+The transference of the vicarage family was at last complete, and John
+was penitently astonished to find that Laurence really did intend to pay
+for their board; in fact, the ex-vicar presented him with a check for
+two months on account calculated at a guinea a week each. John was so
+much moved by this event--the manner in which Laurence offered the check
+gave it the character of a testimonial and thereby added to John's sense
+of obligation--that he was even embarrassed by the notion of accepting
+it. At the same time a faint echo of his own realistic beginnings
+tinkled in his ear a warning not to refuse it, both for his own sake and
+for the sake of his brother-in-law. He therefore escaped from the
+imputation of avarice by suggesting that the check should be handed to
+Hilda, who, as housekeeper, would know how to employ it best. John
+secretly hoped that Hilda, through being able to extract what he thought
+of as "a little pin money for herself" out of it, might discard the
+martyr's halo that was at present pinching her brains tightly enough, if
+one might judge by her constricted expression.
+
+"There will undoubtedly be a small profit," he told himself, "for if
+Laurence has a rather monkish appetite, Edith and Frida eat very
+little."
+
+Perhaps Hilda did manage to make a small profit; at any rate, she seemed
+reconciled to the presence of the Armitages and gave up declaring that
+she was a cipher. The fatigue of moving in had made Laurence's company,
+while he was suffering from the reaction, almost bearable. Frida, apart
+from a habit she had of whispering at great length in her mother's ear,
+was a nice uninquisitive child, and Edith, when she was not whispering
+back to Frida or echoing Laurence, was still able to rouse in her
+brother's heart feelings of warm affection. Old Mrs. Touchwood had
+acquired from some caller a new game of Patience, which kept her gently
+simmering in the lamplight every evening; Harold had discovered among
+the odds and ends of salvage from the move a sixpenny encyclopedia that,
+though it made him unpleasantly informative, at any rate kept him from
+being interrogative, which John found, on the whole, a slight advantage.
+Janet Bond had written again most seriously about Joan of Arc, and the
+film company had given excellent terms for _The Fall of Babylon_.
+Really, except for two huffy letters from his sisters-in-law in London,
+John was able to contemplate with much less misgivings a prospect of
+spending all the winter at Ambles. Beside, he had secured his dog-cart
+with a dashing chestnut mare, and was negotiating for the twenty-acre
+field.
+
+Yes, everything was very jolly, and he might even aim at finishing the
+first draft of the second act before Christmas. It would be jolly to do
+that and jolly to invite James and Beatrice and George and Eleanor, but
+not Hugh--no, in no circumstances should Hugh be included in the
+yuletide armistice--down to Ambles for an uproarious jolly week. Then
+January should be devoted to the first draft of the third act--really it
+should be possible to write to Janet Bond presently and assure her of a
+production next autumn. John was feeling particularly optimistic. For
+three days in succession the feet of the first act had been moving as
+rhythmically and regularly toward the curtain as the feet of guardsmen
+move along the Buckingham Palace Road. It was a fine frosty morning, and
+even so early in the day John was tapping his second egg to the metrical
+apostrophes of Uncle Laxart's speech offering to take his niece, Joan,
+to interview Robert de Baudricourt. Suddenly he noticed that Laurence
+had not yet put in his appearance. This was strange behavior for one who
+still preserved from the habit of many early services an excited
+punctuality for his breakfast, and lightly he asked Edith what had
+become of her husband.
+
+"He hopes to begin working again at his play this morning. Seeing you
+working so hard makes him feel lazy." Edith laughed faintly and
+fearfully, as if she would deprecate her own profanity in referring to
+so gross a quality as laziness in connection with Laurence, and perhaps
+for the first time in her life she proclaimed that her opinion was only
+an echo of Laurence's own by adding, "_he_ says that it makes him feel
+lazy. So he's going to begin at once."
+
+John, whose mind kept reverting iambically and trochaically to the
+curtain of his first act, merely replied, without any trace of awe, that
+he was glad Laurence felt in the vein.
+
+"But he hasn't decided yet," Edith continued, "which room he's going to
+work in."
+
+For the first time a puff of apprehension twitched the little straw that
+might be going to break the camel's back.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't offer him the library," John said quickly. "_And you
+shall see the King of France to-day_," he went on composing in his head.
+"No--_And you shall see King Charles_--no--_and you shall see the King
+of France at once--no--and you shall see the King of France forthwith.
+Sensation among the villagers standing round. Forthwith is weak at the
+end of a line. I swear that you shall see the King of France.
+Sensation._ Yes, that's it."
+
+The top of John's egg was by this time so completely cracked by his
+metronomic spoon that a good deal of the shell was driven down into the
+egg: it did not matter, however, because appetite and inspiration were
+both disposed of by the arrival of Laurence.
+
+"I wish you could have managed to help me with some of these things," he
+was muttering reproachfully to his wife.
+
+The things consisted of six or seven books, a quantity of foolscap, an
+inkpot dangerously brimming, a paper-knife made of olive wood from
+Gethsemane, several pens and pencils, and a roll of blotting paper as
+white as the snow upon the summit of Mont Blanc, and so fat that John
+thought at first it was a tablecloth and wondered what his
+brother-in-law meant to do with it. He was even chilled by a brief and
+horrible suspicion that he was going to hold a communion service. Edith
+rose hastily from the table to help her husband unload himself.
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear, why didn't you ring?"
+
+"My dear, how could I ring without letting my materials drop?" Laurence
+asked, patiently.
+
+"Or call?"
+
+"My chin was too much occupied for calling. But it doesn't matter,
+Edith. As you see, I've managed to bring everything down quite safely."
+
+"I'm so sorry," Edith went on. "I'd no idea...."
+
+"I told you that I was going to begin work this morning."
+
+"Yes, how stupid of me ... I'm so sorry...."
+
+"Going to work, are you?" interrupted John, who was anxious to stop
+Edith's conjugal amenity. "That's capital."
+
+"Yes, I'm really only waiting now to choose my room."
+
+"I'm sorry I can't offer you mine ... but I must be alone. I find...."
+
+"Of course," Laurence agreed with a nod of sympathetic knowingness. "Of
+course, my dear fellow, I shouldn't dream of trespassing. I, though
+indeed I've no right to compare myself with you, also like to work
+alone. In fact I consider that a secure solitude provides the ideal
+setting for dramatic composition. I have a habit--perhaps it comes from
+preparing my sermons with my eye always upon the spoken rather than upon
+the written word--I have a habit of declaiming many of my pages aloud to
+myself. That necessitates my being alone--absolutely alone."
+
+"Yes, you see," Edith said, "if you're alone you're not disturbed."
+
+John who was still sensitive to Edith's truisms tried to cover her last
+by incorporating Hilda in the conversation with a "What room do you
+advise?"
+
+"Why not the dining-room? I'll tell Emily to clear away the breakfast
+things at once."
+
+"Clear away?" Laurence repeated.
+
+"And they won't be laying for lunch till a quarter-to-one."
+
+"Laying for lunch?" Laurence gasped. "My dear Hilda! I don't wish to
+attribute to my--ah--work an importance which perhaps as a hitherto
+unacted playwright I have no right to attribute, but I think John at any
+rate will appreciate my objection to working with--ah--the bread-knife
+suspended over my head like the proverbial sword of Damocles. No, I'm
+afraid I must rule out the dining-room as a practicable environment."
+
+"And Mama likes to sit in the drawing-room," said Hilda.
+
+"In any case," Laurence said, indulgently, "I shouldn't feel at ease in
+the drawing-room. So I shall not disturb Mama. I had thought of
+suggesting that the children should be given another room in which to
+play, but to tell the truth I'm tired of moving furniture about. The
+fact is I miss my vicarage study: it was my own."
+
+"Yes, nobody at the vicarage ever thought of interrupting him, you see,"
+Edith explained.
+
+"Well," said John, roused by the necessity of getting Joan started upon
+her journey to interview Robert de Baudricourt, "there are several empty
+bedrooms upstairs. One of them could be transformed into a study for
+Laurence."
+
+"That means more arranging of furniture," Laurence objected.
+
+"Then there's the garret," said John. "You'd find your bureau up there."
+
+Laurence smiled in order to show how well he understood that the
+suggestion was only playfulness on John's side and how little he minded
+the good-natured joke.
+
+"There is one room which might be made--ah--conducive to good work,
+though at present it is occupied by a quantity of apples; they, however,
+could easily be moved."
+
+"But I moved them in there from what is now your room," Hilda protested.
+
+"It is good for apples to be frequently moved," said Laurence, kindly.
+"In fact, the oftener they are moved, the better. And this holds good
+equally for pippins, codlins, and russets. On the other hand it means I
+shall lose half a day's work, because even if I _could_ make a temporary
+beginning anywhere else, I should have to superintend the arrangement of
+the furniture."
+
+"But I thought you didn't want to have any more furniture arranging to
+do," Hilda contested, acrimoniously. "There are two quite empty rooms at
+the other end of the passage."
+
+"Yes, but I like the room in which the apples are. John will appreciate
+my desire for a sympathetic milieu."
+
+"Come, come, we will move the apples," John promised, hurriedly.
+
+Better that the apples should roll from room to room eternally than that
+he should be driven into offering Laurence a corner of the library, for
+he suspected that notwithstanding the disclaimer this was his
+brother-in-law's real objective.
+
+"It doesn't say anything about apples in the encyclopedia," muttered
+Harold in an aggrieved voice. _"Apoplexy treatment of, Apothecaries
+measure, Appetite loss of. This may be due to general debility,
+irregularity in meals, overwork, want of exercise, constipation, and
+many other...."_
+
+"Goodness gracious me, whatever has the boy got hold of?" exclaimed his
+grandmother.
+
+"Grandmama, if you mix Lanoline with an equal quantity of Sulphur you
+can cure Itch," Harold went on with his spectacles glued to the page.
+"And, oh, Grandmama, you know you told me not to make a noise the other
+day because your heart was weak. Well, you're suffering from
+flatulence. The encyclopedia says that many people who are suffering
+from flatulence think they have heart disease."
+
+"Will no one stop the child?" Grandmama pleaded.
+
+Laurence snatched away the book from his nephew and put it in his
+pocket.
+
+"That book is mine, I believe, Harold," he said, firmly, and not even
+Hilda dared protest, so majestic was Laurence and so much fluttered was
+poor Grandmama.
+
+John seized the opportunity to make his escape; but when he was at last
+seated before his table the feet of the first act limped pitiably;
+Laurence had trodden with all his might upon their toes; his work that
+morning was chiropody, not composition, and bungling chiropody at that.
+After lunch Laurence was solemnly inducted to his new study, and he may
+have been conscious of an ecclesiastical parallel in the manner of his
+taking possession, for he made a grave joke about it.
+
+"Let us hope that I shall not be driven out of my new living by being
+too--ah--broad."
+
+His wife did not realize that he was being droll and had drawn down her
+lips to an expression of pained sympathy, when she saw the others all
+laughing and Laurence smiling his acknowledgments; her desperate effort
+to change the contours of her face before Laurence noticed her failure
+to respond sensibly gave the impression that she had nearly swallowed a
+loose tooth.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like me to bring up your tea, dear, so that you won't be
+disturbed?" she suggested.
+
+"Ah, tea ..." murmured Laurence. "Let me see. It's now a quarter-past
+two. Tea is at half-past four. I will come down for half an hour. That
+will give me a clear two hours before dinner. If I allow a quarter of an
+hour for arranging my table, that will give me four hours in all.
+Perhaps considering my strenuous morning four hours will be enough for
+the first day. I don't like the notion of working after dinner," he
+added to John.
+
+"No?" queried John, doubtfully. He had hoped that his brother-in-law
+would feel inspired by the port: it was easy enough to avoid him in the
+afternoon, especially since on the first occasion that he had been taken
+for a drive in the new dogcart he had evidently been imbued with a
+detestation of driving that would probably last for the remainder of his
+life; in fact he was talking already of wanting to sell Primrose and the
+vicarage chaise.
+
+"Though of course on some evenings I may not be able to help it," added
+Laurence. "I may _have_ to work."
+
+"Of course you may," John assented, encouragingly. "I dare say there'll
+be evenings when the mere idea of waiting even for coffee will make you
+fidgety. You mustn't lose the mood, you know."
+
+"No, of course, I appreciate that."
+
+"There's nothing so easily lost as the creative gift, Balzac said."
+
+"Did he?" Laurence murmured, anxiously. "But I promise you I shall let
+nothing interfere with me _if_--" the conjunction fizzed from his mouth
+like soda from a syphon, "_if_ I'm in the--ah--mood. The
+mood--yes--ah--precisely." His brow began to lower; the mood was upon
+him; and everybody stole quietly from the room. They had scarcely
+reached the head of the stairs when the door opened again and Laurence
+called after Edith: "I should prefer that whoever brings me news of tea
+merely knocks without coming in. I shall assume that a knock upon my
+door means tea. But I don't wish anybody to come in."
+
+Laurence disappeared. He seemed under the influence of a strong mental
+aphrodisiac and was evidently guaranteeing himself against being
+discovered in an embarrassing situation with his Muse.
+
+"This is very good for me," thought John. "It has taught me how easily a
+man may make a confounded ass of himself without anybody's raising a
+finger to warn him. I hope I didn't give that sort of impression to
+those two women on board. I shall have to watch myself very carefully in
+future."
+
+At this moment Emily announced that Lawyer Deacle was waiting to see Mr.
+Touchwood, which meant that the twenty-acre field was at last his. The
+legal formalities were complete; that very afternoon John had the
+pleasure of watching the fierce little Kerry cows munch the last grass
+they would ever munch in his field. But it was nearly dusk when they
+were driven home, and John lost five balls in celebrating his triumph
+with a brassy.
+
+Laurence appeared at tea in a velveteen coat, which probably provided
+the topic for the longest whisper that even Frida had ever been known to
+utter.
+
+"Come, come, Frida," said her father. "You won't disturb us by saying
+aloud what you want to say." He had leaned over majestically to
+emphasize his rebuke and in doing so brushed with his sleeve Grandmama's
+wrist.
+
+"Goodness, it's a cat," the old lady cried, with a shudder. "I shall
+have to go away from here, Johnnie, if you have a cat in the house. I'd
+rather have mice all over me than one of those horrid cats. Ugh! the
+nasty thing!"
+
+She was not at all convinced of her mistake even when persuaded to
+stroke her son-in-law's coat.
+
+"I hope it's been properly shooed out. Harold, please look well under
+all the chairs, there's a good boy."
+
+During the next few days John felt that he was being in some indefinable
+way ousted by Laurence from the spiritual mastery of his own house. John
+was averse from according to his brother-in-law a greater forcefulness
+of character than he could ascribe to himself; if he had to admit that
+he really was being supplanted somehow, he preferred to search for the
+explanation in the years of theocratic prestige that gave a background
+to the all-pervasiveness of that sacerdotal personality. Yet ultimately
+the impression of his own relegation to a secondary place remained
+elusive and incommunicable. He could not for instance grumble that the
+times of the meals were being altered nor complain that in the smallest
+detail the domestic mechanism was being geared up or down to suit
+Laurence; the whole sensation was essentially of a spiritual eviction,
+and the nearest he could get to formulating his resentment (though
+perhaps resentment was too definite a word for this vague uneasiness)
+was his own gradually growing opinion that of all those at present under
+the Ambles roof Laurence was the most important. This loss of importance
+was bad for John's work, upon which it soon began to exert a
+discouraging influence, because he became doubtful of his own position,
+hypercritical of his talent, and timid about his social ability. He
+began to meditate the long line of failures to dramatize the immortal
+tale of Joan of Arc immortally, to see himself dangling at the end of
+this long line of ineptitudes and to ask himself whether bearing in mind
+the vastness of even our own solar system it was really worth while
+writing at all. It could not be due to anything or anybody but Laurence,
+this sense of his own futility; not even when a few years ago he had
+reached the conclusion that as a realistic novelist he was a failure had
+he been so profoundly conscious of his own insignificance in time and
+space.
+
+"I shall have to go away if I'm ever to get on with this play," he told
+himself.
+
+Yet still so indefinite was his sense of subordinacy at Ambles that he
+accused his liver (an honest one that did not deserve the reproach) and
+bent over his table again with all the determination he could muster.
+The concrete fact was still missing; his capacity for self-deception was
+still robust enough to persuade him that it was all a passing fancy, and
+he might have gone plodding on at Ambles for the rest of the winter if
+one morning about a week after Laurence had begun to write, the door of
+his own library had not opened to the usurper, manuscript in hand.
+
+"I don't like to interrupt you, my dear fellow.... I know you have your
+own work to consider ... but I'm anxious for your opinion--in fact I
+should like to read you my first act."
+
+It was useless to resist: if it were not now, it would be later.
+
+"With pleasure," said John. Then he made one effort. "Though I prefer
+reading to myself."
+
+"That would involve waiting for the typewriter. Yes, my screed
+is--ah--difficult to make out. And I've indulged in a good many erasures
+and insertions. No, I think you'd better let me read it to you."
+
+John indicated a chair and looked out of the window longingly at the
+birds, as patients in the hands of a dentist regard longingly the
+sparrows in the dingy evergreens of the dentist's back garden.
+
+"When we had our little talk the other day," Laurence began, "you will
+remember that I spoke of a drama I had already written, of which the
+disciple Thomas was the protagonist. This drama notwithstanding the
+probably obstructive attitude of the Lord Chamberlain I have rewritten,
+or rather I have rewritten the first act. I call the play--ah--_Thomas_."
+
+"It sounds a little trivial for such a serious subject, don't you
+think?" John suggested. "I mean, Thomas has come to be associated in so
+many people's minds with footmen. Wouldn't _Saint Thomas_ be better, and
+really rather more respectful? Many people still have a great feeling of
+reverence for apostles."
+
+"No, no, _Thomas_ it is: _Thomas_ it must remain. You have forgotten
+perhaps that I told you he was the prototype of the man in the street.
+It is the simplicity, the unpretentiousness of the title that for me
+gives it a value. Well, to resume. _Thomas. A play in four acts. By
+Laurence Armytage._ By the way, I'm going to spell my name with a y in
+future. Poetic license. Ha-ha! I shall not advertise the change in the
+_Times_. But I think it looks more literary with a y. _Act the First.
+Scene the First. The shore of the Sea of Galilee._ I say nothing else. I
+don't attempt to describe it. That is what I have learnt from
+Shakespeare. This modern passion for description can only injure the
+greatness of the theme. _Enter from the left the Virgin Mary._"
+
+"Enter who?" asked John in amazement.
+
+"The Virgin Mary. The mother ..."
+
+"Yes, I know who she is, but ... well, I'm not a religious man,
+Laurence, in fact I've not been to church since I was a boy ... but ...
+no, no, you can't do that."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It will offend people."
+
+"I want to offend people," Laurence intoned. "If thy eye offend thee,
+pluck it out."
+
+"Well, you did," said John. "You put in a _y_ instead."
+
+"I'm not jesting, my dear fellow."
+
+"Nor am I," said John. "What I want you to understand is that you can't
+bring the Virgin Mary on the stage. Why, I'm even doubtful about Joan of
+Arc's vision of the Archangel Michael. Some people may object, though
+I'm counting on his being generally taken for St. George."
+
+"I know that you are writing a play about Joan of Arc, but--and I hope
+you'll not take unkindly what I'm going to say--but Joan of Arc can
+never be more than a pretty piece of medievalism, whereas Thomas ..."
+
+John gave up, and the next morning he told the household that he was
+called back to London on business.
+
+"Perhaps I shall have some peace here," he sighed, looking round at his
+dignified Church Row library.
+
+"Mrs. James called earlier this morning, sir, and said not to disturb
+you, but she hoped you'd had a comfortable journey and left these
+flowers, and Mrs. George has telephoned from the theater to say she'll
+be here almost directly."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Worfolk," John said. "Perhaps Mrs. George will be
+taking lunch."
+
+"Yes, sir, I expect she will," said his housekeeper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mrs. George Touchwood--or as she was known on the stage, Miss Eleanor
+Cartright--was big-boned, handsome, and hawklike, with the hungry look
+of the ambitious actress who is drawing near to forty--she was in fact
+thirty-seven--and realizes that the disappointed adventuresses of what
+are called strong plays are as near as she will ever get to the tragedy
+queens of youthful aspiration. Such an one accustomed to flash her dark
+eyes in defiance of a morally but not esthetically hostile gallery and
+to have the whole of a stage for the display of what well-disposed
+critics hailed as vitality and cavaliers condemned as lack of repose,
+such an one in John's tranquil library was, as Mrs. Worfolk put it,
+"rather too much of a good thing and no mistake"; and when Eleanor was
+there, John experienced as much malaise as he would have experienced
+from being shut up in a housemaid's closet with a large gramophone and
+the housemaid. This claustrophobia, however, was the smallest strain
+that his sister-in-law inflicted upon him; she affected his heart and
+his conscience more acutely, because he could never meet her without a
+sensation of guilt on account of his not yet having found a part for her
+in any of his plays, to which was added the fear he always felt in her
+presence that soon or late he should from sheer inability to hold out
+longer award her the leading part in his play. George had often
+seriously annoyed him by his unwillingness to help himself; but at the
+thought of being married for thirteen years to Eleanor he had always
+excused his brother's flaccid dependence.
+
+"George is a bit of a sponge," James had once said, "but Eleanor!
+Eleanor is the roughest and toughest loofah that was ever known. She is
+irritant and absorbent at the same time, and by gad, she has the
+appearance of a loofah."
+
+The prospect of Eleanor's company at lunch on the morning after his
+return to town gave John a sensation of having escaped the devil to fall
+into the deep sea, of having jumped from the frying-pan into the fire,
+in fact of illustrating every known proverbial attempt to express the
+distinction without the difference.
+
+"It's a great pity that Eleanor didn't marry Laurence," he thought.
+"Each would have kept the other well under, and she could have played
+Mary Magdalene in that insane play of his. And, by Jove, if they _had_
+married, neither of them would have been a relation! Moreover, if
+Laurence had been caught by Eleanor, Edith might never have married at
+all and could have kept house for me. And if Edith hadn't married, Hilda
+mightn't have married, and then Harold would never have been born."
+
+John's hard pruning of his family-tree was interrupted by a sense of the
+house's having been attacked by an angry mob--an illusion that he had
+learnt to connect with his sister-in-law's arrival. To make sure,
+however, he went out on the landing and called down to know if anything
+was the matter.
+
+"Mrs. George is having some trouble with the taxi-man, sir," explained
+Maud, who was holding the front-door open and looking apprehensively at
+the pictures that were clattering on the walls in the wind.
+
+"Why does she take taxis?" John muttered, irritably. "She can't afford
+them, and there's no excuse for such extravagance when the tube is so
+handy."
+
+At this moment Eleanor reached the door, on the threshold of which she
+turned like Medea upon Jason to have the last word with the taxi-driver
+before the curtain fell.
+
+"Did Mr. Touchwood get my message?" she was asking.
+
+"Yes, yes," John called down. "I'm expecting you to lunch."
+
+When he watched Eleanor all befurred coming upstairs, he felt not much
+less nervous than a hunter of big game face to face with his first
+tiger; the landing seemed to wobble like a howdah; now he had fired and
+missed, and she was embracing him as usual. How many times at how many
+meetings with Eleanor had he tried unsuccessfully to dodge that
+kiss--which always seemed improper whether because her lips were too
+red, or too full, he could never decide, though he always felt when he
+was released that he ought to beg her husband's pardon.
+
+"You were an old beast not to come and see us when you got back from
+America; but never mind, I'm awfully glad to see you, all the same."
+
+"Thank you very much, Eleanor. Why are you glad?"
+
+"Oh, you sarcastic old bear!"
+
+This perpetual suggestion of his senility was another trick of Eleanor's
+that he deplored; dash it, he was two years younger than George, whom
+she called Georgieboy.
+
+"No, seriously," Eleanor went on. "I was just going to wire and ask if I
+could send the kiddies down to the country. Lambton wants me for a six
+weeks' tour before Xmas, and I can't leave them with Georgie. You see,
+if this piece catches on, it means a good shop for me in the new year."
+
+"Yes, I quite understand your point of view," John said. "But what I
+don't understand is why Bertram and Viola can't stay with their father."
+
+"But George is ill. Surely you got my letter?"
+
+"I didn't realize that the presence of his children might prove fatal.
+However, send them down to Ambles by all means."
+
+"Oh, but I'd much rather not after the way Hilda wrote to me, and now
+that you've come back there's no need."
+
+"I don't quite understand."
+
+"Well, you won't mind having them here for a short visit? Then they can
+go down to Ambles for the Christmas holidays."
+
+"But the Christmas holidays won't begin for at least six weeks."
+
+"I know."
+
+"But you don't propose that Bertram and Viola should spend six weeks
+here?"
+
+"They'll be no bother, you old crosspatch. Bertram will be at school all
+day, and I suppose that Maud or Elsa will always be available to take
+Viola to her dancing-lessons. You remember the dancing-lessons you
+arranged for?"
+
+"I remember that I accepted the arrangement," said John.
+
+"Well, she's getting on divinely, and it would be a shame to interrupt
+them just now, especially as she's in the middle of a Spanish series.
+Her _cachucha_ is ..." Eleanor could only blow a kiss to express what
+Viola's _cachucha_ was. "But then, of course, I had a Spanish
+grandmother."
+
+When John regarded her barbaric personality he could have credited her
+with being the granddaughter of a cannibal queen.
+
+"So I thought that her governess could come here every morning just as
+easily as to Earl's Court. In fact, it will be more convenient, or at
+any rate, equally convenient for her, because she lives at Kilburn."
+
+"I dare say it will be equally convenient for the governess," said John,
+sardonically.
+
+"And I thought," Eleanor continued, "that it would be a good opportunity
+for Viola to have French lessons every afternoon. You won't want to have
+her all the time with you, and the French governess can give the
+children their tea. That will be good for Bertram's accent."
+
+"I don't doubt that it will be superb for Bertram's accent, but I
+absolutely decline to have a French governess bobbing in and out of my
+house. It's bound to make trouble with the servants who always think
+that French governesses are designing and licentious, and I don't want
+to create a false impression."
+
+"Well, aren't you an old prude? Who would ever think that you had any
+sort of connection with the stage? By the way, you haven't told me if
+there'll be anything for me in your next."
+
+"Well, at present the subject of my next play is a secret ... and as for
+the cast...."
+
+John was so nearly on the verge of offering Eleanor the part of Mary of
+Anjou, for which she would be as suitable as a giraffe, that in order to
+effect an immediate diversion he asked her when the children were to
+arrive.
+
+"Let me see, to-day's Saturday. To-morrow I go down to Bristol, where we
+open. They'd better come to-night, because to-morrow being Sunday
+they'll have no lessons, which will give them time to settle down.
+Georgie will be glad to know they're with you."
+
+"I've no doubt he'll be enchanted," John agreed.
+
+The bell sounded for lunch, and they went downstairs.
+
+"I've got to be back at the theater by two," Eleanor announced, looking
+at the horridly distorted watch upon her wrist. "I wonder if we mightn't
+ask Maud to open half-a-bottle of champagne? I'm dreadfully tired."
+
+John ordered a bottle to be opened; he felt rather tired himself.
+
+"Let us be quite clear about this arrangement," he began, when after
+three glasses of wine he felt less appalled by the prospect, and had
+concluded that after all Bertram and Viola would not together be as bad
+as Laurence with his play, not to mention Harold with his spectacles and
+entomology, his interrogativeness and his greed. "The English governess
+will arrive every morning for Viola. What is her name?"
+
+"Miss Coldwell."
+
+"Miss Coldwell then will be responsible for Viola all the morning. The
+French governess is canceled, and I shall come to an arrangement with
+Miss Coldwell by which she will add to her salary by undertaking all
+responsibility for Viola until Viola is in bed. Bertram will go to
+school, and I shall rely upon Miss Coldwell to keep an eye on his
+behavior at home."
+
+"And don't forget the dancing-lessons."
+
+"No, I had Madame What's-her-name's account last week."
+
+"I mean, don't forget to arrange for Viola to go."
+
+"That pilgrimage will, I hope, form a part of what Miss Coldwell would
+probably call 'extras.' And after all perhaps George will soon be fit."
+
+"The poor old boy has been awfully seedy all the summer."
+
+"What's he suffering from? Infantile paralysis?"
+
+"It's all very well for you to joke about it, but you don't live in a
+wretched boarding-house in Earl's Court. You mustn't let success spoil
+you, John. It's so easy when everything comes your way to forget the
+less fortunate people. Look at me. I'm thirty-four, you know."
+
+"Are you really? I should never have thought it."
+
+"I don't mind your laughing at me, you old crab. But I don't like you to
+laugh at Georgie."
+
+"I never do," John said. "I don't suppose that there's anybody alive who
+takes George as seriously as I do."
+
+Eleanor brushed away a tear and said she must get back to the rehearsal.
+
+When she was gone John felt that he had been unkind, and he reproached
+himself for letting Laurence make him cynical.
+
+"The fact is," he told himself, "that ever since I heard Doris Hamilton
+make that remark in the saloon of the _Murmania_, I've become suspicious
+of my family. She began it, and then by ill luck I was thrown too much
+with Laurence, who clinched it. Eleanor is right: I _am_ letting myself
+be spoilt by success. After all, there's no reason why those two
+children shouldn't come here. _They_ won't be writing plays about
+apostles. I'll send George a box of cigars to show that I didn't mean to
+sneer at him. And why didn't I offer to pay for Eleanor's taxi? Yes, I
+am getting spoilt. I must watch myself. And I ought not to have joked
+about Eleanor's age."
+
+Luckily his sister-in-law had finished the champagne, for if John had
+drunk another glass he might have offered her the part of the Maid
+herself.
+
+The actual arrival of Bertram and Viola passed off more successfully.
+They were both presentable, and John was almost flattered when Mrs.
+Worfolk commented on their likeness to him, remembering what a nightmare
+it had always seemed when Hilda used to excavate points of resemblance
+between him and Harold. Mrs. Worfolk herself was so much pleased to have
+him back from Ambles that she was in the best of good humours, and even
+the statuesque Maud flushed with life like some Galatea.
+
+"I think Maud's a darling, don't you, Uncle John?" exclaimed Viola.
+
+"We all appreciate Maud's--er--capabilities," John hemmed.
+
+He felt that it was a silly answer, but inasmuch as Maud was present at
+the time he could not, either for his sake or for hers give an
+unconditional affirmative.
+
+"I swopped four blood-allys for an Indian in the break," Bertram
+announced.
+
+"With an Indian, my boy, I suppose you mean."
+
+"No, I don't. I mean for an Indian--an Indian marble. And I swopped four
+Guatemalas for two Nicaraguas."
+
+"You ought to be at the Foreign Office."
+
+"But the ripping thing is, Uncle John, that two of the Guatemalas are
+fudges."
+
+"Such a doubtful coup would not debar you from a diplomatic career."
+
+"And I say, what is the Foreign Office? We've got a French chap in my
+class."
+
+"You ask for an explanation of the Foreign Office. That, my boy, might
+puzzle the omniscience of the Creator."
+
+"I say, I don't twig very well what you're talking about."
+
+"The attributes of the Foreign Office, my boy, are rigidity where there
+should be suppleness, weakness where there should be firmness, and for
+intelligence the substitution of hair brushed back from the forehead."
+
+"I say, you're ragging me, aren't you? No, really, what is the Foreign
+Office?"
+
+"It is the ultimate preserve of a privileged imbecility."
+
+Bertram surrendered, and John congratulated himself upon the possession
+of a nephew whose perseverance and curiosity had been sapped by a
+scholastic education.
+
+"Harold would have tackled me word by word during one of our walks. I
+shall enter into negotiations with Hilda at Christmas to provide for his
+mental training on condition that I choose the school. Perhaps I shall
+hear of a good one in the Shetland Islands."
+
+When Mrs. Worfolk visited John as usual at ten o'clock to wish him
+good-night, she was enthusiastic about Bertram and Viola.
+
+"Well, really, sir, if yaul pardon the liberty, I must say I wouldn't
+never of believed that Mrs. George's children _could_ be so quiet and
+nice-behaved. They haven't given a bit of trouble, and I've never heard
+Maud speak so highly of anyone as of Miss Viola. 'That child's a regular
+little angel, Mrs. Worfolk,' she said to me. Well, sir, I'm bound to say
+that children does brighten up a house. I'm sure I've done my best what
+with putting flowers in all the vawses and one thing and another, but
+really, well I'm quite taken with your little nephew and niece, and I've
+had some experience of them, I mean to say, what with my poor sister's
+Herbert and all. I _have_ put the tantalus ready. Good-night, sir."
+
+"The fact of the matter is," John assured himself, "that when I'm alone
+with them I can manage children perfectly. I only hope that Miss
+Coldwell will fall in with my ideas. If she does, I see no reason why we
+shouldn't spend an extremely pleasant time all together."
+
+Unfortunately for John's hope of a satisfactory coalition with the
+governess he received a hurried note by messenger from his sister-in-law
+next morning to say that Miss Coldwell was laid up: the precise disease
+was illegible in Eleanor's communication, but it was serious enough to
+keep Miss Coldwell at home for three weeks. "_Meanwhile_," Eleanor
+wrote, "_she is trying to get her sister to come down from_"--the abode
+of the sister was equally illegible. "_But the most important thing
+is," Eleanor went on, "that little V. shouldn't miss her
+dancing-lessons. So will you arrange for Maud to take her every Tuesday
+and Friday? And, of course, if there's anything you want to know,
+there's always George._"
+
+Of George's eternal being John had no doubts; of his knowledge he was
+less sanguine: the only thing that George had ever known really well was
+the moment to lead trumps.
+
+"However," said John, in consultation with his housekeeper, "I dare say
+we shall get along."
+
+"Oh, certainly we shall, sir," Mrs. Worfolk confidently proclaimed,
+"well, I mean to say, I've been married myself."
+
+John bowed his appreciation of this fact.
+
+"And though I never had the happiness to have any little toddlers of my
+own, anyone being married gets used to the idea of having children.
+There's always the chance, as you might say. It isn't like as if I was
+an old maid, though, of course, my husband died in Jubilee year."
+
+"Did he, Mrs. Worfolk, did he?"
+
+"Yes, sir, he planed off his thumb when he was working on one of the
+benches for the stands through him looking round at a black fellow in a
+turban covered in jewelry who was driving to Buckingham Palace. One of
+the new arrivals, it was; and his arm got blood poisoning. That's how I
+remember it was Jubilee year, though usually I'm a terror for knowing
+when anything did occur. He wouldn't of minded so much, he said, only he
+was told it was the Char of Persia and that made him mad."
+
+"Why? What had he got against the Shah?"
+
+"He hadn't got nothing against the Char. But it wasn't the Char; and if
+he'd of known it wasn't the Char he never wouldn't of turned round so
+quick, and there's no saying he wouldn't of been alive to this day. No,
+sir, don't you worry about this governess. I dare say if she'd of come
+she'd only of caused a bit of unpleasantness all round."
+
+At the same time, John thought, when he sent for the children in order
+to make the announcement of Miss Coldwell's desertion, notwithstanding
+Mrs. Worfolk's optimism it was a pity that the first day of their visit
+should be a Sunday.
+
+"I'm sorry to say, Viola, and, of course, Bertram, this applies equally
+to you, that poor Miss Coldwell has been taken very ill."
+
+That strange expression upon the children's faces might be an awkward
+attempt to express their youthful sympathy, but it more ominously
+resembled a kind of gloating ecstacy, as they stood like two cherubs
+outside the gates of paradise, or two children outside a bunshop.
+
+"Very ill," John went on, "so ill indeed that it is feared she will not
+be able to come for a few days, and so...."
+
+Whatever more John would have said was lost in the riotous acclamations
+with which Bertram and Viola greeted the sad news. After the first cries
+and leaps of joy had subsided to a chanted duet, which ran somehow like
+this:
+
+"Oh, oh, Miss Coldwell,
+
+She can't come to Hampstead,
+
+Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,
+
+Miss Coldwell's not coming:"
+
+John ventured to rebuke the singers for their insensibility to human
+suffering.
+
+"For she may be dangerously ill," he protested.
+
+"How _fizzing_," Bertram shouted.
+
+"She might die."
+
+The prospect that this opened before Bertram was apparently too
+beautiful for any verbal utterance, and he remained open-mouthed in a
+mute and exquisite anticipation of liberty.
+
+"What and never come to us ever again?" Viola breathed, her blue eyes
+aglow with visions of a larger life.
+
+John shook his head, gravely.
+
+"Oh, Uncle John," she cried, "wouldn't that be glorious?"
+
+Bertram's heart was too full for words: he simply turned head over
+heels.
+
+"But you hard-hearted little beasts," their uncle expostulated.
+
+"She's most frightfully strict," Viola explained.
+
+"Yes, we shouldn't have been able to do anything decent if she'd come,"
+Bertram added.
+
+A poignant regret for that unknown governess suffering from her
+illegible complaint pierced John's mind. But perhaps she would recover,
+in which case she should spend her convalescence at Ambles with Harold;
+for if when in good health she was strict, after a severe illness she
+might be ferocious.
+
+"Well, I'm not at all pleased with your attitude," John declared. "And
+you'll find me twice as strict as Miss Coldwell."
+
+"Oh, no, we shan't," said Bertram with a smile of jovial incredulity.
+
+John let this contradiction pass: it seemed an imprudent subject for
+debate. "And now, to-day being Sunday, you'd better get ready for
+church."
+
+"Oh, but we always dress up on Sunday," Viola said.
+
+"So does everybody," John replied. "Go and get ready."
+
+The children left the room, and he rang for Mrs. Worfolk.
+
+"Master Bertram and Miss Viola will shortly be going to church, and I
+want you to arrange for somebody to take them."
+
+Mrs. Worfolk hesitated.
+
+"Who was you thinking of, sir?"
+
+"I wasn't thinking of anybody in particular, but I suppose Maud could
+go."
+
+"Maud has her rooms to do."
+
+"Well, Elsa."
+
+"Elsa has her dinner to get."
+
+"Well, then, perhaps you would ..."
+
+"Yaul pardon the liberty, sir, but I never go to church except of an
+evening _some_times; I never could abide being stared at."
+
+"Oh, very well," said John, fretfully, as Mrs. Worfolk retired. "Though
+I'm hanged if _I'm_ going to take them," he added to himself, "at any
+rate without a rehearsal."
+
+The two children soon came back in a condition of complete preparation
+and insisted so loudly upon their uncle's company that he yielded;
+though when he found himself with a child on either side of him in the
+sabbath calm of the Hampstead streets footfall-haunted, he was appalled
+at his rashness. There was a church close to his own house, but with an
+instinct to avoid anything like a domestic scandal he had told his
+nephew and niece that it was not a suitable church for children, and had
+led them further afield through the ghostly November sunlight.
+
+"But look here," Bertram objected, "we can't go through any slums, you
+know, because the cads will bung things at my topper."
+
+"Not if you're with me," John argued. "I am wearing a top-hat myself."
+
+"Well, they did when I went for a walk with Father once on Sunday."
+
+"The slums round Earl's Court are probably much fiercer than the slums
+round Hampstead," John suggested. "And anyway here we are."
+
+He had caught a glimpse of an ecclesiastical building, which
+unfortunately turned out to be a Jewish tabernacle and not open: a few
+minutes later, however, an indubitably Anglican place of worship invited
+their attendance, and John trying not to look as bewildered as he felt
+let himself be conducted by a sidesman to the very front pew.
+
+"I wonder if he thinks I'm a member of parliament. But I wish to
+goodness he'd put us in the second row. I shall be absolutely lost where
+I am."
+
+John looked round to catch the sidesman's eye and plead for a less
+conspicuous position, but even as he turned his head a terrific crash
+from the organ proclaimed that it was too late and that the service had
+begun.
+
+By relying upon the memories of youthful worship John might have been
+able to cope successfully with Morning Prayer, even with that florid
+variation of it which is generally known as Mattins. Unluckily the
+church he had chosen for the spiritual encouragement of his nephew and
+niece was to the church of his recollections as Mount Everest to a
+molehill. As a simple spectator without encumbrances he might have
+enjoyed the service and derived considerable inspiration from it for the
+decorative ecclesiasticism of his new play; as an uncle it alarmed and
+confused him. The lace-hung acolytes, the candles, the chrysanthemums,
+the purple vestments and the ticking of the thurible affected him
+neither with Protestant disgust nor with Catholic devoutness, but much
+more deeply as nothing but incentives to the unanswerable inquiries of
+Bertram and Viola.
+
+"What are they doing?" whispered his nephew.
+
+"Hush!" he whispered back in what he tried to feel was the right
+intonation of pious reproof.
+
+"What's that little boy doing with a spoon?" whispered his niece.
+
+"Hush!" John blew forth again. "Attend to the service."
+
+"But it isn't a real service, is it?" she persisted.
+
+Luckily the congregation knelt at this point, and John plunged down with
+a delighted sense of taking cover. Presently he began to be afraid that
+his attitude of devotional self-abasement might be seeming a little
+ostentatious, and he peered cautiously round over the top of the pew; to
+his dismay he perceived that Bertram and Viola were still standing up.
+
+"Kneel down at once," he commanded in what he hoped would be an
+authoritative whisper, but which was in the result an agonized croak.
+
+"I want to see what they're doing," both children protested.
+
+Bertram's Etons appeared too much attentuated for a sharp tug, nor did
+John feel courageous enough in the front row to jerk Viola down upon her
+knees by pulling her petticoats, which might come off. He therefore
+covered his face with his hands in what was intended to look like a
+spasm of acute reverence and growled at them both to kneel down, unless
+they wanted to be sent back instantly to Earl's Court. Evidently
+impressed by this threat the children knelt down; but they were no
+sooner upon their knees than the perverse congregation rose to its feet,
+the concerted movement taking John so completely unawares that he was
+left below and felt when he did rise like a naughty boy who has been
+discovered hiding under a table. He was not put at ease by Viola's
+asking him to find her place in the prayer-book; it seemed to him
+terrible to discern the signs of a vindictive spirit in one so young.
+
+"Hush," he whispered. "You must remember that we're in the front row and
+must be careful not to disturb the--" he hesitated at the word
+"performers" and decided to envelop whatever they were in a cough.
+
+There were no more questions for a while, nothing indeed but tiptoe
+fidgetings until two acolytes advanced with lighted candles to a
+position on each side of the deacon who was preparing to read the
+gospel.
+
+"Why can't he see to read?" Bertram asked. "It's not dark."
+
+"Hush," John whispered. "This is the gospel"
+
+He knew he was safe in affirming so much, because the announcement that
+he was about to read the gospel had been audibly given out by the
+deacon. At this point the congregation crossed its innumerable features
+three times, and Bertram began to giggle; immediately afterward fumes
+poured from the swung censer, and Viola began to choke. John felt that
+it was impossible to interrupt what was presumably considered the _pièce
+de resistance_ of the service by leading the two children out along the
+whole length of the church; yet he was convinced that if he did not lead
+them out their gigglings and snortings would have a disastrous effect
+upon the soloist. Then he had a brilliant idea: Viola was obviously much
+upset by the incense and he would escort her out into fresh air with
+the solicitude that one gives to a sick person: Bertram he should leave
+behind to giggle alone. He watched his nephew bending lower and lower to
+contain his mirth; then with a quick propulsive gesture he hurried Viola
+into the aisle. Unfortunately when with a sigh of relief he stood upon
+the steps outside and put on his hat he found that in his confusion he
+had brought out Bertram's hat, which on his intellectual head felt like
+a precariously balanced inkpot; and though he longed to abandon Bertram
+to his well merited fate he could not bring himself to walk up
+Fitzjohn's Avenue in Bertram's hat, nor could he even contemplate with
+equanimity the notion of Bertram's walking up under his. Had it been a
+week-day either of them might have passed for an eccentric
+advertisement, but on a Sunday....
+
+"And if I stand on the steps of a church holding this minute hat in my
+hand," he thought, "people will think I'm collecting for some charity.
+Confound that boy! And I can't pretend that I'm feeling too hot in the
+middle of November. Dash that boy! And I certainly can't wear it. A
+Japanese juggler wouldn't be able to wear it. Damn that boy!"
+
+Yet John would rather have gone home in a baby's bonnet than enter the
+church again, and the best that could be hoped was that Bertram dismayed
+at finding himself alone would soon emerge. Bertram, however, did not
+emerge, and John had a sudden fear lest in his embarrassment he might
+have escaped by another door and was even now rushing blindly home.
+Blindly was the right adverb indeed, for he would certainly be unable to
+see anything from under his uncle's hat. Viola, having recovered from
+her choking fit, began to cry at this point, and an old lady who must
+have noted with tender approval John's exit came out with a bottle of
+smelling-salts, which she begged him to make use of. Before he could
+decline she had gone back inside the church leaving him with the bottle.
+If he could have forced the contents down Viola's throat without
+attracting more attention he would have done so, but by this time one
+or two passers-by had stopped to stare at the scene, and he heard one of
+them tell his companion that it was a street conjurer just going to
+perform.
+
+"Will anything make you stop crying?" he asked his niece in despair.
+
+"I want Bertram," she wailed.
+
+And at that moment Bertram appeared, led out by two sidesmen.
+
+"Your little boy doesn't know how to behave himself in church," one of
+them informed John, severely.
+
+"I was only looking for my hat," Bertram explained. "I thought it had
+rolled into the next pew. Let go of my arm. I slipped off the hassock. I
+couldn't help making a little noise, Uncle John."
+
+John was grateful to Bertram for thus exonerating him publicly from the
+responsibility of having begotten him, and he inquired almost kindly
+what had happened.
+
+"The hassock slipped, and I fell into the next pew."
+
+"I'm sorry my nephew made a noise," said John to the sidesman. "My niece
+was taken ill, and he was left behind by accident. Thank you for showing
+him the way out, yes. Come along, Bertram, I've got your hat. Where's
+mine?" Bertram looked blankly at his uncle.
+
+"Do you mean to say--" John began, and then he saw a passing taxi to
+which he shouted.
+
+"Those smelling-salts belong to an old lady," he explained hurriedly and
+quite inadequately to the bewildered sidesman into whose hands he had
+thrust the bottle. "Come along," he urged the children, and when they
+were scrambling into the taxi he called back to the sidesmen, "You can
+give to the jumble sale any hat that is swept up after the service."
+
+Inside the taxi John turned to the children.
+
+"One would think you'd never been inside a church before," he said,
+reproachfully.
+
+"Bertram," said Viola, in bland oblivion of all that her uncle had
+endured, "when we dress up to-day shall we act going to church, or
+finish Robinson Crusoe?"
+
+"Wait till we see what we can find for dressing up," Bertram advised.
+
+John displayed a little anxiety.
+
+"Dressing up?" he repeated.
+
+"We always dress up every Sunday," the children burst forth in unison.
+
+"Oh, I see--it's a kind of habit. Well, I dare say Mrs. Worfolk will be
+able to find you an old duster or something."
+
+"Duster," echoed Viola, scornfully. "That's not enough for dressing up."
+
+"I didn't suggest a duster as anything but a supplement to your ordinary
+costume. I didn't anticipate that you were going to rely entirely upon
+the duster."
+
+"I say, V, can you twig what Uncle John says?"
+
+Viola shook her head.
+
+"Nor more can I," said Bertram, sympathetically.
+
+Before the taxi reached Church Row, John found himself adopting a
+positively deferential manner towards his nephew and his niece, and when
+they were once again back in the quiet house, the hall of which was
+faintly savoury with the maturing lunch he asked them if they would mind
+amusing themselves for an hour while he wrote some letters.
+
+"For I take it you won't want to dress up immediately," he added as an
+excuse for attending to his own business.
+
+The children confirmed his supposition, but went on to inform him that
+the domenical régime at Earl's Court prescribed a walk after church.
+
+"Owing to the accident to my hat I'm afraid I must ask you to let me off
+this morning."
+
+"Right-o," Bertram agreed, cheerfully. "But I vote we come up and sit
+with you while you write your letters. I think letters are a beastly
+fag, don't you?"
+
+John felt that the boy was proffering his own and his sister's company
+in a spirit of altruism, and he could not muster enough gracelessness
+to decline the proposal. So upstairs they all went.
+
+"I think this is rather a ripping room, don't you, V?"
+
+"The carpet's very old," said Viola.
+
+"Have you got any decent books?" Bertram inquired, looking round at the
+shelves. "Any Henty's, I mean, or anything?"
+
+"No, I'm afraid I haven't," said John, apologetically.
+
+"Or bound up Boys Own Papers?"
+
+John shook his head.
+
+"But I'll tell you what I have got," he added with a sudden inspiration.
+"Kingsley's _Heroes_."
+
+"Is that a pi book?" asked Bertram, suspiciously.
+
+"Not at all. It's about Greek gods and goddesses, essentially
+broad-minded divinities."
+
+"Right-o. I'll have a squint at it, if you like," Bertram volunteered.
+"Come on, V, don't start showing off your rotten dancing. Come and look
+at this book. It's got some spiffing pictures."
+
+"Lunch won't be very long," John announced in order to propitiate any
+impatience at what they might consider the boring entertainment he was
+offering.
+
+Presently the two children left their uncle alone, and he observed with
+pride that they took with them the book. He little thought that so mild
+a dose of romance as could be extracted from Kingsley's _Heroes_ would
+before the twilight of that November day run through 36 Church Row like
+fire. But then John did not know that there was a calf's head for dinner
+that night; he had not realized the scenic capacity of the cistern
+cupboard at the top of the house; and most of all he had not associated
+with dressing up on Sunday afternoon the histrionic force that Bertram
+and Viola inherited from their mother.
+
+"Is it Androméda or Andrómeda?" Bertram asked at lunch.
+
+"Andrómeda, my boy," John answered. "Perseus and Andromeda."
+
+"I think it would make a jolly good play, don't you?" Bertram went on.
+
+Really, thought John, this nephew was a great improvement upon that
+spectacled inquisitor at Ambles.
+
+"A capital play," he agreed, heartily. "Are you thinking of writing it?"
+
+"V and I thought we'd do it instead of finishing Robinson Crusoe. Well,
+you see, you haven't got any decent fur rugs, and V's awfully stupid
+about having her face blacked."
+
+"It's my turn not to be a savage," Viola pleaded in defense of her
+squeamishness.
+
+"I said you could be Will Atkins as well. I know I'd jolly well like to
+be Will Atkins myself."
+
+"All right," Viola offered. "You can, and I'll be Robinson."
+
+"You can't change like that in the middle of a play," her brother
+argued.
+
+John, who appreciated both Viola's dislike of burnt-cork and Bertram's
+esthetic objection to changing parts in the middle of a piece, strongly
+recommended Perseus and Andromeda.
+
+"Of course, you got the idea from Kingsley? Bravo, Bertram," he said,
+beaming with cordial patronage.
+
+"And I suppose," his nephew went on, "that you'd rather we played at the
+top of the house. I expect it would be quieter, if you're writing
+letters. Mother said you often liked to be quiet." He alluded to this
+desire rather shamefully, as if it were a secret vice of his uncle, who
+hurriedly approved the choice of the top landing for the scene of the
+classic drama.
+
+"Then would you please tell Mrs. Worfolk that we can have the calf's
+head?"
+
+"The what?"
+
+"V found a calf's head in the larder, and it would make a fizzing
+Gorgon's head, but Mrs. Worfolk wouldn't let us have it."
+
+John was so much delighted with the trend of Bertram's ingenuity that
+he sent for Mrs. Worfolk and told her that the calf's head might be
+borrowed for the play.
+
+"I'll take no responsibility for your dinner," said his housekeeper,
+warningly.
+
+"That's all right, Mrs. Worfolk. If anything happens to the head I
+shan't grumble. There'll always be the cold beef, won't there?"
+
+Mrs. Worfolk turned up her eyes to heaven and left the room.
+
+"Well, I think I've arranged that for you successfully."
+
+"Thank you, Uncle John," said Bertram.
+
+"Thank you, Uncle John," said Viola.
+
+What nice quiet well-mannered children they were, after all; and he by
+no means ought to blame them for the fiasco of the churchgoing; the
+setting had of course been utterly unfamiliar; these ritualistic places
+of worship were a mistake in an unexcitable country like England. John
+retired to his library and lit a Corona with a sense that he thoroughly
+deserved a good cigar.
+
+"Children are not difficult," he said to himself, "if one tries to put
+oneself in their place. That request for the calf's head undoubtedly
+showed a rare combination of adaptiveness with for a schoolboy what was
+almost a poetic fancy. Harold would have wanted to know how much the
+head weighed, and whether in life it preferred to browse on buttercups
+or daisies; but when finally it was cooked he would have eaten twice as
+much as anybody else. I prefer Bertram's attitude; though naturally I
+can appreciate a housekeeper's feelings. These cigars are in capital
+condition. Really, Bertram's example is infectious, and by gad, I feel
+quite like a couple of hours with Joan. Yes, it's a pity Laurence hasn't
+got Bertram's dramatic sense. A great pity."
+
+The sabbath afternoon wore on, and though John did not accumulate enough
+energy to seat himself at his table, he dreamed a good deal of wonderful
+situations in the fourth act, puffing away at his cigar and hearing from
+time to time distant shouts and scamperings; these, however, did not
+keep him from falling into a gentle doze, from which he was abruptly
+wakened by the opening of the library door.
+
+"Ah, is that tea?" he asked cheerfully in that tone with which the
+roused sleeper always implies his uninterrupted attention to time and
+space.
+
+"No, sir, it's me," a grim voice replied. "And if you don't want us all
+to be drowned where we stand, it being a Sunday afternoon, and not a
+plumber to be got, and Maud in the hysterics, and those two young
+Tartars screaming like Bedlamites, and your dinner ruined and done for,
+and the feathers gone from Elsa's new hat, per-raps you could come
+upstairs, Mr. Touchwood. Gordon's head indeed, and the boy as naked as a
+stitch!"
+
+John jumped to his feet and hurried out on the landing; at the same
+moment Bertram with nothing to cover him except a pudding-shape on his
+head, a tea-tray on his arm, a Turkish scimitar at his waist, and the
+pinions of a blue and green bird tied round his ankles leapt six stairs
+of the flight above and alighting at his uncle's feet, thrust the calf's
+head into his face.
+
+"You're turned to stone, Phineus," he yelled. "You can't move. You've
+seen the Gorgon."
+
+"There he goes again with his Gordon and his Gladstone," said Mrs.
+Worfolk. "How dare you be so daring?"
+
+"The Gorgon's sister," cried Bertram lunging at her with the scimitar.
+"Beware, I am invisible."
+
+Whereupon he enveloped the calf's head in a napkin, held the tea-tray
+before his face, and darted away upstairs.
+
+"I'm afraid he's a little over-excited," said John, doubtfully.
+
+At this moment a stream of water began to flow past his feet and pour
+down upon him from the landing above.
+
+"Why, the house is full of water," he gasped.
+
+"It's what I'm trying to tell you, sir," Mrs. Worfolk fumed. "He's done
+something with that there cistern and burst it. I can't stop the
+water."
+
+John followed Perseus on his wild flight up the stairs down which every
+moment water was flowing more freely. When he reached the cistern
+cupboard he discovered Maud bound fast to the disordered cistern, while
+Viola holding in her mouth a large ivory paper-knife and wearing what
+looked like Mrs. Worfolk's sealskin jacket that John had given her last
+Christmas was splashing at full length in a puddle on the floor and
+clawing at Maud's skirts with ferocious growls and grunts.
+
+"You dare try to undress me again, Master Bertram," the statuesque Maud
+was screaming.
+
+"Well, Andromeda's got practically nothing on in the book, and you said
+you'd rather not be the sea-monster," Bertram was arguing. "Andromeda,"
+he cried seeing by the manner of his uncle's advance that the curtain
+must now be rung down upon the play, "I have turned the monster to
+stone. Go on, V, you can't move from now on."
+
+Viola stiffened and without a twitch let the stream of water pour down
+upon her, while Bertram planting his foot in the small of her back waved
+triumphantly the Gorgon's head, both of whose ears gave way under the
+strain, so that John's dinner was soon as wet as he was.
+
+The cistern emptied itself at last; Maud was released; Bertram and Viola
+were led downstairs to be dried and on Mrs. Worfolk's recommendation
+sent instantly to bed.
+
+"I told you," said Bertram, "that if Miss Coldwell had come, we couldn't
+have done anything decent."
+
+What woman, John wondered, might serve as a comparable deterrent? The
+fantastic idea of appealing for aid to Doris Hamilton flashed through
+his mind, but on second thoughts he felt that there would be something
+undignified in asking her to come at such a moment. Then he remembered
+how often he had heard his sister-in-law Beatrice lament her
+childlessness. Why should he not visit James and Beatrice this very
+evening? He owed them a visit, and his domestics were all obviously too
+much agitated even to contemplate the preparation of dinner. Mrs.
+Worfolk would perhaps be in a better temper when he got back and he
+would explain to her that the seal was a marine animal, the skin of
+which would not be injured by water.
+
+"I think I'll ask Mrs. James to give us a helping hand this week," John
+suggested. "I shall be rather busy myself."
+
+"Yes, sir, and so shall I, trying to get the house straight again which
+it looks more like Shooting the Chutes at Earl's Court than a
+gentleman's house, I'm bound to say."
+
+"Still it might have been worse, Mrs. Worfolk. They might have played
+with another element. Fire, for instance. That would have been much more
+awkward."
+
+"And it's thanks to me the house isn't on fire as well," Mrs. Worfolk
+shrilled in her indignation. "For if that young Turk didn't come
+charging down into the kitchen and trying to tell me that the
+kitchen-fire was a serpent and start attacking it tooth and nail. And
+there was poor Elsa shut up in the coal-cellar and hollering fit to
+break anyone's heart. 'She's Daniel in a tower of brass,' he says as
+bold as a tower of brass himself."
+
+"And what were you, Mrs. Worfolk?" John asked.
+
+"Oh, his lordship had the nerve to say I was an atlas. 'Yes,' I said,
+'my lord, you let me catch hold of you and I'll make your behind look
+like an atlas before I've done with it.'"
+
+"Do you think that Mrs. James could control them?" John asked.
+
+"I wouldn't say as the Lord Mayor himself could control them, but it's
+not for me to give advice when good food can be turned into Gordon's
+heads. And whatever give them the idea, I don't know, for I'm sure
+General Gordon was a very handsome man to look at. Yaul excuse me, sir,
+but if you don't want to catch your death, you'd better change your
+things."
+
+John followed Mrs. Worfolk's advice, and an hour later he was walking
+through the misty November night in the direction of St. John's Wood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+If a taxi had lurked in any of the melancholy streets through which John
+was making his way to Hill Road he would have taken refuge in it
+gratefully, for there was no atmosphere that preyed upon his mind with
+such a sense of desolation as the hour of evening prayer in a
+respectable Northern suburb. The occasional footsteps of uninspired
+lovers dying away into by-streets; the occasional sounds of stuffy
+worship proceeding from church or chapel; the occasional bark of a dog
+trying to obtain admittance to an empty house; the occasional tread of a
+morose policeman; the occasional hoot of a distant motor-horn; the
+occasional whiff of privet-shrubberies and of damp rusty railings; the
+occasional effusions of chlorotic gaslight upon the raw air, half fog,
+half drizzle; the occasional shadows that quivered upon the dimly
+luminous blinds of upper windows; the occasional mutterings of
+housemaids in basements--not even John's buoyant spirit could rise above
+such a weight of depressing adjuncts to the influential Sabbath gloom.
+He began to accuse himself of having been too hasty in his treatment of
+Bertram and Viola; the scene at Church Row viewed in retrospect seemed
+to him cheerful and, if the water had not reached his Aubusson rug,
+perfectly harmless. No doubt, in the boarding-house at Earl's Court such
+behavior had been considered impossible. Had not the children talked of
+finishing Robinson Crusoe and alluded to his own lack of suitable fur
+rugs? Evidently last week the drama had been interrupted by the landlady
+because they had been spoiling her fur rugs. John was on the point of
+going back to Church Row and inviting the children to celebrate his
+return in a jolly impromptu supper, when he remembered that there were
+at least five more Sundays before Christmas. Next Sunday they would
+probably decide to revive the Argonauts, a story that, so far as he
+could recall the incidents, offered many opportunities for destructive
+ingenuity. Then, the Sunday after, there would be Theseus and the
+Minotaur; if there were another calf's head in the larder, Bertram might
+easily try to compel Mrs. Worfolk to be the Minotaur and wear it, which
+might mean Mrs. Worfolk's resignation from his service, a prospect that
+could not be faced with equanimity. But would the presence of Beatrice
+exercise an effective control upon this dressing up, and could he stand
+Beatrice for six weeks at a stretch? He might, of course, engage her to
+protect him and his property during the first few days, and after that
+to come for every week end. Suppose he did invite Doris Hamilton, but,
+of course, that was absurd--suppose he did invite Beatrice, would Doris
+Hamilton--would Beatrice come? Could it possibly be held to be one of
+the duties of a confidential secretary to assist her employer in
+checking the exuberance of his juvenile relations? Would not Miss
+Hamilton decide that her post approximated too nearly to that of a
+governess? Obviously such a woman had never contemplated the notion of
+becoming a governess. But had she ever contemplated the notion of
+becoming a confidential secretary? No, no, the plan was fantastic,
+unreal ... he must trust to Beatrice and hope that Miss Coldwell would
+presently recover, or that Eleanor's tour would come to a sudden end, or
+that George would have paid what he owed his landlady and feel better
+able to withstand her criticism of his children. If all these hopes
+proved unfounded, a schoolboy, like the rest of human nature, had his
+price--his noiselessness could be bought in youth like his silence later
+on. John was turning into Hill Road when he made this reflection; he was
+within the area of James' cynical operations.
+
+John's eldest brother was at forty-six an outwardly rather improved, an
+inwardly much debased replica of their father. The old man had not
+possessed a winning personality, but his energy and genuine powers of
+accomplishment had made him a successful general practitioner, because
+people overlooked his rudeness in the confidence he gave them and
+forgave his lack of sympathy on account of his obvious devotion to their
+welfare. He with his skeptical and curious mind, his passion for
+mathematics and hatred of idealism, and his unaffected contempt for the
+human race could not conceive a worse hell in eternity than a general
+practice offered him in life; but having married a vain, beautiful, lazy
+and conventional woman, he could not bring himself to spoil his honesty
+by blaming for the foolish act anything more tangible than the scheme of
+creation; and having made himself a damned uncomfortable bed with a
+pretty quilt, as he used to say, he had decided that he must lie on it.
+No doubt, many general practitioners go through life with the conviction
+that they were intended to devote themselves to original research; but
+Dr. Robert Touchwood from what those who were qualified to judge used to
+say of him had reason to feel angry with his fate.
+
+James, who as a boy had shown considerable talent, was chosen by his
+father to inherit the practice. It was typical of the old gentleman that
+he did not assume this succession as the right of the eldest son, but
+that he deliberately awarded it to James as the most apparently adequate
+of his offspring. Unfortunately James, who was dyspeptic even at school,
+chose to imitate his father's mannerisms while he was still a student at
+Guy's and helping at odd hours in the dispensary. Soon after he had
+taken his finals and had seen his name engraved upon the brass plate
+underneath his father's, old Dr. Touchwood fell ill of an incurable
+disease and James found himself in full charge of the practice, which he
+proceeded to ruin, so that not long after his father's death he was
+compelled to sell it for a much smaller sum than it would have fetched a
+few years before. For a time he played alternately with the plan of
+setting up as a specialist in Harley Street or of burying himself in the
+country to write a monograph on British dragon-flies--for some reason
+these fierce and brilliant insects touched a responsive chord in James.
+He finally decided upon the dragon-flies and went down to Ockham Common
+in Surrey to search for _Sympetrum Fonscolombii_, a rare migrant that
+was reported from that locality in 1892. He could not prove that it was
+any more indigenous than himself to the sophisticated county, but in the
+course of his observations he met Beatrice Pyrke, the daughter of a
+prosperous inn-keeper in a neighboring town, and married her.
+Notwithstanding such a catch--he used to vow that she was more
+resplendent than even _Anax Imperator_--he continued to take an interest
+in dragon-flies, until his monograph was unluckily forestalled a few
+years later. It was owing to an article of his in one of the
+entomological journals that he encountered Daniel Curtis--a meeting
+which led to Hilda's marriage. In those days--John had not yet made a
+financial success of literature--this result had seemed to the
+embittered odonatist a complete justification of the many hours he had
+wasted in preparing for his never-to-be written monograph, because his
+sister's future had for some time been presenting a disagreeable and
+insoluble problem. Besides observing dragon-flies, James spent one year
+in making a clock out of fishbones, and another year in perfecting a
+method of applying gold lacquer to poker-work.
+
+A more important hobby, however, that finally displaced all the others
+was foreign literature, in the criticism of which he frequently occupied
+pages in the expensive reviews, pages that gradually grew numerous
+enough to make first one book and then another. James' articles on
+foreign literature were always signed; but he also wrote many criticisms
+of English literature that were not signed. This hack-work exasperated
+him so much that he gradually came to despising the whole of English
+literature after the eighteenth century with the exception of the novels
+of George Meredith. These he used to read aloud to his wife when he was
+feeling particularly bilious and derive from her nervous bewilderment a
+savage satisfaction. In her the critic possessed a perpetual incarnation
+of the British public that he so deeply scorned, and he treated his
+wife in the same way as he fancied he treated the larger entity: without
+either of them he would have been intellectually at a loose end. For all
+his admiration of French literature James spoke the language with a
+hideous British accent. Once on a joint holiday John, who for the whole
+of a channel-crossing had been listening to his brother's tirades
+against the rottenness of modern English literature and his pæans on
+behalf of modern French literature, had been much consoled when they
+reached Calais to find that James could not make himself intelligible
+even to a porter.
+
+"But," as John had said with a chuckle, "perhaps Meredith couldn't have
+made himself intelligible to an English porter."
+
+"It's the porter's fault," James had replied, sourly.
+
+For some years now the critic with his wife and a fawn-coloured bulldog
+had lived in furnished apartments at 65 Hill Road, a creeper-matted
+house of the early 'seventies which James characterized as quiet and
+Beatrice as handy; in point of fact it was neither, being exposed to
+barrel-organs and remote from busses. A good deal of the original
+furniture still incommoded the rooms; but James had his own chair,
+Beatrice had her own footstool, and Henri Beyle the bulldog his own
+basket. The fire-place was crowned by an overmantel of six decorative
+panels, all that was left of James' method of applying gold lacquer to
+poker-work. There were also three or four family portraits, which John
+for some reason coveted for his own library, and a drawer-cabinet of
+faded and decrepit dragon-flies. Some bookshelves filled with yellow
+French novels gave an exotic look to the drab room, which, whenever
+James was not smoking his unusually foul pipes, smelt of gravy and malt
+vinegar except near the window, where the predominant perfume was of
+ferns and oilcloth. Between the living-room and the bedroom were
+double-doors hidden by brown plush curtains, which if opened quickly
+revealed nothing but a bleak expanse of bed and a gray window fringed
+with ragged creepers. When a visitor entered this room to wash his
+hands he used to look at James' fishbone clock under its bell-glass on a
+high chest of drawers and shiver in the dampness; the fireplace was
+covered by a large wardrobe, and one of Beatrice's hats was often on the
+bed, the counterpane of which was stenciled with Beyle's paws. John, who
+loathed this bedroom, always said he did not want to wash his hands,
+when he took a meal at Hill Road.
+
+The depression of his Sunday evening walk had made John less critical
+than he usually was of James' rooms, and he heard the gate of the
+front-garden swing back behind him with a sense of pleasurable
+expectation.
+
+"There will be cold mutton for supper," he said to himself, thinking
+rather guiltily of the calf's head that he might have eaten and to
+partake of which he had not invited his brother and Beatrice. "Cold
+mutton and a very wet salad, with either tinned pears or tinned
+pineapple to follow--or perhaps stewed figs."
+
+When John entered, James was deep in his armchair with Beyle snoring on
+his lap, where he served as a rest for the large book that his master
+was reading.
+
+"Hullo," the critic exclaimed without attempting to rise. "You are back
+in town then?"
+
+"Yes, I came back on Friday."
+
+"I thought you wouldn't be able to stand the country for long. Remember
+what Horry Walpole said about the country?"
+
+"Yes," said John, quickly. He had not the least idea really, but he had
+long ago ceased to have any scruples about preventing James first of all
+from trying to remember a quotation, secondly from trying to find it,
+thirdly from asking Beatrice where she had hidden the book in which it
+was to be found, and finally from not only reading it when the book was
+found, but also from reading page after page of irrelevant matter in the
+context. "Though Ambles is really very jolly," he added. "I'm expecting
+you and Beatrice to spend Christmas with me, you know."
+
+James grunted.
+
+"Well, we'll see about that. I don't belong to the Dickens Fellowship
+and I shall be pretty busy. You popular authors soon forget what it
+means to be busy. So you've had another success? Who was it this
+time--Lucretia Borgia, eh?" he laughed, bitterly. "Good lord, it's
+incredible, isn't it? But the English drama's in a sick state--a very
+sick state."
+
+"All contemporary art is in a sick state according to the critics," John
+observed. "Critics are like doctors; they are not prejudiced in favor of
+general good-health."
+
+"Well, isn't it in a sick state?" James demanded, truculently.
+
+"I don't know that I think it is. However, don't let's begin an argument
+before supper. Where's Beatrice?"
+
+"She bought a new hat yesterday and has gone to demonstrate its
+becomingness to God and woman."
+
+"I suppose you mean she's gone to church? I went to church myself this
+morning."
+
+"What for? Copy?"
+
+"No, no, no. I took George's children."
+
+"You don't mean to say that you've got _them_ with you?"
+
+John nodded, and his brother exploded with an uproarious laugh.
+
+"Well, I was fool enough to marry before I was thirty," he bellowed.
+"But at any rate I wasn't fool enough to have any children. So you're
+going to sup with us. I ought to warn you it's cold mutton to-night."
+
+"Really? Capital! There's nothing I like better than cold mutton."
+
+"Upon my soul, Johnnie, I'll say this for you. You may write stale
+romantic plays about the past, but you manage to keep plenty of romantic
+sauce for the present. Yes, you're a born optimist. Look at your
+skin--pink as a baby's. Look at mine--yellow as a horse's tooth. Have
+you heard my new name for your habit of mind? Rosification. Rather good,
+eh? And you can rosify anything from Lucretia Borgia to cold mutton.
+Now don't look angry with me, Johnnie; you must rosify my ill-humor.
+With so many roses you can't expect not to have a few thorns as well,
+and I'm one of them. No, seriously, I congratulate you on your success.
+And I always try to remember that you write with your tongue in your
+cheek."
+
+"On the contrary I believe I write as well as I can," said John,
+earnestly. "I admit that I gave up writing realistic novels, but that
+was because they didn't suit my temperament."
+
+"No, by gad, they didn't! And, anyway, no Englishman can write a
+realistic novel--or any other kind of a novel if it comes to that. My
+lord, the English novel!"
+
+"Look here," John protested. "I do not want to argue about either plays
+or novels to-night. But if you must talk about books, talk about your
+own, not mine. Beatrice wrote to me that you had something coming along
+about the French Symbolists. I shouldn't have thought that they would
+have appealed to you."
+
+"They don't. I hate them."
+
+"Well, why write a book about them? Their day has been over a long
+time."
+
+"To smash them. To prove that they were a pretentious set of epileptic
+humbugs."
+
+"Sort of Max Nordau business?"
+
+"Max Nordau! I hope you aren't going to compare me with that flat-footed
+bus-conductor. No, no, Johnnie, the rascals took themselves seriously
+and I'm going to smash them on their own estimate of their own
+importance. I'm going to prove that they were on the wrong track and led
+nowhere."
+
+"It's consoling to learn that even French literature can go off the
+lines sometimes."
+
+"Of course it can, because it runs on lines. English literature on the
+contrary never had any lines on which to run, though in the eighteenth
+century it followed a fairly decent coaching-road. Modern English
+literature, however, is like a rogue elephant trampling down the jungle
+that its predecessors made some attempt to cultivate."
+
+"I never knew that even moral elephants had taken up agriculture
+seriously."
+
+James blew all the ashes of his pipe over Beyle in a gust of contempt,
+and rose from his chair.
+
+"The smirk!" he cried. "The traditional British smirk! The gerumky-gerum
+horse-laugh! British humor! Ha-ha! Begotten by Punch out of Mrs. Grundy
+with the Spectator for godfather. '_Go to, you have made me mad._'"
+
+"It's a pity you can't tell me about your new book without flying into a
+rage," John said, mildly. "You haven't told me yet when it's to appear."
+
+"My fourteen readers aren't languishing. But to repay politeness by
+politeness, my book will come out in March."
+
+"I'm looking forward to it," John declared. "Have you got good terms
+from Worrall?"
+
+"As good terms as a consumptive bankrupt might expect from Shylock. What
+does the British public care for criticism? You should hear me reading
+the proofs to Beatrice. You should really have the pleasure of watching
+her face, and listening to her comments. Do you know why Beatrice goes
+to church? I'll tell you. She goes to indulge in a debauch of the
+accumulated yawns of the week."
+
+"Hush, here she is," John warned him.
+
+James laughed again.
+
+"Johnnie, you're _impayable_. Your sensitiveness to Beatrice betrays the
+fount of your success. You treat the British public with just the same
+gentlemanly gurgle. And above all you're a good salesman. That's where
+George failed when he tried whisky on commission."
+
+"I don't believe you're half the misanthropist you make yourself out."
+
+"Of course, I'm not. I love human nature. Didn't I marry Beatrice, and
+didn't I spend a year in making a clock out of fishbones to amuse my
+landlady's children, and wasn't I a doctor of medicine without once
+using my knowledge of poisons? I love mankind--but dragon-flies were
+more complex and dogs are more admirable. Well, Beatrice, did you enjoy
+the sermon?"
+
+His wife had come in and was greeting John broadly and effusively, for
+when she was excited her loud contralto voice recaptured many rustic
+inflections of her youth. She was a tall woman, gaudily handsome,
+conserving in clothes and coiffure the fashions of her prime as queens
+do and barmaids who become the wives of publicans. On Sundays she wore a
+lilac broadcloth with a floriated bodice cut close to the figure; but
+she was just as proud of her waist on weekdays and discreet about her
+legs, which she wrapped up in a number of petticoats. She was as real or
+as unreal as a cabinet-photograph of the last decade of the nineteenth
+century: it depended on the attitude of the observer. Although there was
+too much of her for the apartments, it could not be said that she
+appeared out of place in them; in fact she was rather like a daughter of
+the house who had come home for the holidays.
+
+"Why, it's John," she expanded in a voice rich with welcome. "How are
+you, little stranger?"
+
+"Thank you very much for the flowers, Beatrice. They were much
+appreciated."
+
+"I wanted you to know that we were still in the land of the livin'.
+You're goin' to stay to supper, of course? But you'll have to be content
+with cold mutton, don't you know."
+
+There was a tradition among novelists that well-bred people leave out
+their final "g's"; so Beatrice saved on these consonants what she
+squandered upon aspirates.
+
+"And how do you think Jimmie's lookin'?" she went on. "I suppose he's
+told you about his new book. Comin' out in March, don't you know. I feel
+awfully up in French poitry since he read it out to me. Don't light
+another pipe now, dear. The girl's gettin' the supper at once. I think
+you're lookin' very well, Johnnie, I do indeed. Don't you think he's
+lookin' very well, Jimmie? Has Bill Bailey been out for his run?" This
+was Beatrice's affectionate diminutive for Henri Beyle, the dog.
+
+"No, I won't bother about my hands," John put in hastily to forestall
+Beatrice's next suggestion.
+
+"We had such a dull sermon," she sighed.
+
+Her husband grunted a request to spare them the details.
+
+"Well, don't you know, it's a dull time for sermons now before
+Christmas. But it didn't matter, as what I really wanted was a puff of
+fresh air. Yes, I'd begun to think you'd forgotten all about us," she
+rambled on, turning archly to John. "I know we must be dull company, but
+all work and no play, don't you know ... yours is all plays and no work.
+Jimmie, I made a joke," she laughed, twitching her husband's sleeve to
+secure his attention. "Did you hear?"
+
+"Yes, I heard," he growled.
+
+"I thought it was rather good, didn't you, Johnnie?"
+
+"Very good indeed," he assented, warmly. "Though I do work
+occasionally."
+
+"Oh, of course, you silly thing, I wasn't bein' serious. I told you it
+was a joke. I know you must work a bit. Here comes the girl with supper.
+You'll excuse me, Johnnie, while I go and titivate myself. I sha'n't be
+a minute."
+
+Beatrice retired to the bedroom whence she could be heard humming over
+her beautification.
+
+"You're not meditating marriage, are you?" James mocked.
+
+The bachelor shook his head.
+
+"At the same time," he protested, stoutly, "I don't think you're
+entitled to sneer at Beatrice. Considering--" he was about to say
+"everything," but feeling that this would include his brother too
+pointedly he substituted, "the weather, she's wonderfully cheerful. And
+you know I've always insisted that these rooms are cramped."
+
+"Yes, well, when a popular success oils my palm, John, we'll move next
+door to you in Church Row."
+
+John wished that James would not always harp upon their respective
+fortunes: it made him feel uncomfortable, especially when he was
+sitting down to cold mutton. Besides, it was unfair; had he not once
+advised James to abandon criticism and take up--he had been going to
+suggest "anything except literature," but he had noticed James' angry
+dismay and had substituted "creative work." What had been the result? An
+outburst of contemptuous abuse, a violent renunciation of anything that
+approximated to his own work. If James despised his romantic plays, why
+could he not be consistent and despise equally the wealth they brought
+him? He honored his brother's intellectual sincerity, why could not his
+brother do as much for his?
+
+"What beats me," James had once exclaimed, "is how a man like you who
+professes to admire--no, I believe you're honest--who does admire
+Stendhal, Turgenev, Flaubert and Merimée, who recognizes the perfection
+of _Manon Lescaut_ and _Adolphe_, who in a word has taste, can bring
+himself to eructate the _Fall of Babylon_."
+
+"It's all a matter of knowing one's own limitations," John had replied.
+"I tried to write realistic novels. But my temperament is not
+realistic."
+
+"No, if it were," James had murmured, "you wouldn't stand my affectation
+of superiority."
+
+It was this way James had of once in a very long while putting himself
+in the wrong that used always to heal John's wounded generosity. But
+these occasional lapses--as he supposed his cynical brother would call
+them--were becoming less and less frequent, and John had no longer much
+excuse for clinging to his romantic reverence for the unlucky head of
+his family.
+
+During the first half of supper Beatrice delivered a kind of lecture on
+housekeeping in London on two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a
+week, including bones for the dog; by the time that the stewed figs were
+put on the table this monologue had reduced both brothers to such a
+state of gloom by striking at James' experience and John's imagination,
+that the sourness of the cream came as a natural corollary; anything but
+sour cream would have seemed an obtrusive reminder of housekeeping on
+more than two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week, including
+bones for the dog. John was convinced by his sister-in-law's mood that
+she would enjoy a short rest from speculating upon the comparative
+versatility of mutton and beef, and by James' reception of her remarks
+that he would appreciate her housekeeping all the more after being
+compelled to regard for a while the long procession of chops that his
+landlady would inevitably marshal for him while his wife was away. The
+moment seemed propitious to the unfolding of his plan.
+
+"I want to ask you both a favor," he began. "No, no, Beatrice, I
+disagree with you. I don't think the cream is really sour. I find it
+delicious, but I daren't ever eat more than a few figs. The cream,
+however, is particularly delicious. In fact I was on the point of
+inquiring the name of your dairy."
+
+"If we have cream on Sundays," Beatrice explained, "Jimmie has to put up
+with custard-powder on Wednesdays. But if we don't have cream on
+Sundays, I can spare enough eggs on Wednesdays for real custard."
+
+"That's very ingenious of you," John declared. "But you didn't hear what
+I was saying when I broke off in defense of the cream, _which_ is
+delicious. I said that I wanted to ask a favor of you both."
+
+"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," James chuckled. "Or were you going
+to suggest to Beatrice that next time you have supper with us she should
+experiment not only with fresh cream, but also with some rare dish like
+nightingales' tongues--or even veal, for instance?"
+
+"Now, Jimmie, you're always puttin' hits in at me about veal; but if I
+get veal, it throws me out for the whole week."
+
+John made another effort to wrench the conversation free from the topic
+of food:
+
+"No, no, James. I was going to ask you to let Beatrice come and give me
+a hand with our nephew and our niece." He slightly accentuated the
+pronoun of plural possession. "Of course, that is to say, if Beatrice
+would be so kind."
+
+"What do you want her to do? Beat them?" James asked.
+
+"No, no, no, James. I'm not joking. As I explained to you, I've got
+these two children--er--staying with me. It appears that George is too
+overstrained, too ill, that is, to manage them during the few weeks that
+Eleanor will be away on tour, and I thought that if Beatrice could be my
+guest for a week or two until the governess has re-created her nervous
+system, which I understand will take about a month, I should feel a
+great weight off my mind. A bachelor household, you know, is not
+primarily constructed to withstand an invasion by children. You'd find
+them very difficult here, James, if you hadn't got Beatrice."
+
+"Oh, Johnnie, I should love it," his sister-in-law cried. "That is if
+Jimmie could spare me."
+
+"Of course, I could. You'd better take her back with you to-night."
+
+"No, really?" said John. "Why that would be splendid. I'm immensely
+obliged to you both."
+
+"He's quite anxious to get rid of me," Beatrice laughed, happily. "I
+sha'n't be long packin'. Fancy lookin' after Eleanor's two youngsters.
+I've often thought I _would_ rather like to see if I couldn't bring up
+children."
+
+"Now's your chance," John jovially offered.
+
+"Jimmie didn't ever care much for youngsters," Beatrice explained.
+
+Her husband laughed bitterly.
+
+"Quite enough people hate me, as it is," he sneered, "without
+deliberately creating a child of my own to add to the number."
+
+"Oh, no, of course, dear, I know we're better off as we are," Beatrice
+said with a soothing pat for her husband's round shoulders. "Only the
+idea comes into my head now and again that I'd just like to see if I
+couldn't manage them, that's all, dear. I'm not complaining."
+
+"I don't want to hurry you away," James muttered. "But I've got some
+work to do."
+
+"We'd better send the servant out to look for a taxi at once," John
+suggested. "It's Sunday night, you know."
+
+Twenty minutes later, Beatrice looking quite fashionable now in her
+excitement--so many years had it obliterated--was seated in the taxi;
+John was half-way along the garden path on his way to join her, when his
+brother called him back.
+
+"Oh, by the way, Johnnie," he said in gruff embarrassment, "I've got an
+article on Alfred de Vigny coming out soon in _The Nineteenth Century_.
+It can't bring me in less than fifteen guineas, but it might not be
+published for another three months. I can show you the editor's letter,
+if you like. I wonder if you could advance me ten guineas? I'm a little
+bothered just at the moment. There was a vet's bill for the dog and...."
+
+"Of course, of course, my dear fellow. I'll send you a check to-night.
+Thanks very much for--er--releasing Beatrice, I mean--helping me out of
+a difficulty with Beatrice. Very good of you. Good-night. I'll send the
+check at once."
+
+"Don't cross it," said James.
+
+On the way back to Hampstead in the dank murkiness of the cab, Beatrice
+became confidential.
+
+"Jimmie always hated me to pass remarks about havin' children, don't you
+know, but it's my belief that he feels it as much as anyone. Look at the
+fuss he makes of poor old Bill Bailey. And bein' the eldest son and
+havin' the pictures of his grandfather and grandmother, I'm sure there
+are times when he'd give a lot to explain to a youngster of his own who
+they really were. It isn't so interestin' to explain to me, don't you
+know, because they aren't my relations, except, of course, by marriage.
+I always feel myself that Jimmie for an eldest son has been very
+unlucky. Well, there's you, for instance. I don't mean to say he's
+jealous, because he's not; but still I dare say he sometimes thinks that
+he ought to be where you are, though, of course, that doesn't mean to
+say that he'd like you to be where he is. But a person can't help
+feelin' that there's no reason why you shouldn't both have been where
+you are. The trouble with Jimmie was that he wasted a lot of time when
+he was young, and sometimes, though I wouldn't say this to anybody but
+you, sometimes I do wonder if he doesn't think he married too much in a
+hurry. Then there were his dragon-flies. There they all are falling to
+pieces from want of interest. I don't suppose anybody in England has
+taken so much trouble as Jimmie over dragon-flies, but what is a
+dragon-fly? They'll never be popular with the general public, because
+though they don't sting, people think they do. And then that fellow--who
+is it--it begins with an M--oh dear, my memory is something chronic!
+Well, anyway, he wrote a book about bees, and it's tremendously popular.
+Why? Because a bee is well-known. Certainly they sting too, but then
+they have honey and people keep them. If people kept dragon-flies, it
+would be different. No, my opinion is that for an eldest son Jimmie has
+been very unlucky."
+
+The next day Bertram disappeared to school at an hour of the morning
+which John remembered did exist in his youth, but which he had for long
+regarded as a portion of the great backward and abysm of time. Beatrice
+tactfully removed his niece immediately after breakfast, not the auroral
+breakfast of Bertram, but the comfortable meal of ten o'clock; and
+except for a rehearsal of the _bolero_ in the room over the library John
+was able to put in a morning of undisturbed diligence. Beatrice took
+Viola for a walk in the afternoon, and when Bertram arrived back from
+school about six o'clock she nearly spoilt her own dinner by the
+assistance she gave him with his tea. John had a couple of quiet hours
+with _Joan of Arc_ before dinner, when he was only once interrupted by
+Beatrice's coming as her nephew's ambassador to ask what was the past
+participle of some Latin verb, which cost him five minutes' search for a
+dictionary. After dinner John played two sets of piquet with his
+sister-in-law and having won both began to feel that there was a good
+deal to be said for a woman's presence in the house.
+
+But about eleven o'clock on the morning of the next day James arrived,
+and not only James but Beyle the bulldog, who had, if one might judge by
+his behavior, as profound a contempt as his master for John's library,
+and a much more unpleasant way of showing it.
+
+"I wish you'd leave your dog in the hall," John protested. "Look at him
+now; he's upset the paper-basket. Get down off that chair! I say, do
+look at him!"
+
+Beyle was coursing round the room, steering himself with the kinked blob
+that served him for a tail.
+
+"He likes the soft carpet," his master explained. "He thinks it's
+grass."
+
+"What an idiotic dog," John scoffed. "And I suppose he thinks my
+Aubusson is an herbaceous border. Drop it, you brute, will you. I say,
+do put him downstairs. He's going to worry it in a minute, and all agree
+that bulldogs can't be induced to let go of anything they've once fairly
+gripped. Lie down, will you!"
+
+James roared with laughter at his brother's disgust, but finally he
+turned the dog out of the room, and John heard what he fancied was a
+panic-stricken descent of the stairs by Maud or....
+
+"I say, I hope he isn't chasing Mrs. Worfolk up and down the house," he
+ejaculated as he hurried out on the landing. What ever Beyle had been
+doing, he was at rest now and smiling up at John from the front-door
+mat. "I hope it wasn't Mrs. Worfolk," he said, coming back. "She's in a
+very delicate state just at present."
+
+"What?" James shouted, incredulously.
+
+"Oh, not in that way, my dear fellow, not in that way. But she's not
+used to having so many visitors in the house."
+
+"I'm going to take one of them away with me, if that'll be any
+consolation to her," James announced.
+
+"Not Beatrice?" his brother stammered.
+
+James nodded grimly.
+
+"It's all very fine for you with a mob of servants to look after you:
+but I can't spare Beatrice any more easily than you could spare Mrs.
+Worfolk. I've been confoundedly uncomfortable for nearly two days, and
+my wife must come back."
+
+"Oh, but look here," John protested. "She's been managing the children
+magnificently. I've hardly known they were in the house. You can't take
+Beatrice away."
+
+"Sorry, Johnnie, but my existence is not so richly endowed with comforts
+as yours. You'd better get a wife for yourself. You can afford one."
+
+"But can't we arrive at a compromise?" John pleaded. "Why don't you come
+and camp out with me, too?"
+
+"Camp out, you hypocrite!" the critic jeered. "No, no, you can't bribe
+me with your luxuries. Do you think that I could work with two children
+careering all over the place? I dare say they don't disturb your plays.
+I dare say you can't hear them above the clash of swords and the rolling
+of thunder, but for critical work I want absolute quiet. Sorry, but I'm
+afraid I must carry off Beatrice."
+
+"Well, of course, if you must...." John murmured, despondently. And it
+was very little consolation to think, while Viola practised the
+_fandango_ in the library preparatory to dislocating the household by
+removing Maud from her work to escort her to the dancing-class, that
+Beatrice herself would have liked to stay.
+
+"However," John sternly resolved, "the next time that James tries to
+scoff at married life I shall tell him pretty plainly what I think of
+his affectation."
+
+He decided ultimately to keep the children at Church Row for a week, to
+give them some kind of treat on Saturday, and on Saturday evening,
+before dinner, to take them back to their father and insist upon his
+being responsible for them. If by chance George proved to be really ill,
+which he did not suppose for a moment that he would, he should take
+matters firmly into his hands and export the children to Ambles until
+their mother came home: Viola could practise every known variety of
+Spanish dance over Laurence's head, or even in Laurence's room; and as
+for Bertram he could corrupt Harold to his heart's content.
+
+On the whole, the week passed off well. Although Viola had fallen like
+Lucifer from being an angel in Maud's mind, she won back her esteem by
+behaving like a human little girl when they went to the dancing-class
+together and did not try to assume diabolic attributes in exchange for
+the angelic position she had forfeited. John was allowed to gather that
+Viola's chief claim to Maud's forgiveness was founded upon her
+encouragement of the advances made to her escort by a handsome young
+sergeant of the Line whom they had encountered in the tube.
+
+"Miss Viola behaved herself like a little lady," Maud had informed John
+when they came home.
+
+"You enjoyed taking her?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, sir, it's a pleasure to go about with anyone so lady-like.
+Several very nice people turned round to admire her."
+
+"Did they, Maud, did they?"
+
+Later, when Viola's account of the afternoon reached him he wondered if
+the sergeant was one of those nice people.
+
+Mrs. Worfolk, too, was reconciled to Bertram by the profound respect he
+accorded to her tales and by his appreciation of an album of family
+photographs she brought out for him from the bottom of her trunk.
+
+"The boy can be as quiet as a mouse," she assured John, "as long as he
+isn't encouraged to make a hullabaloo."
+
+"You think I encourage him, Mrs. Worfolk?"
+
+"Well, sir, it's not my place to offer an opinion about managing
+children, but giving them a calf's head is as good as telling them to
+misbehave theirselves. It's asking for trouble. There he is now, doing
+what he calls his home work with a little plate of toffee I made for
+him--as good as gold. But what I do ask is where's the use in filling up
+a child's head with Latin and Greece. Teach a child to be a heathen
+goddess and a heathen goddess he'll be. Teach him the story of the
+Infant Samuel and he'll behave like the Infant Samuel, though I must say
+that one child who I told about God's voice, in the family to which I
+was nursemaid, had a regular fit and woke up screaming in the middle of
+the night that he could hear God routing about for him under the bed.
+But then he was a child with very old-fashioned notions and took the
+whole story for gospel, and his mother said after that no one wasn't to
+read him nothing except stories about animals."
+
+"What happened to him when he grew up?" John asked.
+
+"Well, sir, I lost sight of the whole family, but I dare say he became a
+clergyman, for he never lost this habit of thinking God was dodging him
+all the time. It was God here, and God there, till I fairly got the
+jumps myself and might have taken up with the Wesleans if I hadn't gone
+as third housemaid to a family where the master kept race-horses which
+gave me something else to think about, and I never had anything more to
+do with children until my poor sister's Herbert."
+
+"That must have been a great change, Mrs. Worfolk."
+
+"Yes, sir, so it was; but life's only one long changing about, though
+they do say there's nothing new under the sun. But good gracious me,
+fellows who make up mottoes always exaggerate a bit: they've got to, so
+as to keep up with one another."
+
+When Friday evening arrived John nearly emphasized Mrs. Worfolk's
+agreement with Heraclitus by keeping the children at Church Row. But by
+the last post there came a letter from Janet Bond to beg an earlier
+production of _Joan of Arc_ if it was by any means possible, and John
+looking at the infinitesimal amount he had written during the week
+resolved that he must stick to his intention of taking the children back
+to their father on the following day.
+
+"What would you like to do to-morrow?" he inquired. "I happen to have a
+free afternoon, and--er--I'm afraid your father wants you back in Earl's
+Court, so it will be your last opportunity of enjoying yourselves for
+some time--I mean of our enjoying ourselves for some time, in fact,
+until we all meet at Ambles for Christmas."
+
+"Oh, I say," Bertram protested. "Have we got to go back to rotten old
+Earl's Court? What a sell!"
+
+"I thought we were going to live here always," Viola exclaimed.
+
+"But don't you want to go back to your father?" John demanded in what he
+hoped was a voice brimming with reproaches for their lack of filial
+piety, but which he could not help feeling was bubbling over with
+something very near elation.
+
+"Oh, no," both children affirmed, "we like being with you much best."
+
+John's gratification was suddenly darkened by the suspicion that perhaps
+Eleanor had told them to flatter him like this; he turned swiftly aside
+to hide the chagrin that such a thought gave him, and when he spoke
+again it was almost roughly, because in addition to being suspicious of
+their sincerity he was vexed with himself for displaying a spirit of
+competitive affection. It occurred to him that it was jealousy rather
+than love which made the world go round--a dangerous reflection for a
+romantic playwright.
+
+"I'm afraid it can't be helped," he said. "To-morrow is definitely our
+last day. So choose your own method of celebrating it without dressing
+up."
+
+"Oh, we only dress up on Sundays," Viola said, loftily.
+
+"I vote we go to the Zoo," Bertram opinionated after a weighty pause.
+
+Had his nephew Harold suggested a visit to the Zoo, John would have
+shunned the proposal with horror; but with Bertram and Viola the
+prospect of such an expedition was positively enticing.
+
+"I must beware of favoritism," John warned himself. "Yes, and I must
+beware of being blarneyed." Then aloud he added:
+
+"Very well, we will visit the Zoo immediately after lunch to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, but we must go in the morning," Bertram cried. "There won't be
+nearly time to see everything in the afternoon."
+
+"What about our food?"
+
+"We can eat there."
+
+"But, my dear boy," John said. "You are confusing us with the lions. I
+much doubt if a human being _can_ eat at the Zoo, unless he has a
+passion for peanuts and stale buns, which I have not."
+
+"I swear you can," Bertram maintained. "Anyhow, I know you can get ices
+there in the summer."
+
+"We'll risk it," John declared, adventurously; and the children echoed
+his enthusiasm with joy.
+
+"We must see the toucans this time," Bertram announced in a grave voice,
+"and last time we missed the zebu."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought that possible," John demurred, "with all those
+stripes."
+
+"Not the zebra," Bertram severely corrected him. "The zebu."
+
+"Never heard of the beast," John said.
+
+"I say, V," Bertram exclaimed, incredulously. "He's never heard of the
+zebu."
+
+Viola was too much shocked by her uncle's ignorance to do more than
+smile sadly.
+
+"We'll show it you to-morrow," Bertram promised.
+
+"Thanks very much. I shall enjoy meeting the zebu," John admitted,
+humbly. "And any other friends of yours in the animal world whose names
+begin with Z."
+
+"And we also missed the ichneumon," Viola reminded her brother.
+
+"Your last visit seems to have been full of broken appointments. It's
+just as well you're going again to-morrow. You'll be able to explain
+that it wasn't your fault."
+
+"No, it wasn't," said Bertram, bitterly. "It was Miss Coldwell's."
+
+"Yes," said Viola. "She simply tore past everything. And when Bertram
+gave the chimpanzee a brown marble instead of a nut and he nearly broke
+one of his teeth, she said it was cruel."
+
+"Yes, fancy thinking _that_ was cruel," Bertram scoffed. "He was in an
+awful wax, though; he bunged it back at me like anything. But I swopped
+the marble on Monday with Higginbotham Minor for two green commonys: at
+least I said it was the marble; only really I dropped it while we were
+waiting for the bus."
+
+"You're a kind of juvenile Lord Elgin," John declared.
+
+"What did he do?"
+
+"He did the Greek nation over marbles, just as you did the chimpanzee
+and Higginbotham Minor."
+
+Next morning John made arrangements to send the children's luggage to
+Earl's Court so that he should be able when the Zoological Gardens were
+closed to take them directly home and not be tempted to swerve from his
+determination: then under the nearest approach to a blue sky that London
+can produce in November they set out for Regent's Park.
+
+John with his nephew and niece for guides spent a pleasant if exhausting
+day. Remembering the criticism leveled against Miss Coldwell's rapidity
+of transit, he loitered earnestly by every cage, although he had really
+had no previous conception of how many animals the Zoo included and
+began to dread a long list of uninvited occupants at the day's end. He
+had a charming triumph in the discovery of two more animals beginning
+with Z, to wit, the zibet and the zoril, which was the sweeter for the
+fact that they were both new beasts to the children. There was an
+argument with the keeper of the snake's house, because Bertram nearly
+blinded a lethargic alligator with his sister's umbrella, and another
+with the keeper of the giraffes, because in despite of an earnest plea
+not to feed them, Viola succeeded in tempting one to sniff moistly a
+piece of raspberry noyau. If some animals were inevitably missed, there
+were several welcome surprises such as seeing much more of the
+hippopotamus than the tips of his nostrils floating like two bits of
+mud on the surface of the water; others included the alleged visibility
+of a beaver's tail, a conjugal scene between the polar-bears, a truly
+demoniac exhibition of rage by the Tasmanian-devil, some wonderful
+gymnastics by a baby snow-leopard, a successful attempt to touch a
+kangaroo's nose, an indisputable wriggle of vitality from the anaconda,
+and the sudden scratching of its ear by a somnolent fruit-eating bat.
+
+About ten minutes before the Gardens closed John, who was tired out and
+had somehow got his cigar-case full of peanuts, declared it was time to
+go home.
+
+"Oh, but we must just have a squint at the Small Cats' House," Bertram
+cried, and Viola clasped her hands in apprehension at the bare idea of
+not doing so.
+
+"All right," John agreed. "I'll wait for you three minutes, and then I'm
+going slowly along towards the exit."
+
+The three minutes passed, and since the children still lingered he
+walked on as he had promised. When they did not catch him up as soon as
+he expected, he waited for a while and then with an exclamation of
+annoyance turned back.
+
+"What on earth can they find to enjoy in this awful smell?" he wondered,
+when he entered the Small Cats' House to drag them out. The house was
+empty except for a bored keeper thinking of his tea.
+
+"Have you seen two children?" John asked, anxiously.
+
+"No, sir, this is the Small Cats' House," replied the keeper.
+
+"Children," repeated John, irritably.
+
+"No, sir. Or, yes, I believe there _was_ a little boy and a little girl
+in here, but they've been gone some minutes now. It's closing time," he
+added, significantly.
+
+John rushed miserably along deserted paths through the dusk, looking
+everywhere for Bertram and Viola without success.
+
+"All out," was being shouted from every direction.
+
+"Two children," he panted to a keeper by the exit.
+
+"All out"
+
+"But two children are lost in the Gardens."
+
+"Closing time, sir. They must have gone out by another gate."
+
+He herded John through the turnstile into the street as he would have
+herded a recalcitrant gnu into its inclosure.
+
+"But this is terrible," John lamented. "This is appalling. I've lost
+George's children."
+
+He hailed a taxi, drove to the nearest police-station, left their
+descriptions, and directed the driver to Halma House, Earl's Court
+Square.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+John came to the conclusion while he was driving to Earl's Court that
+the distinctive anxiety in losing two children was to be sought for in
+an acute consciousness of their mobility. He had often enough lost such
+articles as sovereigns, and matchboxes, and income-tax demands; but in
+the disappearance of these he had always been consoled by the knowledge
+that they were stationary in some place or another at any given moment,
+and that somebody or another must find them at some time or another,
+with profit or disappointment to himself. But Bertram and Viola might be
+anywhere; if at this moment they were somewhere, before the taxi had
+turned the next corner they might be somewhere else. The only kind of
+loss comparable to this was the loss of a train, in which case also the
+victim was dismayed by the thought of its mobility. Moreover, was it
+logically possible to find two children, any more than it was possible
+to find a lost train? They could be caught like a train by somebody
+else; but except among gipsies, who were practically extinct, the sport
+of catching children was nowadays unknown. The classic instance of two
+lost children--and by the way an uncle came into that--was _The Babes in
+the Wood_, in which story they were neither caught nor found, though
+certainly their bodies were found owing to the eccentric behavior of
+some birds in the vicinity. It would be distressing to read in the paper
+to-morrow of two children's having been found under a drift of
+paper-bags in the bear-pit at the Zoo, hugged to death not by each
+other, but by the bears. Or they might have hidden themselves in the
+Reptile House--Bertram had displayed a dreadful curiosity about the
+effect of standing upon one of the alligators--and their fate might
+remain for ever a matter of conjecture. Yet even supposing that they
+were not at this moment regarding with amazed absorption--absorption was
+too ominous a word--with amazed interest the nocturnal gambols of the
+great cats, were they on that account to be considered safe? If it was a
+question of being crunched up, it made little difference whether one was
+crunched up by the wheels of an omnibus or by the jaws of a panther. To
+be sure, Bertram was accustomed to go to school by tube every morning,
+and obviously he must know by this time how to ask the way to any given
+spot....
+
+The driver of the taxi was taking no risks with the traffic, and John's
+tightly strung nerves were relaxed; he began to perceive that he was
+agitating himself foolishly. The wide smoothness of Cromwell Road was
+all that was needed to persuade him that the shock had deprived him for
+a short time of common sense. How absurd he had been! Of course the
+children would be all right; but he should take good care to administer
+no less sharp a shock to George than he had experienced himself. He did
+not approve of George's attitude, and if the temporary loss of Bertram
+and Viola could rouse him to a sense of his paternal responsibilities,
+this disturbing climax of a jolly day would not have been led up to in
+vain. No, George's moral, mental, and physical laziness must no longer
+be encouraged.
+
+"I shall make the whole business out to be as bad as possible," he
+decided. "Though, now that I have had time to think the situation out, I
+realize that there is really not the least likelihood of anything's
+serious having happened to them."
+
+For James even when he was most exasperating John always felt an
+involuntary deference that stood quite apart from the sentimental regard
+which he always tried to owe him as head of the family; for his second
+brother George he had nothing but contempt. James might be wrongheaded;
+but George was fatheaded. James kept something of their father's fallen
+day about him; George was a kind of gross caricature of his own self.
+Every feature in this brother's face reproduced the corresponding
+feature in his own with such compelling suggestiveness of a potentially
+similar degeneration that John could never escape from the reproach of
+George's insistent kinship. Many times he had been seized by a strong
+impulse to cut George ruthlessly out of his life; but as soon as he
+perceived that gibbous development of his own aquiline nose, that
+reduplication of his own rounded chin, that bull-like thickening of his
+own sanguine neck, and that saurian accentuation of the eloquent pouches
+beneath his own eyes, John surrendered to the claims of fraternity and
+lent George as much as he required at the moment. If Daniel Curtis's
+desire to marry Hilda had always puzzled him, Eleanor's willingness to
+be tied for life to George was even more incomprehensible. Still, it was
+lucky that she had been taken with such a whim, because she was all that
+stood between George and absolute dependence upon his family, in other
+words upon his younger brother. Whatever Eleanor's faults, however
+aggressive her personality, John recognized that she was a hard worker
+and that the incubus of a husband like George (to whom she seemed
+curiously and inexplicably devoted) entitled her to a great deal of
+indulgence.
+
+It was strange to look back now to the time when he and George were both
+in the city, himself in dog-biscuits and George in wool, and to remember
+that except their father everybody in the family had foretold a
+prosperous commercial career for George. Beyond his skill at Solo Whist
+and a combination of luck with judgment in betting through July and
+August on weight for age selling-plates and avoiding the big autumn
+handicaps, John could not recall that George had ever shown a glimmer of
+financial intelligence. Once or twice when he had visited his brother in
+the wool-warehouse he had watched an interview between George and a bale
+of wool, and he had often chuckled at the reflection that the
+protagonists were well matched--there had always been something woolly
+about George in mind and body; and when one day he rolled stolidly forth
+from the warehouse for the last time in order to enter into partnership
+with a deluded friend to act as the British agents for a society of
+colonial housewives, John felt that the deluded friend would have been
+equally well served by a bale of wool. When George and his deluded
+friend had tried the patience of the colonial housewives for a year by
+never once succeeding in procuring for them what they required, the
+partnership was dissolved, and George processed from undertaking to
+undertaking till he became the business manager of a theatrical touring
+company. Although as a business manager he reached the nadir of his
+incompetence he emerged from the post with Eleanor for wife, which
+perhaps gave rise to a family legend that George had never been so
+successful as when he was a business manager. This legend he never
+dispelled by a second exhibition of himself in the part, although he
+often spoke regretfully of the long Sundays in the train, playing nap
+for penny points. After he married Eleanor he was commission-agent for a
+variety of gentlemanly commodities like whisky and cigars; but he drank
+and smoked much more than he sold, and when bridge was introduced and
+popularized, having decided that it was the best investment for his
+share of Eleanor's salary, he abandoned everything else. Moreover,
+John's increasing prosperity gave his play a fine stability and
+confidence; he used to feel that his wife's current account merely
+lapped the base of a solid cliff of capital. A bad week at Bridge came
+to be known as another financial disappointment; but he used to say
+cheerfully when he signed the I.O.U. that one must not expect everybody
+in the family to be always lucky, and that it was dear old John's turn
+this week. John himself sometimes became quite giddy in watching the
+swift revolutions of the wheel of fortune as spun by George. The effect
+of sitting up late at cards usually made George wake with a headache,
+which he called "feeling overworked"; he was at his best in the dusky
+hours before dinner, in fact just at the time when John was on his way
+to explode in his ear the news of the children's disappearance; it was
+then that among the attenuated spinsters of Halma House his grossness
+seemed nothing more than a ruddy well-being and that his utter
+indifference to any kind of responsibility acquired the characteristics
+of a ripe geniality.
+
+Halma House, Earl's Court Square, was a very large boarding-house, so
+large that Miss Moxley, the most attenuated spinster who lived in it,
+once declared that it was more like a residential hotel than a
+boarding-house, a theory that was eagerly supported by all the other
+attenuated spinsters who clung to its overstuffed furniture or like
+dusty cobwebs floated about its garish saloons. Halma House was indeed
+two houses squeezed or knocked (or whatever other uncomfortable verb can
+be found to express the welding) into one. Above the front-door of
+number 198 were the large gilt letters that composed HALMA: above the
+front-door of what was once number 200 the equally large gilt letters
+that made up HOUSE. The division between the front-door steps had been
+removed so as to give an almost Medician grandeur to the entrance, at
+the top of which beneath a folded awning a curved garden-seat against
+the disused door of number 20 suggested that it was the resort for the
+intimate gayety of the boarders at the close of a fine summer day; as
+Miss Moxley used to vow, it was really quite an oasis, with the
+plane-trees of the square for contemplation not to mention the noising
+of the sparrows and the distant tinkling of milk-cans, quite an oasis in
+dingy old London. But then Miss Moxley had the early symptoms of
+exophthalmus, a malady that often accompanies the poetic temperament;
+Miss Moxley, fluttering out for five minutes' fresh air before dinner on
+a gentle eve in early June, was capable of idealizing to the semblance
+of a careless pastoral group the spectacle of a half-pay major, a portly
+widow or two up from the country, and George Touchwood, all brushing the
+smuts from their noses while they gossiped together on that seat: this
+was by no means too much for her exophthalmic vision.
+
+John's arrival at Halma House in raw November was not greeted by such
+evidence of communal felicity; on the contrary, when he walked up the
+steps, the garden-seat looked most defiantly uninviting; nor did the
+entrance hall with its writhing gilt furniture symbolize anything more
+romantic than the competitive pretentiousness of life in a
+boarding-house that was almost a residential hotel. A blond waiter whose
+hair would have been dishevelled but for the uses of perspiration
+informed him that Mr. Tooshvood was in his sitting-room, and led him to
+a door at the end of the hall opposite another door that gave descent to
+the dungeons of supply, the inmates of which seemed to spend their time
+in throwing dishes at one another.
+
+The possession of this sitting-room was the outstanding advantage that
+George always claimed for Halma House, whenever it was suggested that he
+should change his quarters: Adam discoursing to his youngest descendant
+upon the glories of Eden could hardly have outbragged George on the
+subject of that sitting-room. John on the other hand disliked it and
+took pleasure in pointing out the impossibility of knowing whether it
+was a conservatory half transformed into a box-room or a box-room nearly
+turned into a conservatory. He used to call it George's amphibious
+apartment, with justice indeed, for Bertram and Viola with true
+appreciation had once selected it as the appropriate setting in which to
+reproduce Jules Verne's _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_. The
+wallpaper of dark blue flock was smeared with the glistening pattern as
+of seaweed upon rocks at low tide; the window was of ground-glass tinted
+to the hue of water in a swimming-bath on Saturday afternoon, and was
+surrounded by an elaborate arrangement of cork that masked a number of
+flower pots filled with unexacting plants; while as if the atmosphere
+was not already sufficiently aqueous, a stage of disheartened
+aspidistras cast a deep-sea twilight upon the recesses of the room, in
+the middle of which was a jagged table of particolored marble, and upon
+the walls of which were hung cases of stuffed fish. Mrs. Easton, the
+proprietress of Halma House, only lent the room to George as a favor: it
+was not really his own, and while he lay in bed of a morning she used
+to quarrel there with all the servants in turn. Moreover, any of the
+boarders who had bicycles stabled them in this advantageous apartment,
+the fireplace of which smoked. Nevertheless, George liked it and used to
+knit there for an hour after lunch, sitting in an armchair that smelt
+like the cushions of a third-class smoker and looking with his knitting
+needles and opaque eyes like a large lobster preening his antennæ in the
+corner of a tank.
+
+When John visited him now, he was reading an evening paper by the light
+of a rugged mantle of incandescent gas and calculating how much he would
+have won if he had backed the second favorite for every steeplechase of
+the day.
+
+"Hullo, is that you, John?" he inquired with a yawn, and one hand swam
+vaguely in his brother's direction while the other kept its fingers
+spread out upon the second favorites like a stranded starfish.
+
+"Yes, I'm afraid I've got very bad news for you, George."
+
+George's opaque eyes rolled slowly away from the races and fixed his
+brother's in dull interrogation.
+
+"Bertram and Viola are lost," John proclaimed.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," George sighed with relief. "I thought you were
+serious for a minute. Crested Grebe at 4 to 1--yes, my theory that you
+ought to back second favorites works out right for the ninth time in
+succession. I should have been six pounds up to-day, betting with level
+sovereigns. Tut-tut-tut!"
+
+John felt that his announcement had not made quite the splash it ought
+to have made in George's deep and stagnant pool.
+
+"I don't think you heard what I said," he repeated. "Bertram and
+Viola--_your_ children--are definitely lost."
+
+"I don't expect they are really," said George, soothingly. "No, no, not
+really. The trouble is that not one single bookie will take on this
+second-favorite system. Ha-ha--they daren't, the cowards! Don't you
+bother about the kids; no, no, they'll be all right. They're probably
+hanging on behind a van--they often do that when I'm out with them, but
+they always turn up in the end. Yes, I should have made twenty-nine
+pounds this week."
+
+"Look here," said John, severely, "I want you clearly to understand that
+this is not a simple question of losing them for a few minutes or so.
+They have been lost now since the Zoo was closed this afternoon, and I
+am not yet convinced that they are not shut up inside for the night."
+
+"Ah, very likely," said George. "That's just the kind of place they
+might get to."
+
+"The prospect of your children's passing the night in the Zoo leaves you
+unaffected?" John demanded in the tone of an examining counsel.
+
+"Oh, they'll have been cleared out by now," said George. "You really
+mustn't bother yourself about them, old boy."
+
+"You have no qualms, George, at the notion of their wandering for hours
+upon the outskirts of Regent's Park?"
+
+"Now don't you worry, John. I'm not going to worry, and I don't want you
+to worry. Why worry? Depend upon it, you'll find them safe and sound in
+Church Row when you get back. By the way, is your taxi waiting?"
+
+"No, I dismissed it."
+
+"I was afraid it might be piling up the twopences. Though I dare say a
+pyramid of twopences wouldn't bother you, you old plutocrat. Yes, these
+second favorites...."
+
+"Confound the second favorites," John exclaimed. "I want to discuss your
+children."
+
+"You wouldn't, if you were their father. They involve me in far too many
+discussions. You see, you're not used to children. I am."
+
+John's eyes flashed as much as the melancholy illumination permitted;
+this was the cue for which he had been waiting.
+
+"Just so, my dear George. You are used to children: I am not. And that
+is why I have come to tell you that the police have been instructed to
+return them, when found, to _you_ and not to me."
+
+George blinked in a puzzled way.
+
+"To me?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes, to you. To their father. Hasn't their luggage arrived? I had it
+sent back here this morning."
+
+"Ah, yes," George said. "Of course! I was rather late getting up this
+morning. I've been overworking a bit lately, and Karl did mutter
+something about luggage. Didn't it come in a taxi?"
+
+John nodded.
+
+"Yes, I remember now, in a prepaid taxi; but as I couldn't remember that
+I was expecting any luggage, I told Karl to send it back where it came
+from."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you sent their luggage back after I'd taken the
+trouble to...."
+
+"That's all right, old boy. I was feeling too tired to deal with any
+problems this morning. The morning is the only opportunity I get for a
+little peace. It never occurred to me whose luggage it was. It might
+have been a mistake; in fact I thought it was a mistake. But in any case
+it's very lucky I did send it back, because they'll want it to-night."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't keep them with me any longer."
+
+Though irony might be lost on George's cold blood, the plain fact might
+wake him up to the actuality of the situation and so it did.
+
+"Oh, but look here, old boy," he expostulated, "Eleanor won't be home
+for another five weeks. She'll be at Cardiff next week."
+
+"And Bertram and Viola will be at Earl's Court," said John, firmly.
+
+"But the doctor strongly recommended me to rest. I've been very seedy
+while you were in America. Stomachic, old boy. Yes, that's the trouble.
+And then my nerves are not as strong as yours. I've had a lot of worry
+lately."
+
+"I'm sorry," John insisted. "But I've been called away on urgent
+business, and I can't leave the children at Church Row. I'm sorry,
+George, but as soon as they are found, I must hand them over to you."
+
+"I shall send them down to the country," George threatened.
+
+"When they are once more safely in your keeping, you can do what you
+like with them."
+
+"To your place, I mean."
+
+Normally John would have given a ready assent to such a proposal; but
+George's attitude had by now aroused his bitter disapproval, and he was
+determined that Bertram and Viola should be planted upon their father
+without option.
+
+"Ambles is impossible," he said, decidedly. "Besides, Eleanor is anxious
+that Viola shouldn't miss her series of Spanish dances. She attends the
+dancing-class every Tuesday and Friday. No doubt your landlady will lend
+you Karl to escort her."
+
+"Children are very difficult in a boarding-house," George argued.
+"They're apt to disturb the other guests. In fact, there was a little
+trouble only last week over some game--"
+
+"Robinson Crusoe," John put in.
+
+"Ah, they told you?"
+
+"No, no, go on. I'm curious to know exactly what we missed at Church
+Row."
+
+"Well, they have a habit, which Eleanor most imprudently encourages, of
+dressing up on Sundays, and as I've had to make it an understood thing
+that _none_ of _my_ clothes are to be used, they are apt to borrow other
+people's. I must admit that generally people have been very kind about
+lending their clothes; but latterly this dressing up has taken a more
+ambitious form, and on Sunday week--I think it was--"
+
+"Yes, it would have been a Sunday," John agreed.
+
+"On Sunday week they borrowed Miss Moxley's parrot for Robinson Crusoe.
+You remember poor Miss Moxley, John?"
+
+"Yes, she lent you five pounds once," said John, sternly.
+
+"Precisely. Oh yes, she did. Yes, yes, that was why I was so vexed about
+her lending her parrot."
+
+"Why shouldn't she lend her parrot?"
+
+"No reason at all why she shouldn't lend it; but apparently parrots are
+very excitable birds, and this particular one went mad under the strain
+of the children's performance, bit Major Downman's finger, and escaped
+by an upper window. Poor Miss Moxley was extremely upset, and the bird
+has never been seen since. So you see, as I told you, children are apt
+to be rather a nuisance to the other guests."
+
+"None of the guests at Halma House keeps a tame calf?"
+
+George looked frightened.
+
+"Oh no, I don't think so. There's certainly never been the least sign of
+mooing in the garden. Besides, I'm sure Mrs. Easton would object to a
+calf. She even objects to dogs, as I had to tell James the other day
+when he came to see me _very_ early about signing some deed or other.
+But what made you ask about a calf? Do you want one?"
+
+"No, I don't want one: I hate cows and calves. Bertram and Viola,
+however, are likely to want one next week."
+
+"You've been spoiling them, old chap. They'd never dare ask me for a
+calf. Why, it's preposterous. Yes, you've been spoiling them. Ah, well,
+you can afford it; that's one thing."
+
+"Yes, I dare say I have been spoiling them, George; but you'll be able
+to correct that when they're once again in your sole charge."
+
+George looked doubtful.
+
+"I'm very strict with them," he admitted. "I had to be after they lost
+the parrot and burned Mrs. Easton's rug. It was most annoying."
+
+"Yes, luckily I hadn't got any suitable fur rugs," John chuckled. "So
+they actually burnt Mrs. Easton's?"
+
+"Yes, and--er--she was so much upset," George went on, "that
+she's--well--the fact is, they _can't_ come back, John, because she's
+let their room."
+
+"How much do you owe her?" John demanded.
+
+"Oh, very little. I think only from last September. Well, you see,
+Eleanor was out of an engagement all the summer and had a wretched
+salary at the Parthenon while she was understudying--these
+actress-managers are awful harpies--do you know Janet Bond?"
+
+"Yes, I'm writing a tragedy for her now."
+
+"Make her pay, old boy, make her pay. That's my advice. And I know the
+business side of the profession. But to come back to Mrs. Easton--I was
+really very angry with her, but you see, I've got my own room here and
+it's uncommonly difficult to find a private room in a boarding-house, so
+I thought we'd stay on here till Eleanor's tour was over. She intends to
+save three pounds a week, and if I have a little luck over the sticks
+this winter, we shall be quite straight with Mrs. Easton, and then the
+children will be able to come back in the New Year."
+
+"How much do you owe her?" John demanded for the second time.
+
+"Oh, I think it's about twenty pounds--it may be a little more."
+
+John knew how much the little more always was in George's calculations,
+and rang the bell, which fetched his brother out of the armchair almost
+in a bound.
+
+"Old boy, I never ring the bell here," he expostulated. "You see, I
+never consider that my private room is included in the attendance."
+
+George moved nervously in the direction of the door to make his peace
+with whoever should answer the unwonted summons; but John firmly
+interposed himself and explained that he had rung for Mrs. Easton
+herself.
+
+"Rung for Mrs. Easton?" George repeated in terrified amazement. "But she
+may come!"
+
+"I hope she will," replied John, becoming more divinely calm every
+moment in the presence of his brother's agitation.
+
+A tangled head flung itself round the door like one of the minor
+characters in a Punch and Judy show.
+
+"Jew ring?" it asked, hoarsely.
+
+"Please ask Mrs. Easton to come down to Mr. Touchwood's sitting-room,"
+said John, seriously.
+
+The head sniffed and vanished.
+
+"I wish you could realize, old chap, that in a boarding-house far more
+tact is required than anywhere else in the world," George muttered in
+melancholy apprehension. "An embassy isn't in it with a boarding-house.
+For instance, if I hadn't got the most marvelous tact, I should never
+have kept this room. However," he added more cheerfully, "I don't
+suppose for a moment that she'll come--unless of course she thinks that
+the chimney is on fire. Dash it, John, I wish you could understand some
+of the difficulties of my life. That's why I took up knitting. My nerves
+are all to pieces. If I were a rich man I should go for a long
+sea-voyage."
+
+George fell into a silent brooding upon his misfortunes and ill-health
+and frustrated ambitions; John examined the stuffed fish upon the walls,
+which made him think of wet days upon the river and waiting drearily in
+hotel smoking-rooms for the weather to clear up. Then suddenly Mrs.
+Easton filled the room. Positive details of this lady's past were
+lacking, although the gossip of a long line of attenuated spinsters had
+evolved a rich apocrypha. It was generally accepted, however, that Halma
+House was founded partly upon settlements made in her favor long ago by
+a generous stockbroker and partly upon an insurance-policy taken out by
+her late husband Dr. Easton, almost on the vigil of his death, the only
+successful operation he ever performed. The mixed derivation of her
+prosperity was significantly set forth in her personal appearance: she
+either wore widow's black and powdered her face with pink talcum or she
+wore bright satins with plumed hats and let her nose shine: so that
+although she never looked perfectly respectable, on the other hand she
+never looked really fast.
+
+"Good evening, ma'am," John began at once, assuming an air of
+Grandisonian courtesy. "My brother is anxious to settle his account."
+
+The clouds rolled away from Mrs. Easton's brow; the old Eve glimmered
+for a moment in her fierce eye; if he had been alone with her, John
+would have thought that she was about to wink at him.
+
+"I hear my nephew and niece have been taking liberties with your rug,"
+he went on, but feeling that he might have expressed the last sentence
+better, he hurriedly blotted the check and with a bow handed it to the
+proprietress. "No doubt," he added, "you will overlook it this time? I
+am having a new rug sent to you immediately. What--er--skin do you
+prefer? Bear? I mean to say, the rug."
+
+He tried to think of any other animal whose personality survived in
+rugs, but could think of none except a rabbit, and condemning the
+ambiguity of the English language waited in some embarrassment for Mrs.
+Easton to reply. She was by this time so surely convinced of John's
+interest in her that she opened to him with a trilling flutter of
+complacency like a turkey's tail.
+
+"It happened to be a bearskin," she murmured. "But children will be
+children. We oughtn't to forget that we were all children once, Mr.
+Touchwood."
+
+"So no doubt," John nervously continued, "you will be glad to see them
+when they come back to-night. Their room...."
+
+"I shall give orders at once, Mr. Touchwood."
+
+He wished that she would not harp upon the Mr. Touchwood; he seemed to
+detect in it a kind of reproachful formality; but he thanked her and
+hoped nervously she would now leave him to George.
+
+"Oh dear me, why the girl hasn't lit the fire," Mrs. Easton exclaimed,
+evidently searching for a gracious action.
+
+George eying his brother with a glance between admiration and
+disquietude told his landlady that he thought the fire smoked a little.
+
+"I shall have the chimney swept to-morrow," she answered as grandly as
+if she had conferred a dukedom upon John and an earldom upon George.
+
+Then with a special smile that was directed not so much toward the
+successful author as toward the gallant male she tucked away the check
+in her bodice, where it looked as forlorn as a skiff upon the tumultuous
+billows of the Atlantic, and went off to put on her green satin for
+dinner.
+
+"We shall all hope to see you at half-past seven," she paused in the
+doorway to assure John.
+
+"You know, I'll tell you what it is, old chap," said George when they
+were alone again. "_You_ ought to have taken up the commission business
+and _I_ ought to have written plays. But thanks very much for tiding me
+over this difficult time."
+
+"Yes," said John, a little sharply. "Your wife's current account wasn't
+flowing quite strongly enough, was it?"
+
+"Wonderful woman, Mrs. Easton," George declared. "She has a keen eye for
+business."
+
+"And for pleasure too, I should imagine," said John, austerely. "But get
+on your coat, George," he added, "because we must go out and inquire at
+all the police stations in turn for news of Bertram and Viola. We can't
+stop here discussing that woman."
+
+"I tell you the kids will be all right. You mustn't get fussy, John.
+It's absurd to go out now," George protested. "In fact I daren't. I must
+think of my health. Dr. Burnham who's staying here for a congress of
+medical men has given me a lot of advice, and as he has refused to
+charge me a penny for it, the least I can do is to pay attention to what
+he says. Besides, what are we going to do?"
+
+"Visit all the police stations in London."
+
+"What shall we gain by doing that? Have you ever been to a police
+station? They're most uncomfortable places to hang about in before
+dinner."
+
+"Get on your coat," John repeated.
+
+George sighed.
+
+"Well, if you insist, I suppose you have the right to insist; but in my
+opinion it's a waste of time. And if the kids are in a police station, I
+think it would teach them a dashed good lesson to keep them there for
+awhile. You don't want to encourage them to lose themselves every day. I
+wish _you_ had half a dozen kids."
+
+John, however, was inflexible; the sight of his brother sitting in that
+aqueous room and pondering the might-have-beens of the race course had
+kindled in his breast the fire of a reformer; George must be taught
+that he could not bring children into the world without being prepared
+to look after them. He must and should be taught.
+
+"Why, you'd take more trouble," he declared, "if you'd lost a fox
+terrier."
+
+"Of course I should," George agreed. "I should have to."
+
+John reddened with indignation.
+
+"Don't be angry, old chap. I didn't mean that I should think more of a
+fox terrier. But, don't you see, a dog is dependent upon its collar,
+whereas Bertram and Viola can explain where they come from. Is it very
+cold out?"
+
+"You'd better wear your heavy coat."
+
+"That means I shall have to go all the way upstairs," groaned George.
+
+The two brothers walked along the hall, and John longed to prod George
+with a heavy, spiked pole.
+
+"Going out, Touchwood?" inquired an elderly man of military appearance,
+who was practicing golf putts from one cabbage rose to another on the
+Brussels carpet.
+
+"Yes, I'm going out, Major. You know my brother, don't you? You remember
+Major Downman, John?"
+
+George left his brother with the major and toiled listlessly upstairs.
+
+"I think I once saw a play of yours, Mr. Touchwood."
+
+John smiled as mechanically as the major might have returned a salute.
+
+"_The Fall of Nineveh_, wasn't it?"
+
+The author bowed an affirmative: it was hardly worth while
+differentiating between Nineveh and Babylon when he was just going out.
+
+"Yes," the major persisted. "Wasn't there a good deal of talk about the
+scantness of some of the ladies' dresses?"
+
+"There may have been," John said. "We had to save on the dresses what we
+spent on the hanging gardens."
+
+"Quite," agreed the major, wisely. "But I'm not a puritan myself."
+
+John bowed again to show his appreciation of the admission.
+
+"Oh, no. Rather the reverse, in fact. I play golf every Sunday, and if
+it's wet I play bridge."
+
+John wished that George would be quick with his coat.
+
+"But I don't go in much for the theater nowadays."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"No, though I used to when I was a subaltern. By gad, yes! But it was
+better, I think, in my young days. No offense to you, Mr. Touchwood."
+
+"Distance does lend enchantment," John assented.
+
+"Quite, quite. I suppose you don't remember a piece at the old Prince of
+Wales? What was it called? Upon my soul, I've forgotten. It was a
+capital piece, though. I remember there was a scene in which the
+uncle--or it may not have been the uncle--no, I'm wrong. It was at the
+Strand. Or was it? God bless my soul, I don't know which it was. You
+don't remember the piece? It was either at the Prince of Wales or the
+Strand, or, by Jove, was it Toole's?"
+
+Was George never coming? Every moment would bring Major Downman nearer
+to the heart of his reminiscence, and unless he escaped soon he might
+have to submit to a narrative of the whole plot.
+
+"Do you know what I'm doing?" the Major began again. "I'm confusing two
+pieces. That's what I'm doing. But I know an uncle arrived suddenly."
+
+"Yes, uncles are often rather fidgety," John agreed. "Ah, excuse me,
+Major. I see my brother coming downstairs. Good-by, Major, good-by. I
+should like to have a chat with you one of these days about the
+mid-Victorian theater."
+
+"Delighted," the Major said, fervently. "I shall think of that play
+before to-night. Don't you be afraid. Yes, it's on the tip of my tongue.
+On the very tip. But I'm confusing two theaters. I see where I've gone
+wrong."
+
+At that moment there was the sound of a taxi's arrival at Halma House;
+the bell rang; when George opened the door for John and himself to pass
+out, they were met by Mrs. Worfolk holding Viola and Bertram tightly,
+one in each hand.
+
+"I told you they'd turn up," George said, and immediately took off his
+overcoat with a sigh of relief. "Well, you've given us a nice hunt," he
+went on with an indignant scowl at the children. "Come along to my room
+and explain where you've been. Good evening, Mrs. Worfolk."
+
+In their father's sitting-room Bertram and Viola stood up to take their
+trial.
+
+"Yes," opened Mrs. Worfolk, on whom lay the burden of narrating the
+malefactors' behavior. "Yes, I've brought back the infant prodigals, and
+a nice job I've had to persuade them to come quiet. In fact, I never had
+such a job since I took my poor sister's Herbert hollering to the
+hospital with a penny as he'd nearly choked himself with, all through
+him sucking it to get at some sweet stuff which was stuck to the edge.
+He _didn't_ choke, though, because I patted him all down the street the
+same as if I'd been bowling a hoop, and several people looked at me in a
+very inquisitive way. Not that I ever pay attention to how people looks,
+except in church. To begin with, the nerve they've got. Well, I mean to
+say, when any one packs up some luggage and sends it off in a taxi,
+whoever expects to see it come back again almost at once? It came
+bouncing back, I do declare, as if it had been India rubber. 'Well,' as
+I said to Maud, 'It just shows how deep they are, and Mr. Touchwood'll
+have trouble with them before the day's done. You mark my words.' And,
+sure enough, just as I'd made up my mind that you wouldn't be in to tea,
+rat-a-tat-tat on the front door, and up drives my lord and my lady as
+grand as you like in a taxi. Of course, it give me a bit of a turn, not
+seeing you, sir, and I was just going to ask if you'd had an accident or
+something, when my lord starts in to argue with the driver that he'd
+only got to pay half fare for himself and his sister, the same as his
+father does when they travel by train. Oh, yes; he was going to pay the
+man himself. Any one would of thought it was the Juke of Wellington, to
+hear him arguing with that driver. Well, anyway, in the end, of course I
+had to pay the difference out of my housekeeping money, which you'll
+find entered in the book. And then, without so much as a blink, my lord
+starts in to tell how they'd gone into the Small Rat's House--"
+
+"Cats," interrupted Viola, solemnly.
+
+"Well, rats or cats, what does it matter, you naughty girl? It wasn't of
+rats or cats you were thinking, but running away from your poor uncle,
+as you perfeckly well know. Yes, indeed, sir, they went into this small
+house and dodged you like two pickpockets and then went careering out of
+the Zoo in the opposite direction. The first taxi that came along they
+caught hold of and drove back to Church Row. 'But your uncle intended
+for you to go back to your father, Mr. George, in Earl's Court,' I
+remarked very severely. 'We know,' they says to me, laughing like two
+hyenas. 'But we don't want to go back to Earl's Court,' putting in a
+great deal of rudeness about Earl's Court, which, not wanting to get
+them into worse trouble than what they will get into as it is, I won't
+repeat. 'And we won't go back to Earl's Court,' they said, what's more.
+'We _won't_ go back.' Well, sir, when I've had my orders given me, I
+know where I am, and the policeman at the corner being a friend of
+Elsa's, he helped; for, believe me or not, they struggled like two
+convicks with Maud and I. Well, to cut a long story short, here they
+are, and just about fit to be put to bed on the instant."
+
+John could not fancy that Eleanor had contrived such an elaborate
+display of preference for his company, and with every wish to support
+Mrs. Worfolk by an exhibition of avuncular sternness he could only smile
+at his nephew and niece. Indeed, it cost him a great effort not to take
+them back with him at once to Hampstead. He hardened himself, however,
+and tried to look shocked.
+
+"We wanted to stay with you," said Bertram.
+
+"We wanted to stay with you," echoed Viola.
+
+"We didn't _want_ to dodge you in the Small Cats' House. But we had to,"
+said Bertram.
+
+"Yes, we had to," echoed Viola.
+
+"Their luggage _'as_ come back with them," interrupted Mrs. Worfolk,
+grimly.
+
+"Oh, of course, they must stay here," John agreed. "Oh, unquestionably!
+I wasn't thinking of anything else."
+
+He beckoned to Bertram and Viola to follow him out of the room.
+
+"Look here," he whispered to them in the passage, "be good children and
+stay quietly at home. We shall meet at Christmas." He pressed a
+sovereign into each hand.
+
+"Good lummy," Bertram gasped. "I wish I'd had this on the fifth of
+November. I'd have made old Major Downman much more waxy than he was
+when I tied a squib to his coat."
+
+"Did you, Bertram, did you? You oughtn't to have done that. Though I can
+understand the temptation. But don't waste this on fireworks."
+
+"Oh no," said Bertram. "I'm going to buy Miss Moxley a parrot, because
+we lost hers."
+
+"Are you, Bertram?" John exclaimed with some emotion. "That shows a fine
+spirit, my boy. I'm very pleased with you."
+
+"Yes," said Bertram, "because then with what you gave V we'll buy a
+monkey at the same time."
+
+"Good heavens," cried John, turning pale. "A monkey?"
+
+"That will be nice, won't it, Uncle John?" Viola asked, tenderly.
+
+But perhaps it would escape from an upper window like the parrot, John
+thought, before Christmas.
+
+When the children had been sent upstairs and Mrs. Worfolk had gone back
+to Hampstead, John told his brother that he should not stop to dinner
+after all.
+
+"Oh, all right," George said. "But I had something to talk over with
+you. Those confounded children put it clean out of my mind. I had a
+strange letter from Mama this week. It seems that Hugh has got into
+rather a nasty fix. She doesn't say what it is, and I don't know why she
+wrote to me of all people. But she's evidently frightened about Hugh and
+asks me to approach you on his behalf."
+
+"What on earth has he been doing now?" asked John, gloomily.
+
+"I should think it was probably money," said George. "Well, I told you
+I'd had a lot of worry lately, and I _have_ been very worried about this
+news of Hugh. Very worried. I'm afraid it may be serious this time. But
+if I were you, old chap, I should refuse to do anything about it. Why
+should he come to you to get him out of a scrape? You've done enough for
+him, in my opinion. You mustn't let people take advantage of your good
+nature, even if they are relations. I'm sorry my kids have been a bit of
+a nuisance, but, after all, they are still only kids, and Hugh isn't.
+He's old enough to know better. Mama says something about the police,
+but that may only be Hugh's bluff. I shouldn't worry myself if I were
+you. It's no good for us all to worry."
+
+"I shall go and see Hugh at once," John decided. "You're not keeping
+anything from me, George? He's not actually under arrest?"
+
+"Oh, no, you won't have to visit any more police stations to-night,"
+George promised. "Hugh is living with his friend, Aubrey Fenton, at 22
+Carlington Road, West Kensington."
+
+"I shall go there to-night," John declared.
+
+He had almost reached the front door when George called him back.
+
+"I've been trying to work out a riddle," he said, earnestly. "You know
+there's a medicine called Easton's Syrup? Well, I thought ... don't be
+in such a hurry; you'll muddle me up ... and I shall spoil it...."
+
+"Try it on Major Downman," John advised, crossly, slamming the door of
+Halma House behind him. "Fatuous, that's what George is, utterly
+fatuous," he assured himself as he hurried down the steps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+John decided to walk from Earl's Court to West Kensington. Being still
+in complete ignorance of what Hugh had done, he had a presentiment that
+this time it was something really grave, and he was now beginning to
+believe that George knew how grave it was. Perhaps his decision to go on
+foot was not altogether wise, for he was tired out by a convulsive day,
+and he had never experienced before such a fathomless sinking of the
+stomach on the verge of being mixed up in a disagreeable family
+complication, which was prolonged by the opportunity that the walk
+afforded him for dismal meditation. While he hurried with bowed head
+along one ill-lighted road after another a temptation assailed him to
+follow George's advice and abandon Hugh, and not merely Hugh, but all
+the rest of his relations, a temptation that elaborated itself into
+going back to Church Row, packing up, and escaping to Arizona or British
+East Africa or Samoa. In the first place, he had already several times
+vowed never more to have anything to do with his youngest brother;
+secondly, he was justified in resenting strongly the tortuous road by
+which he had been approached on his behalf; thirdly, it might benefit
+Hugh's morals to spend a week or two in fear of the ubiquitous police,
+instead of a few stay-at-home tradesmen; fourthly, if anything serious
+did happen to Hugh, it would serve as a warning to the rest of his
+relations, particularly to George; finally, it was his dinner hour, and
+if he waited to eat his dinner before tackling Hugh, he should
+undoubtedly tackle him afterward in much too generous a frame of mind.
+Yes, it would be wiser to go home at once, have a good dinner, and start
+for Arizona to-morrow morning. The longer he contemplated it, the less
+he liked the way he had been beguiled into visiting Hugh. If the--the
+young bounder--no, really bounder was not too strong a word--if the
+young bounder was in trouble, why could he not have come forward openly
+and courageously to the one relation who could help him? Why had he
+again relied upon his mother's fondness, and why had she, as always,
+chosen the indirect channel by writing to George rather than to himself?
+The fact of the matter was that his mother and George and Hugh possessed
+similar loose conceptions of integrity, and now that it was become a
+question of facing the music they had instinctively joined hands. Yet
+George had advised him to have nothing more to do with Hugh, which
+looked as if his latest game was a bit too strong even for George to
+relish, for John declined to believe that George possessed enough of the
+spirit of competitive sponging to bother about trying to poach in Hugh's
+waters; Hilda or Eleanor might, but George.... George was frightened,
+that was it; obviously he knew more than he had told, and he did not
+want to be exposed ... it would not astonish him to learn that George
+was in the business with Hugh and had invented that letter from Mama to
+invoke his intervention before it was too late to save himself. What
+could it all be about? Curiosity turned the scale against Arizona, and
+John pressed forward to West Kensington.
+
+The houses in Carlington Road looked like an over-crowded row of tall,
+thin men watching a football match on a cold day; each red-faced house
+had a tree in front of it like an umbrella and trim, white steps like
+spats; in a fantastic mood the comparison might be prolonged
+indefinitely, even so far as to say that, however outwardly
+uncomfortable they might appear, like enthusiastic spectators, they were
+probably all aglow within. If John had been asked whether he liked an
+interior of pink lampshades and brass gongs, he would have replied
+emphatically in the negative; but on this chill November night he found
+the inside of number 22 rather pleasant after the street. The maid
+looked doubtful over admitting him, which was not surprising, because
+an odor of hot soup in the hall and the chink of plates behind a closed
+door on the right proclaimed that the family was at dinner.
+
+"Will you wait in the drawing-room, sir?" she inquired. "I'll inform Mr.
+Touchwood that you're here."
+
+John felt a grim satisfaction in thus breaking in upon Hugh's dinner;
+there was nothing so well calculated to disturb even a tranquil
+conscience as an unexpected visit at such an hour; but the effect upon
+guilt would be....
+
+"Just say that a gentleman wishes to speak to him for a minute. No
+name," he replied.
+
+The walk through the dim streets, coupled with speculations upon the
+various crimes that his brother might have committed, had perhaps
+invested John's rosy personality with an unusual portentousness, for the
+maid accepted his instructions fearfully and was so much flustered by
+them that she forgot to turn up the gas in the drawing-room, of which
+John was glad; he assured himself that the heavily draped room in the
+subdued light gave the final touch to the atmosphere of horror which he
+aimed at creating; and he could not resist opening the door to enjoy the
+consternation in the dining-room just beyond.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+A murmur from the maid.
+
+"Well, you'd better finish your soup first. I wouldn't let my soup get
+cold for anybody."
+
+There followed a general buzz from the midst of which Hugh emerged, his
+long, sallow face seeming longer than usual in his anxiety, his long,
+thin neck craning forward like an apprehensive bird's, and his bony
+fingers clutching a napkin with which he dusted his legs nervously.
+
+"Like a flag of truce," John thought, and almost simultaneously felt a
+sharp twinge of resentment at Hugh's daring to sport a dinner jacket
+with as much effrontery as if his life had been as white as that expanse
+of shirt.
+
+"Good Lord," Hugh exclaimed when he recognized his brother. "I thought
+you were a detective, at least. Come in and have some grub, won't you?
+Mrs. Fenton will be awfully glad to see you."
+
+John demurred at the invitation. Judging by what he had been told about
+Mrs. Fenton's attitude toward Hugh, he did not think that Touchwood was
+a welcome name in 22 Carlington Road.
+
+"Aubrey!" Hugh was shouting. "One of my brothers has just blown in."
+
+John felt sure that the rapid feminine voice he could faintly hear had a
+distinct note of expostulation in it; but, however earnest the
+objection, it was at once drowned in the boisterous hospitality of
+Aubrey, who came beaming into the hall--a well set up young man of about
+twenty-five with a fresh complexion, glasses, an opal solitaire in his
+shirt, and a waxy white flower in his buttonhole.
+
+"Do come in," he begged, with an encouraging wave of his napkin. "We've
+only just begun."
+
+Although John felt that by dining in this house he was making himself an
+accessory after the still undivulged fact, he was really so hungry by
+now that he could not bring himself to refuse. He knew that he was
+displaying weakness, but he compounded with his austere self by arguing
+that he was more likely to arrive at the truth if he avoided anything in
+the nature of precipitate action.
+
+Mrs. Fenton did not receive her guest as cordially as her son; in fact,
+she showed plainly that she resented extremely his having been invited
+to dinner. She was a well-preserved woman and reminded John of a pink
+crystallized pear; her frosted transformation glistened like encrusted
+sugar round the stalk, which was represented by a tubular head ornament
+on the apex of the carefully tended pyramid; her greeting was sticky.
+
+"My son's friend has spoken of you," Mrs. Fenton was saying, coldly, in
+reply to John's apologies for intruding upon her like this. He for his
+part was envying her ability to refer to Hugh without admitting his
+individual existence, when somebody kicked him under the table, and,
+looking up, he saw that Hugh was frowning at him in a cautionary
+manner.
+
+"I've already met your brother, the writer," his hostess continued.
+
+"My brother, James?" asked John in amazement. He could not envisage
+James in these surroundings.
+
+"No, I have not had the pleasure of meeting him _yet_. I was referring
+to the dramatist, who has dined with me several times."
+
+"But," John began, when another kick under the table silenced him.
+
+"Pass the salt, will you, George, old boy?" Hugh said loudly.
+
+John's soup was cold, but in the heat of his suppressed indignation he
+did not notice it. So George had been masquerading in this house as
+himself; no wonder he had not encouraged the idea of an interview with
+Hugh. Evidently a dishonest outrage had been perpetrated in his name,
+and though Hugh might kick him under the table, he should soon obtain
+his revenge by having Hugh kicked out of the house. John took as much
+pleasure in his dinner that evening as a sandbag might have taken in
+being stuffed with sand. He felt full when it was over, but it was a
+soulless affair; and when Mrs. Fenton, who had done nothing except look
+down her nose all through the meal, left the table, he turned furiously
+upon Hugh.
+
+"What does this gross impersonation mean?" he demanded.
+
+Aubrey threw himself figuratively between the brothers, which only
+seemed to increase John's irritation.
+
+"We wanted to jolly the mater along," he explained. "No harm was
+intended, but Hughie was keen to prove his respectability; so, as you
+and he weren't on the most cordial terms, we introduced your brother,
+George, as yourself. It was a compliment, really, to your public
+character; but old George rather enjoyed dining here, and I'm bound to
+say he sold the mater some very decent port. In fact, you're drinking it
+now."
+
+"And I suppose," said John, angrily, "that between you all you've
+perpetrated some discreditable fraud, what? I suppose you've been
+ordering shirts in my name as well as selling port, eh? I'll disown the
+bill. You understand me? I won't have you masquerading as a gentleman,
+Hugh, when you can't behave like one. It's obtaining money under false
+pretenses, and you can write to your mother till you're as blue in the
+face as the ink in your bottle--it won't help you. I can put up with
+laziness; I can tolerate stupidity; I can endure dissipation; but I'm
+damned if I'll stand being introduced as George. Port, indeed! Don't try
+to argue with me. You must take the consequences. Mr. Fenton, I'm sorry
+I allowed myself to be inveigled like this into your mother's house. I
+shall write to her when I get home, and I hope she will take steps to
+clear that impostor out. No, I won't have a cigar--though I've no doubt
+I shall presently receive the bill for them, unless I've also been
+passed off as a tobacconist's agent by George. As for him, I've done
+with him, too. I shall advertise in the _Times_ that neither he nor Hugh
+has any business to order things in my name. I came here to-night in
+response to an urgent appeal; I find that I've been made a fool of; I
+find myself in a most undignified position. No, I will not have another
+glass of port. I don't know how much George exacted for it, but let me
+tell you that it isn't even good port: it's turbid and fiery."
+
+John rose from the table and was making for the door, when Hugh took
+hold of his arm.
+
+"Look here, old chap," he began.
+
+"Don't attempt to soften me with pothouse endearments," said John,
+fiercely. "I will not be called 'old chap.'"
+
+"All right, old chap, I won't," said Hugh. "But before you go jumping
+into the street like a lighted cracker, please listen. Nobody has been
+ordering anything in your name. You're absolutely off the lines there.
+Why, I exhausted your credit years ago. And I don't see why you should
+grudge poor old George a few dinners."
+
+"You rascal," John stammered. "You impudent rascal!"
+
+"Don't annoy him, Hughie," Aubrey advised. "I can see his point."
+
+"Oh, you can, sir, can you?" John snapped. "You can understand, can you,
+how it affects me to be saddled with brothers like these and port like
+this?"
+
+John was so furious that he could not bring himself to mention George or
+Hugh by name: they merely represented maddening abstractions of
+relationship, and he longed for some phrase like "my son's friend" with
+which he might disown them forever.
+
+"You mustn't blame your brother George, Mr. Touchwood," urged Aubrey.
+"He's not involved in this latest affair. I'm sorry we told the mater
+that he was you, but the mater required jollying along, as I explained.
+She can't appreciate Hugh. He's too modern for her."
+
+"I sympathize with Mrs. Fenton."
+
+"You must forgive a ruse. It's just the kind of ruse I should think a
+playwright would appreciate. You know. Charley's Aunt and all that."
+
+John clenched his fist: "Don't you mutter to me about a sense of humor,"
+he said to Hugh, wrathfully.
+
+"I wasn't muttering," replied Hugh. "I merely observed that a little
+sense of humor wouldn't be a bad thing. I'm sorry that George has been
+dragged like a red herring across the business, because it's a much more
+serious matter than simply introducing George to Mrs. Fenton as you and
+selling her some port which personally I think is not at all bad, eh,
+Aubrey?"
+
+He poured himself out another glass to prove his conviction.
+
+"You may think all this a joke," John retorted. "But I don't. I consider
+it a gross exhibition of bad taste."
+
+"All right. Granted. Let's leave it at that," sighed Hugh, wearily. "But
+you don't give a fellow much encouragement to own up when he really is
+in a tight corner. However, personally I've got past minding. If I'm
+sentenced to penal servitude, it'll be your fault for not listening.
+Only don't say I disgraced the family name."
+
+"Hugh's right," Aubrey put in. "We really are in a deuce of a hole."
+
+"Disgrace the family name?" John repeated. "Allow me to tell you that
+when you hawk George round London as your brother, the playwright, I
+consider _that_ is disgracing the family name."
+
+"So that if I'm arrested for forgery," Hugh asked, "you won't mind?"
+
+"Forgery?" John gasped.
+
+Hugh nodded.
+
+"Yes, we had bad luck in the straight," he murmured, tossing off two
+more glasses of port. "Cleared every hurdle like a bird and ... however,
+it's no good grumbling. We just didn't pull it off."
+
+"No," sighed Aubrey. "We were beaten by a short head."
+
+John sat down unsteadily, filled up half a glass of Burgundy with
+sherry, and drank it straight off without realizing that George's port
+was even worse than he had supposed.
+
+"Whose name have you forged?" he brought himself to ask at last.
+
+"Stephen Crutchley's."
+
+"Good heavens!" he groaned. "But this is horrible. And has he found out?
+Does he know who did it?"
+
+It was characteristic of John that he did not ask for how much his
+friend's name had been forged.
+
+"He has his suspicions," Hugh admitted. "And he's bound to know pretty
+soon. In fact, I think the only thing to do is for you to explain
+matters. After all, in a way it was a joke."
+
+"Yes, a kind of experimental joke," Aubrey agreed.
+
+"But it has proved to me how easy it is to cash a forged check," Hugh
+continued, hopefully. "And, of course, if you talk to Crutchley he'll be
+all right. He's not likely to be very severe on the brother of an old
+friend. That was one of the reasons we experimented on him--that, and
+also partly because I found an old check book of his. He's awfully
+careless, you know, is Stephen--very much the high-brow architect and
+all that, though he doesn't forget to charge. In fact, so many people
+have had to pay for his name that it serves him right to find himself
+doing the same for once."
+
+"Does Mrs. Fenton know anything of this?" John asked.
+
+"Why, no," Aubrey answered, quickly. "Well, women don't understand about
+money, do they? And the mater has less idea of the wicked world than
+most. My father was always a bit of a recluse, don't you see?"
+
+"Was he?" John said, sarcastically. "I should think his son will be a
+bit of a recluse, too, before he's done. But forgery! No, it's
+incredible--incredible!"
+
+"Don't worry, Johnnie," Hugh insisted. "Don't worry. I'm not worrying at
+all, now that you've come along. Nobody knows anything for certain yet.
+George doesn't know. Mama doesn't know. Mrs. Fenton doesn't know. And
+Stevie only guesses."
+
+"How do you know that he guesses?" John demanded.
+
+"Well, that's part of the story, eh, Aubrey?" said Hugh, turning to his
+accomplice, who nodded sagely.
+
+"Which I suppose one ought to tell in full, eh, Aubrey?" he went on.
+
+"I think it would interest your brother--I mean--quite apart from his
+being your brother, it would interest him as a playwright," Aubrey
+agreed.
+
+"Glasses round, then," called Hugh, cheerfully.
+
+"There's a vacant armchair by the fireplace," Aubrey pointed out to
+John.
+
+"Thanks," said John, stiffly. "I don't suppose that the comfort of an
+armchair will alleviate my feelings. Begin, sir," he commanded Hugh.
+"Begin, and get it finished quickly, for heaven's sake, so that I can
+leave this house and think out my course of action in solitude."
+
+"Do you know what it is, Johnnie?" Hugh said, craning his neck and
+examining his brother with an air of suddenly aroused curiosity. "You're
+beginning to dramatize yourself. I suppose it's inevitable, but I wish
+you wouldn't. It gives me the same kind of embarrassed feeling that I
+get when a woman starts reciting. You're not subjective. That's the
+curse of all romantic writers. You want to get an objective viewpoint.
+You're not the only person on in this scene. I'm on. Aubrey's on. Mrs.
+Fenton and Stevie Crutchley are waiting in the wings, as it were. And,
+for all I know, the police may be waiting there, too, by this time. Get
+an objective viewpoint, Johnnie. Subjectivity went out with Rousseau."
+
+"Confound your impudence," John spluttered.
+
+"Yes, that's much better than talking about thinking out a course of
+action in solitude," Hugh approved. "But don't run away with the idea
+that I'm trying to annoy you. I'm not. I've every reason to encourage
+the romantic side of you, because finally it will be the romantic side
+of you that will shudder to behold your youngest brother in the dock. In
+fact, I'm going the limit on your romance. At the same time I don't like
+to see you laying it on too thick. I'll give you your fine feelings and
+all that. I'll grant you your natural mortification, etcetera, etcetera.
+But try to see my point of view as well as your own. When you're
+thinking out a course of action in solitude, you'll light a cigar with a
+good old paunch on it, and you'll put your legs up on the mantelpiece,
+unless you've grown old-maidish and afraid of scratching the furniture,
+and you'll pat your passbook, which is probably suffering from fatty
+degeneration. That's a good phrase, Aubrey?"
+
+"Devilish good," the accomplice allowed. "But, look here, Hugh,
+steady--the mater gets rather bored if we keep the servants out of the
+dining-room too long, and I think your brother is anxious to have the
+story. So fire ahead, there's a good fellow."
+
+Hugh looked hurt at the lack of appreciation which greeted the subtler
+shades of his discourse, but, observing that John looked still more hurt
+at being kept waiting, he made haste to begin without further reference
+to style.
+
+"Well, you see, Johnnie, I've always been unlucky."
+
+John made a gesture of impatience; but Hugh raised a sedative hand.
+
+"I know there's nothing that riles lucky people so much as when unlucky
+people claim the prerogatives of their bad luck. I'm perfectly willing
+to admit that I'm lazier than you. But remember that energy is a gift,
+not an attainment. And I was born tired. The first stunning blow I had
+was when the old man died. You remember he always regarded me as a bit
+of an infant prodigy? So I was from his point of view, for he was over
+sixty when he begot me, and he used to look at me just as some people
+look at the silver cups they've won for races. But when he died, all the
+advantages of being the youngest son died with him, and I realized that
+I was an encumbrance. I'm willing to grant that I was a nuisance, too,
+but ... however, it's no use raking up old scores.... I'm equally
+willing to admit that you've always treated me very decently and that
+I've always behaved very rottenly. I'll admit also that my taste in
+clothes was beyond my powers of gratification; that I liked wine and
+women--or to put a nicer point upon it--whisky and waitresses. I did.
+And what of it? You'll observe that I'm not going to try to justify
+myself. Have another glass of port? No? Right-o; well, I will. I repeat
+I'm not going to attempt to justify myself, even if I couldn't, which I
+can, but in vino veritas, which I think you'll admit is Latin. Latin, I
+said. Precisely. Where was I?"
+
+"Hugh, old boy, buck up," his friend prompted, anxiously.
+
+"Come, sir," John said, trembling visibly with indignation. "Get on with
+your story while you can. I don't want to waste my time listening to the
+meanderings of a drunkard."
+
+Hugh's eyes were glazing over like a puddle in frost, but he knitted his
+brows and regarded his brother with intense concentration.
+
+"Don't try to take any literary advantage of me, Johnnie. You can dig
+out the longest word in the dictionary, but I've got a longer.
+Metempsychosis! Hear that? I'm willing to admit that I don't like having
+to say it, but you find me another man who can say it at all after
+George's port. Metempsychosis! And it's not a disease. No, no, no, no,
+don't you run away with the idea that it's a disease. Not at all. It's a
+religion. And for three years I've been wasting valuable knowledge like
+that on an architect's office. Do you think Stevie wants to hear about
+metempsychosis--that's the third time I've cleared it--of course he
+doesn't. Stephen Crutchley is a Goth. What am I? I'm a Palladian. There
+you have it. Am I right, Aubrey?"
+
+"Quite right, old boy, only come to the point."
+
+"That's all right, Aubrey, don't you be afraid. I'm nursing her along by
+the rails. You can lay a hundred pounds to a box of George's cigars bar
+one. And that one's me. Where was I? Ah, yes. Well, I'm not going to say
+a word against Stephen, Johnnie. He's a friend of yours. He's my boss.
+He's one of England's leading ecclesiastical architects. But that
+doesn't help me when I find myself in a Somersetshire village seven
+miles from the nearest station arguing with a deaf parson about the
+restoration of his moldy church. Does it? Of course not. It doesn't help
+me when I find myself sleeping in damp sheets and woken up at seven
+o'clock by a cross between a gardener and a charwoman for early service.
+Does it? Of course not. Architecture like everything else is a good job
+when you're waving the flag on top of the tower; but when you're digging
+the foundations it's rotten. Stevie and I have had our little
+differences, but when he's sober--I mean when I'm sober--he'll tell you
+that there's not one of his juniors he thinks better of than me. I'm
+against Gothic. I consider Gothic the muddle-headed expression of a
+muddle-headed period. But I've been loyal to Stevie, only...."
+
+Hugh paused solemnly, while his friend regarded him with nervous
+solicitude.
+
+"Only," Hugh repeated in a loud voice. "Metempsychosis," he murmured,
+and drinking two more glasses of wine, he sat back in his chair and
+shook his head in mute despair of human speech.
+
+Aubrey took John aside.
+
+"I'm afraid Hugh's too far gone to explain all the details to-night," he
+whispered. "But it's really very serious. You see he found an old check
+book of Mr. Crutchley's, and more from a joke than anything else he
+tried to see if it was difficult to cash a check. It wasn't. He
+succeeded. But he's suspected. I helped him indirectly, but of course I
+don't come into the business except as an accessory. Only, if you take
+my advice, you'll call on Mr. Crutchley as soon as you can, and I'm sure
+you'll be able to square things up. You'll know how to manage him; but
+Hugh has a way of exasperating him."
+
+All the bland, the almost infantine simplicity of Aubrey Fenton's
+demeanor did not avail to propitiate John's rage; and when the maid came
+in with a message from his hostess to ask if it would soon be convenient
+to allow the table to be cleared, he announced that he should not remain
+another minute in the house.
+
+"But can Hugh count on your support?" Aubrey persisted. He spoke like an
+election agent who is growing rapidly doubtful of his candidate's
+prospects.
+
+"He can count on nothing," said John, violently. "He can count on
+nothing at all. On absolutely nothing at all."
+
+Anybody who had seen Hugh's condition at this moment would have agreed
+with John. His eyes had already lost even as much life as might have
+been discerned in the slow freezing of a puddle, and had now assumed the
+glassy fixity and perfect roundness of two bottle-stoppers.
+
+"He can count on nothing," John asseverated.
+
+"I see," said Aubrey, tactfully. "I'll try and get that across to him.
+Must you really be going?"
+
+"Immediately."
+
+"You'll trot in and say ta-ta to the mater?"
+
+John had no wish ever again to meet this crystallized lady, but his
+politeness rose superior to his indignation, and he followed the son of
+the house into the drawing-room. His last glimpse of Hugh was of a
+mechanical figure, the only gesture of which was awkwardly to rescue
+every glass in turn that the maid endeavored to include in her clearance
+of the table.
+
+"It's scandalous," muttered John. "It's--it's abominable! Mrs. Fenton,"
+he said with a courtly bow for her hospitality, "I regret that your son
+has encouraged my brother to impose himself upon your good-nature. I
+shall take steps to insure that he shall do so no longer. I beg your
+pardon, Mrs. Fenton, I apologize. Good-night."
+
+"I've always spoilt Aubrey," she said. "And he always had a mania for
+dangerous toys which he never could learn to work properly. Never!" she
+repeated, passionately.
+
+For an instant the musty sugar in which she was inclosed cracked and
+allowed John a glimpse of the feminine humanity underneath; but in the
+same instant the crystallization was more complete than ever, and when
+John released her hand he nearly took out his handkerchief to wipe away
+the stickiness.
+
+"I say, what steps _are_ you going to take to-morrow?" Aubrey asked.
+
+"Never mind," John growled. Inasmuch as he himself had no more idea of
+what he intended to do than Aubrey, the reply was a good one.
+
+Where Carlington Road flows into Hammersmith Road John waited for a
+passing taxi, apostrophizing meanwhile the befogged stars in the London
+sky.
+
+"I shall not forget to-night. No, I certainly sha'n't. I doubt if any
+dramatist ever spent such another. A glimpse at all the animals of the
+globe, a lunch that would have made a jackal vomit, a search for two
+lost children, an interview with a fatuous brother, a loan of over
+thirty pounds, a winking landlady, a narrow escape from being bored to
+death by a Major, a dinner that gave me the sensation of being slowly
+buried alive, a glass of George's port, and for climax the news that my
+brother has committed a forgery. How can I think about Joan of Arc? A
+few more days like this and I shall never be able to think or write
+again--however, please God, there'll always be the cinema."
+
+Whirring home to Hampstead John fell asleep, and when he had
+supplemented that amount of repose in the taxi by eight hours in his own
+bed, he woke next morning with his mind made up to square matters with
+Stephen Crutchley, to withdraw Hugh from architecture, to intern him
+until Christmas at Ambles, and in the New Year to transport him to
+British Honduras as a mahogany-planter. He had met on board the
+_Murmania_ a mahogany-planter who was visiting England for the first
+time in thirteen years: the profession must be an enthralling one.
+
+It was only when John reached the offices of Stephen Crutchley in Staple
+Inn that he discovered it was Sunday, which meant another whole day's
+idleness and suspense, and he almost fell to wishing that he was in
+church again with Bertram and Viola. But there was a sweet sadness in
+this old paved court, where a few sparrows chirped their plaintive
+monotone from an overarching tree, the branches of which fretted a sky
+of pearly blue, and where several dreary men were sitting upon the
+benches regarding their frayed boots. John could not remain
+unsusceptible to the antique charm of the scene, and finding an
+unoccupied bench he rested there in the timid sunlight.
+
+"What a place to choose for a forgery," he murmured, reproachfully, and
+tried to change the direction of his thoughts by remembering that Dr.
+Johnson had lived here for a time. He had no sooner concentrated upon
+fancies of that great man than he began to wonder if he was not mistaken
+in supposing that he had lived here, and he looked round for some one
+who could inform him. The dreary men with frayed boots were only
+counting the slow minutes of divine service before the public-houses
+could open: they knew nothing of the lexicographer. But the subject of
+forgery was not to be driven away by memories of Dr. Johnson, because
+his friend, Dr. Dodd, suddenly jumped into the train of thought, and it
+was impossible not to conjure up that poor and learned gentleman's last
+journey to Tyburn nor to reflect how the latticed dormers on the Holborn
+side of the Inn were the same now as then and had actually seen Dr. Dodd
+go jolting past. John had often thought how incomprehensible it was that
+scarcely a century ago people should have been hanged for such crimes as
+forgery; but not it seemed rather more comprehensible. Of course, he
+should not like to know that his brother was going to be hanged; but for
+the sake of his future it would be an excellent thing to revive capital
+punishment for minor crimes. He should like when all this dreadful
+business was settled to say to his brother, "Oh, by the way, Hugh, I
+hear they've just passed a bill making forgery a capital offense once
+more. I think you'll like mahogany-planting."
+
+But would the fear of death act as a deterrent upon such an one as Hugh,
+who after committing so dishonorable a crime had lacked even the grace
+to make his confession of it soberly? It was doubtful: Hugh was without
+shame. From boyhood his career had been undistinguished by a single
+decent action; but on the contrary it had been steadily marred by vice
+and folly from the time when he had stolen an unused set of British
+North Borneo stamps from the locker of his best friend at school to this
+monstrous climax. Forgery! Great heavens, had he ever yet envisaged Hugh
+listening abjectly (or worse impudently) to the strictures of a scornful
+judge? Had he yet imagined the headlines in the press? _Brother of
+distinguished dramatist sent to penal servitude. Judge's scathing
+comments._ Mr. Touchwood breaks down in court. _Miss Janet Bond's
+production indefinitely postponed._ Surely Stephen would not proceed to
+extreme measures, but for the sake of their lifelong sympathy spare his
+old friend this humiliation; yet even as John reached this conclusion
+the chink-chink of the sparrows in the plane-tree sounded upon the air
+like the chink-chink of the picks on Dartmoor. Hugh a convict! It might
+well befall thus, if his jaunty demeanor hardened Stephen's heart.
+Suppose that Stephen should be seized with one of those moral crises
+that can only be relieved by making an example of somebody? Would it not
+be as well to go down at once to his place in the country and try to
+square matters, unembarrassed by Hugh's brazen impenitence? Or was it
+already too late? John could not bring himself to believe that his old
+friend would call in the police without warning him. Stephen had always
+had a generous disposition, and it might well be that rather than wound
+John's pride by the revelation of his brother's disgrace he had made up
+his mind to say nothing and to give Hugh another chance: that would be
+like Stephen. No, he should not intrude upon his week-end; though how he
+was going to pass the long Sunday unless he occupied himself with
+something more cheerful than his own thoughts he did not know. Should he
+visit James and Beatrice, and take them out to lunch with a Symphony
+Concert to follow? No, he should never be able to keep the secret of
+Hugh's crime, and James would inevitably wind up the discussion by
+making it seem as if it were entirely his own fault. Should he visit
+George and warn him that the less intercourse he had with Hugh the
+better, yes, and incidentally observe to George that he resented his
+impersonation of himself at Mrs. Fenton's? No, George's company would be
+as intolerable as his port. And the children? No, no, let them dress up
+with minds still untainted by their Uncle Hugh's shame; let them enact
+Robinson Crusoe and if they liked burn Halma House to the ground. What
+was unpremeditated arson compared with deliberate forgery? But if there
+was a genuine criminal streak in the Touchwoods, how was he ever again
+to feel secure of his relations' honor? To-morrow he might learn that
+James had murdered Beatrice because she had slept through the opening
+chapters of _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_. To-morrow he might learn that
+George was a defaulting bookmaker, that Hilda had embezzled the whole of
+Laurence's board, and that Harold was about to be prosecuted by the
+Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Why, even his mother
+might have taken to gin-drinking in the small hours of the morning!
+
+"God forgive me," said John. "I am losing my faith in humanity and my
+respect for my mother. Yet some imbeciles prate about the romance of
+crime."
+
+John felt that if he continued to sit here brooding upon his relations
+he should be in danger of taking some violent step such as joining the
+Salvation Army: he remembered how an actor in _The Fall of Babylon_ had
+brooded upon his inability to say his lines with just the emphasis he as
+author had required, until on the night before the opening he had left
+the theater and become a Salvationist. One of the loafers in the court
+shuffled up to John and begged him for a match; when John complied he
+asked for something to use it on, and John was so much distressed by the
+faint likeness he bore to his eldest brother that he gave him a cigar.
+
+"Without me that is what they would all be by now, every one of them,
+James, George, and Hugh," he thought "But if I hadn't been lucky, so
+might I," he added, reprovingly, to himself, "though at any rate I
+should have tried to join a workhouse and not wasted my time cadging for
+matches in Staple Inn."
+
+John was not quite clear about workhouses; he had abandoned realistic
+writing before he dealt with workhouse life as it really is.
+
+"However, I can't sit here depressing myself all day; besides, this
+bench is damp. What fools those sparrows are to stay chirping in that
+tree when they might be hopping about in Hampshire--out of reach of
+Harold's air-gun of course--and what a fool I am! But it's no use for me
+to go home and work at Joan of Arc. The English archers will only be
+shooting broad arrows all the time. I'll walk slowly to the Garrick, I
+think, and have an early lunch."
+
+Perversely enough the club did not seem to contain one sympathetic
+acquaintance, let alone a friend, that Sunday; and after lunch John was
+reduced to looking at the portraits of famous dead players, who bored
+him nearly as much as one or two of the live ones who were lounging in
+the smoking-room.
+
+"This is getting unendurable," he moaned, and there seemed nothing for
+it but to sally forth and walk the hollow-sounding city. From Long Acre
+he turned into St. Martin's Lane, shook off the temptation to bore
+himself still more hopelessly by a visit to the National Gallery, and
+reached Cockspur Street. Three or four Sabbath loiterers were staring at
+a window, and John saw that it was the office of the Cunard Line and
+that the attraction was a model of the _S.S. Murmania_.
+
+"What a fool I am!" John murmured much more emphatically than in Staple
+Inn. He was just going to call a taxi to drive him to Chelsea, when he
+experienced from yesterday a revulsion against taxis. Yesterday had been
+a nightmare of taxis, between driving to the Zoo and driving to the
+police station and driving home after that interview with the forger--by
+this time John had discarded Hugh as a relation--not to mention Mrs.
+Worfolk in a taxi, and the children in a taxi, and their luggage buzzing
+backward and forward between Earl's Court and Hampstead in a taxi. No,
+he should walk to Chelsea: a brisk walk with an objective would do him
+good. 83 Camera Square. It was indeed rather a tribute to his memory, he
+flattered himself, that he could remember her address without referring
+to her card. He should walk along the Embankment; it was only half-past
+two now.
+
+It was pleasant walking by the river on that fine afternoon, and John
+felt as he strode along Grosvenor Road, his spirit rising with the eager
+tide, that after all there was nothing like the sea, nothing!
+
+"As soon as I've finished Joan of Arc, I shall take a sea-voyage. It's
+all very well for George to talk about sea-voyages, but let him do some
+work first. Even if I do send him for a sea-voyage, how will he spend
+his time? I know perfectly well. He'll feel seasick for the first week
+and play poker for the rest of the passage. No, no, after the Christmas
+holidays at Ambles he'll be as right as a trivet without a sea-voyage.
+What is a trivet by the way? Now if I had a secretary, I should make a
+note of a query like that. As it is, I shall probably never know what a
+trivet is; but if I had a secretary, I should ask her to look it up in
+the dictionary when we got home. I dare say I've lost thousands of ideas
+by not having a secretary at hand. I shall have to advertise--or find
+out in some way about a secretary. Thank heaven, neither Hilda nor
+Beatrice nor Eleanor nor Edith knows shorthand. But even if Edith did
+know shorthand, she'd be eternally occupied with the dactylography--as I
+suppose _he'd_ call it--of Laurence's apostolic successes--there's
+another note I might make. Of course, it's nothing wonderful as a piece
+of wit, but I might get an epigram worth keeping, say three times a
+week, if I had a secretary at my elbow. I don't believe that Stephen
+will make any difficulties about Hugh. Oh no, I don't think so. I was
+tired this morning after yesterday. This walk is making me see events in
+their right proportion. Rosification indeed! James brings out these
+things as if he were a second Sydney Smith; but in my opinion wit
+without humor is like marmalade without butter. And even if I do rosify
+things, well, what is it that Lady Teazle says? _I wish it were spring
+all the year round and that roses grew under our feet._ And it takes
+something to rosify such moral anemia as Hugh's. By the way I wonder
+just exactly whereabouts in Chelsea Camera Square is."
+
+Now if there was one thing that John hated, if there was one thing that
+dragged even his buoyant spirits into the dust, if there was one thing
+worse than having a forger for a blood-relation, it was to be compelled
+to ask his way anywhere in London within the four miles radius. He would
+not even now admit to himself more than that he did not know the _exact_
+whereabouts of Camera Square. Although he really had not the remotest
+idea beyond its location in the extensive borough of Chelsea where
+Camera Square was, he wasted half-an-hour in dancing a kind of Ladies'
+Chain with all the side-streets off King's Road and never catching a
+glimpse of his destination. It was at last borne in upon him that if he
+wanted to call on Mrs. Hamilton at a respectable hour for afternoon tea
+he should simply have to ask his way.
+
+Now arose for John the problem of choosing the oracle. He walked on and
+on, half making up his mind every moment to accost somebody and when he
+was on the point of doing so perceiving in his expression a latent
+haughtiness that held him back until it was too late. Had it not been
+Sunday, he would have entered a shop and bought sufficiently expensive
+to bribe the shopman from looking astonished at his ignorance.
+Presently, however, he passed a tobacconist's, and having bought three
+of the best cigars he had, which were not very good, he asked casually
+as he was going out the direction of Camera Square. The shopman did not
+know. He came to another tobacconist's, bought three more cigars, and
+that shopman did not know either. Gradually with a sharp sense of
+impending disgrace John realized that he must ask a policeman. He turned
+aside from the many inviting policemen in the main road, where the
+contemptuous glances of wayfarers might presume his rusticity, and tried
+to find a policeman in a secluded by-street. This took another
+half-an-hour, and when John did accost this ponderous hermit of the
+force he accosted him in broken English.
+
+"Ees thees ze vay to Cahmehra Squah?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders
+in what he conceived to be the gesture of a Frenchman who had landed
+that morning from Calais.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Cahmehra Squah?" John repeated.
+
+The policeman put his hand in his pocket, and John thought he was going
+to whistle for help; but it was really to get out a handkerchief to blow
+his nose and give him time to guess what John wanted to know.
+
+"Say it again, will yer?" the policeman requested.
+
+John repeated his Gallic rendering of Camera.
+
+"I ain't seen it round here. Where do you say you dropped it?"
+
+"Eet ees a place I vants."
+
+What slow-witted oafs the English were, thought John with a
+compassionate sigh for the poor foreigners who must be lost in London
+every day. However, this policeman was so loutish that he felt he could
+risk an almost perfect pronunciation.
+
+"Oh, Kemmerer Squer," said the policeman with a huge smile of
+comprehension. "Why, you're looking at it." He pointed along the road.
+
+"Damn," thought John. "I needn't have asked at all. Sank you.
+Good-evening," he said aloud.
+
+"The same to you and many of them, Napoleon," the policeman nodded.
+
+John hurried away, and soon he was walking along a narrow garden, very
+unlike a London garden, for it was full of frost-bitten herbaceous
+flowers and smelt of the country. Not a house on this side of the square
+resembled its neighbor; but Number 83 was the most charmingly odd of
+all, two stories high with a little Chinese balcony and jasmine over a
+queer pointed porch of wrought iron.
+
+"Yes, sir, Mrs. Hamilton is at home," said the maid.
+
+The last bars of something by Schumann or Chopin died away; in the
+comparative stillness that succeeded John could hear a canary singing,
+and the tinkle of tea-cups; there was also a smell of muffins
+and--mimosa, was it? Anyway it was very delicious, he thought, while he
+made his overcoat as small as possible, so as not to fill the tiny hall
+entirely.
+
+"Mr. Touchwood was the name?" the maid asked.
+
+"What an intelligent young woman," he thought. "How much more
+intelligent than that policeman. But women are more intelligent in small
+things."
+
+John felt very large as he bowed his head to enter the drawing-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+A sudden apprehension of his bulk (though he was only comparatively
+massive) overcame John when he stood inside the tiny drawing-room of 83
+Camera Square; and it was not until the steam from the tea-pot had
+materialized into Miss Hamilton, who in a dress of filmy gray floated
+round him as a cloud swathes a mountain, that he felt at ease.
+
+"Why, how charming of you to keep your word," her well-remembered voice,
+so soft and deep, was murmuring. "You don't know my mother, do you?
+Mother, this is Mr. Touchwood, who was so kind to Ida and me on the
+voyage back from America."
+
+Mrs. Hamilton was one of those mothers that never destroy the prospects
+of their children by testifying outwardly to what their beauty may one
+day come: neither in face nor in expression nor in gesture nor in voice
+did she bear the least resemblance to her daughter. At first John was
+inclined to compare her to a diminutive clown; but presently he caught
+sight of some golden mandarins marching across a lacquer cupboard and
+decided that she resembled a mandarin; after which wherever he looked in
+the room he seemed to catch sight of her miniature--on the
+willow-pattern plates, on the mantelpiece in porcelain, and even on the
+red lacquer bridge that spanned the tea-caddy.
+
+"We've all heard of Mr. Touchwood," she said, picking up a small silver
+weapon in the shape of a pea-shooter and puffing out her already plump
+cheeks in a vain effort to extinguish the flame of the spirit-lamp. "And
+I'm devoted to the drama. Pouf! I think this is a very dull instrument,
+dear. What would England be without Shakespeare? Pouf! Pouf! One blows
+and blows and blows and blows till really--well, it has taught me never
+to regret that I did not learn the flute when there was a question of my
+having lessons. Pouf! Pouf!"
+
+John offered his services as extinguisher.
+
+"You have to blow very hard," she warned him; and he being determined at
+all costs to impress Miss Hamilton blew like a knight-errant at the gate
+of an enchanted castle. It was almost too vigorous a blast: besides
+extinguishing the flame, it blew several currants from the cake into
+Mrs. Hamilton's lap, which John in an access of good-will tried to blow
+off again less successfully.
+
+"Bravo," the old lady exclaimed, clapping her hands. "I'm glad to see
+that it can be done. But didn't you write _The Walls of Jericho_? Ah no,
+I'm thinking of Joshua and his trumpet."
+
+"_The Fall of Babylon_, mother," Miss Hamilton put in with a smile, in
+the curves of which quivered a hint of scornfulness.
+
+"Then I was not so far out. _The Fall of Babylon_ to be sure. Oh, what a
+fall was there, my countrymen."
+
+She beamed at the author encouragingly, who beamed responsively back at
+her; presently she began to chuckle to herself, and John, hoping that in
+his wish to be pleasant to Miss Hamilton's mother he was not appearing
+to be imitating a hen, chuckled back.
+
+"I'm glad you have a sense of humor," she exclaimed, suddenly assuming
+an intensely serious expression and throwing up her eyebrows like two
+skipping-ropes.
+
+John, who felt as if he was playing a game, copied her expression as
+well as he was able.
+
+"I live on it," she pursued. "And thrive moreover. A small income and an
+ample sense of humor. Yes, for thus one avoids extravagance oneself, but
+enjoys it in other people."
+
+"And how is Miss Merritt?" John inquired of Miss Hamilton, when he had
+bowed his appreciation of the witticism. But before she could reply, her
+mother rattled on: "Miss Merritt will not take Doris to America again.
+Miss Merritt has written a book called _The Aphorisms of Aphrodite_."
+
+The old lady's remarkable eyebrows were darting about her forehead like
+forked lightning while she spoke.
+
+"The Aphorisms of Aphrodite!" she repeated. "A collection of some of the
+most declassical observations that I have ever encountered." Like a
+diver's arms the eyebrows drew themselves together for a plunge into
+unfathomable moral depths.
+
+"My dear mother, lots of people found it very amusing," her daughter
+protested.
+
+"Miss Merritt," the old lady asserted, "was meant for bookkeeping by
+double-entry, instead of which she had taken to book-writing by
+double-entente. The profits may be treble, but the method is base. How
+did she affect you, Mr. Touchwood?"
+
+"She frightened me," John confessed. "I thought her manner somewhat
+severe."
+
+"You hear that, Doris? Her ethical exterior frightened him."
+
+"You're both very unfair to Ida. I only wish I had half her talents."
+
+"Wrapped in a napkin," said the old lady, "you have your shorthand."
+
+John's heart leapt.
+
+"Ah, you know shorthand," he could not help ejaculating with manifest
+pleasure.
+
+"I studied for a time. I think I had vague ideas once of a commercial
+career," she replied, indifferently.
+
+"The suggestion being," Mrs. Hamilton put in, "that I discouraged her.
+But how is one to encourage shorthand? If she had learnt the deaf and
+dumb alphabet I might have put aside half-an-hour every day for
+conversation. But it is as hard to encourage shorthand as to encourage a
+person who is talking in his sleep."
+
+John fancied that beneath the indifference of the daughter and the
+self-conscious humor of the mother he could detect cross-currents of
+mutual disapproval; he could have sworn that the daughter was beginning
+to be perpetually aware of her mother's presence.
+
+"Or is it due to my obsession that relations should never see too much
+of each other?" he asked himself. "Yet she knows shorthand--an
+extraordinary coincidence. What a delightful house you have," he said
+aloud with as much fervor as would excuse the momentary abstraction into
+which he had been cast.
+
+"My husband was a sinologue," Mrs. Hamilton announced.
+
+"Was he indeed?" said John, trying to focus the word.
+
+"And the study of Chinese is nearly as exclusive as shorthand," the old
+lady went on. "But we traveled a great deal in China when I was first
+married and being upon our honeymoon had but slight need of general
+conversation."
+
+No wonder she looked like a mandarin.
+
+"And to me their furniture was always more expressive than their
+language. Hence this house." Her black eyebrows soared like a condor to
+disappear in the clouds of her snowy hair. "But do not let us talk of
+China," she continued. "Let us rather talk of the drama. Or will you
+have another muffin?"
+
+"I think I should prefer the muffin," John admitted.
+
+Presently he noticed that Miss Hamilton was looking surreptitiously at
+her watch and glancing anxiously at the deepening twilight; she
+evidently had an appointment elsewhere, and he rose to make his
+farewells.
+
+"For I'm sure you're wanting to go out," he ventured.
+
+"Doris never cares to stay at home for very long," said her mother; and
+John was aware once again, this time unmistakably, of the cross-currents
+of mutual discontent.
+
+"I had promised to meet Ida in Sloane Square."
+
+"On the holy mount of Ida," the old lady quoted; John laughed out of
+politeness, though he was unable to see the point of the allusion; he
+might have concluded that after all Mrs. Hamilton was really rather
+stupid, perhaps even vain and tiresome, had she not immediately
+afterward proposed that he should give Doris time to get ready and have
+the benefit of her company along King's Road.
+
+"For I assume you are both going in the same direction," she said,
+evoking with her eyebrows the suggestion of a signpost.
+
+"My dear mother, Mr. Touchwood doesn't want to be bored with escorting
+me," her daughter was protesting.
+
+John laughed at the idea of being bored; then he fancied that in such a
+small room his laughter might have sounded hysterical, and he raised the
+pitch of his voice to give the impression that he always laughed like
+that. In the end, after a short argument, Miss Hamilton agreed somewhat
+ungraciously to let John wait for her. When she was gone to get ready,
+her mother leaned over and tapped John's arm with a fan.
+
+"I'm getting extremely anxious about Doris," she confided; the eyebrows
+hovering in her forehead like a hawk about to strike gave her listener
+the impression that she was really going to say something this time.
+
+"Her health?" he began, anxiously.
+
+"Her health is perfect. It is her independence which worries me. Hence
+this house! Her father's brother is only too willing to do anything for
+her, but she declines to be a poor relation. Now such an attitude is
+ridiculous, because she is a poor relation. To each overture from her
+uncle she replies with defiance. At one moment she drowns his remarks in
+a typewriter; at another she flourishes her shorthand in his face; and
+this summer she fled to America before he had finished what he was
+saying. Mr. Touchwood, I rely on you!" she exclaimed, thumping him on
+the shoulder with the fan.
+
+John felt himself to be a very infirm prop for the old lady's ambition,
+and wobbled in silence while she heaped upon him her aspirations.
+
+"You are a man of the world. All the world's a stage! Prompt her, my
+dear Mr. Touchwood, prompt her. You must have had a great experience in
+prompting. I rely on you. Her uncle _must_ be allowed to help her. For
+pray appreciate that Doris's independence merely benefits charitable
+institutions, and in my opinion there is a limit to anonymous
+benevolence. Perhaps you've heard of the Home for Epileptic Gentlewomen?
+They can have their fits in peace and comfort entirely because my
+daughter refuses to accept one penny from her uncle. To a mother, of
+course, such behavior is unaccountable. And what is so unjust is that
+she won't allow me to accept a penny either, but has even gone so far as
+to threaten to live with Miss Merritt if I do. Aphorisms of Aphrodite! I
+can assure you that there are times when I do not regret that I possess
+an ample sense of humor. If you were a mother, Mr. Touchwood...."
+
+"I _am_ an uncle," said John, quickly. He was not going to let Mrs.
+Hamilton monopolize all the privileges of kinship.
+
+"Then who more able to advise a niece? She will listen to you. Friends,
+Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. You must remember that she
+already admires you as a playwright. Insist that in future she must
+admire you from the stalls instead of from the pit--as now. At present
+she is pinched. Do not misunderstand me. I speak in metaphors. She is
+pinched by straitened circumstances just as the women of China are
+pinched by their shoes. She declines to wear a hobble-skirt; but decline
+or not, she hobbles through life. She cannot do otherwise, which is why
+we live here in Camera Square like two spoonfuls of tea in an old
+caddy!"
+
+"But you know, personally," John protested while the old lady was
+fanning back her lost breath, "personally, and I am now speaking as an
+uncle, personally I must confess that independence charms me."
+
+"Music hath charms," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Who will deny it? And
+independence with the indefinite article before it also hath charms; but
+independence with no article at all, independence, the abstract noun,
+though it may be a public virtue, is a private vice. Vesuvius lends
+variety to the Bay of Naples; but a tufted mole on a woman's cheek
+affects the observer with abhorrence, like a woolly caterpillar lurking
+in the heart of a rose. Let us distinguish between the state and the
+individual. Do, my dear Mr. Touchwood, let us always preserve a
+distinction between wild nature and human nature."
+
+John was determined not to give way, and he once more firmly asserted
+his admiration for independence.
+
+"All the world's a stage," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Yes, and all the men and
+women merely players; yet life, Mr. Touchwood, is not a play. I have
+realized that since my husband died. The widow of a sinologue has much
+to realize. At first I hoped that Doris would marry. But she has never
+wanted to marry. Men proposed in shoals. But as I always said to them,
+'What is the use of proposing to my daughter? She will never marry.'"
+
+For the first time John began to pay a deep and respectful attention to
+the conversation.
+
+"Really I should have thought," he began; but he stopped himself
+abruptly, for he felt that it was not quite chivalrous for him to
+appraise Miss Hamilton's matrimonial chances. "No doubt Miss Hamilton is
+very critical," he substituted.
+
+"She would criticize anybody," the old lady exclaimed. "From the Creator
+of us all in general to her own mother in particular she would criticize
+anybody. Anybody that is, except Miss Merritt. Do not suppose, for
+instance, that she will not criticize you."
+
+"Oh, I have no hope of escaping," John said.
+
+"But pay no attention and continue to advise her. Really, when I think
+that on account of her obstinacy a number of epileptic females are
+enjoying luxurious convulsions while I am compelled to alternate between
+muffins and scones every day of the week, though I never know which I
+like better, really I resent our unnecessary poverty. As I say to her,
+whether we accept her uncle's offer or not, we are always poor
+relations; so we may as well be comfortably off poor relations."
+
+"Don't you suppose that perhaps her uncle is all the fonder of her
+because of this independence?" John suggested. "I think I should be."
+
+"But what is the use of that?" Mrs. Hamilton demanded. "Nothing is so
+bad for people as stunted affection. My husband spent all his
+patrimony--he was a younger son--everything he had in fact upon his
+passion for Chinese--well, not quite everything, for he was able to
+leave me a small income, which I share with Doris. Pray remember that I
+have never denied her anything that I could afford. Although she has
+many times plotted with her friend Ida Merritt to earn her own living, I
+have never once encouraged her in such a step. The idea to me has always
+been painful. A sense of humor has carried _me_ through life; but Doris,
+alas, is infected with gloom. Whether it is living in London or whether
+it is reading Nietzsche I don't know, but she is infested with gloom.
+Therefore when I heard of her meeting you I was glad; I was almost
+reconciled to the notion of that vulgar descent upon America. Pray do
+not imagine that I am trying to flatter: you should be used to public
+approbation by now. John Hamilton is her uncle's name, and he has a
+delightful estate near the Mull of Kintyre--Glencockic House--some of
+the rents of which provide carpets for the fits of epileptic gentlewomen
+and some the children of indigent tradesmen in Ayr with colonial
+opportunities. Yet his sister-in-law must choose every morning between
+muffins and scones."
+
+John tried unsuccessfully to change the conversation; he even went so
+far as to ask the old lady questions about her adventures in China,
+although it was one of the rules of his conduct never to expose himself
+unnecessarily to the reminiscences of travelers.
+
+"Yes, yes," she would reply, impatiently, "the bells in the temple
+gardens are delicious. Ding-dong! ding-dong! But, as I was saying,
+unless Doris sees her way to be at any rate outwardly gracious ..." and
+so it went on until Doris herself, dressed in that misty green Harris
+tweed of the _Murmania_, came in to say that she was ready.
+
+"My dear child," her mother protested. "The streets of London are empty
+on Sunday evening, but they are not a Highland moor. What queer notions
+of dress you do have, to be sure."
+
+"Ida and I are going out to supper with some friends of hers in Norwood,
+and I want to keep warm in the train."
+
+"One of the aphorisms of Aphrodite, I suppose, to wear a
+Norfolk-jacket--or should I say a Norwood jacket?--on Sunday evening.
+You must excuse her, Mr. Touchwood."
+
+John was by this time thoroughly bored by the old lady's witticisms and
+delighted to leave her to fan herself in the firelight, while he and her
+daughter walked along toward King's Road.
+
+"No sign of a taxi," said John, whose mind was running on shorthand,
+though he was much too shy to raise the topic for a second time. "You
+don't mind going as far as Sloane Square by motor-bus?"
+
+A moment later they were climbing to the outside of a motor-bus; when
+John pulled the waterproof rug over their knees and felt the wind in his
+face while they swayed together and apart in the rapid motion, he could
+easily have fancied that they were once again upon the Atlantic.
+
+"I often think of our crossing," he said in what he hoped was an
+harmonious mixture of small talk and sentiment.
+
+"So do I."
+
+He tried to turn eagerly round, but was unable to do so on account of
+having fastened the strap of the rug.
+
+"Well, in Camera Square, wouldn't you?" she murmured.
+
+"You're not happy there?" In order to cover his embarrassment at finding
+he had asked what she might consider an impertinent question John turned
+away to fasten the rug more tightly, which nearly kept him from turning
+around again at all.
+
+"Don't let's talk about me," she begged, dismissing the subject with a
+curt little laugh. "How fast they do drive on Sunday."
+
+"Yes, the streets are empty," he agreed. Good heavens, at this rate they
+would be at Sloane Square in five minutes, and he might just as well
+never have called on her. What did it matter if the streets were empty?
+They were not half as empty as this conversation.
+
+"I'm working hard," he began.
+
+"Lucky you!"
+
+"At least when I say I'm working hard," he corrected himself, "I mean
+that I have been working hard. Just at present I'm rather worried by
+family matters."
+
+"Poor man, I sympathize with you."
+
+She might sympathize with him; but on this motor-bus her manner was so
+detached that nobody could have guessed it, John thought, and he had
+looked at her every time a street-lamp illuminated her expression.
+
+"I often think of our crossing," he repeated. "I'm sure it would be a
+great pity to let our friendship fade out into nothing. Won't you lunch
+with me one day?"
+
+"With pleasure."
+
+"Wednesday at Princes? Or no, better say the Carlton Grill."
+
+"Thanks so much."
+
+"It's not easy to talk on a motor-bus, is it?" John suggested.
+
+"No, it's like trying to talk to somebody whom you're seeing off in a
+train."
+
+"I hope you'll enjoy your evening. You'll remember me to Miss Merritt?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+Sloane Square opened ahead of them; but at any rate, John congratulated
+himself, he had managed to arrange a lunch for Wednesday and need no
+longer reproach himself for a complete deadlock.
+
+"I must hurry," she warned him when they had descended to the pavement.
+
+"Wednesday at one o'clock then."
+
+He would have liked to detain her with elaborate instructions about the
+exact spot on the carpet where she would find him waiting for her on
+Wednesday; but she had shaken him lightly by the hand and crossed the
+road before he could decide between the entrance in Regent Street and
+the entrance in Pall Mall.
+
+"It is becoming every day more evident, Mrs. Worfolk," John told his
+housekeeper after supper that evening, "that I must begin to look about
+for a secretary."
+
+"Yes, sir," she agreed, cheerfully. "There's lots of deserving young
+fellows would be glad of the job, I'm shaw."
+
+John left it at that, acknowledged Mrs. Worfolk's wishes for his night's
+repose, poured himself out a whisky and soda, and settled himself down
+to read a gilded work at fifteen shillings net entitled _Fifteen Famous
+Forgers_. When he had read three shillings' worth, he decided that the
+only crime which possessed a literary interest for anybody outside the
+principals was murder, and went to bed early in order to prepare for the
+painful interview at Staple Inn next morning.
+
+Stephen Crutchley, the celebrated architect, was some years older than
+John, old enough in fact to have been severely affected by the esthetic
+movement in his early twenties; he had a secret belief that was
+nourished both by his pre-eminence in Gothic design and by his wife's
+lilies and languors that he formed a link with the Pre-Raphaelites. His
+legs were excessively short, but short though they were one of them had
+managed to remain an inch shorter than the other, which in conjunction
+with a ponderous body made his gait something between a limp and a
+shamble. He had a long ragged beard which looked as if he had dropped
+egg or cigarette-ash on it according to whether the person who was
+deciding its color thought it was more gray or more yellow. His
+appearance was usually referred to by paragraph writers as leonine, and
+he much regretted that his beard was turning gray so soon, when what the
+same writers called his "tawny mane of hair" was still unwithered. He
+affected the Bohemian costume of the 'eighties, that is to say the
+velvet jacket, the flowered silk waistcoat, and the unknotted tie of
+deep crimson or old gold kept in place by a prelate's ring; he lunched
+every day at the Arts Club, and since he was making at least £6000 a
+year, he did not bother to go back to his office in the afternoon. John
+had met him first soon after his father's death in 1890 somewhere in
+Northamptonshire where Crutchley was restoring a church--his first big
+job--and where John was editing temporarily a local paper. In those days
+John reacting from dog-biscuits was every bit as romantic as he was now;
+he and the young architect had often talked the sun up and spoken
+ecstatically of another medieval renaissance, of the nobility of
+handicrafts and of the glory of the guilds. Later on, when John in the
+reaction from journalism embarked upon realistic novels, Crutchley was
+inclined to quarrel with him as a renegade, and even went so far as to
+send him a volume of Browning's poems with _The Lost Leader_ heavily
+marked in red pencil. Considering that Crutchley was making more money
+with his gargoyles than himself with his novels John resented the
+accusation of having deserted his friend for a handful of silver; and as
+for the ribbon which he was accused of putting in his coat, John thought
+that the architect was the last person to underline such an accusation,
+when himself for the advancement of his work had joined every
+ecclesiastical society from the English Church Union to the Alcuin Club.
+There was not a ritualistic parson in the land who wanted with or
+without a faculty to erect a rood or reredos but turned to Crutchley for
+his design, principally because his watch-chain jingled with religious
+labels; although to do him justice, even when he was making £6000 a year
+he continued to attend Choral Eucharists as regularly as ever. When John
+abandoned realistic novels and made a success as a romantic playwright
+his friend welcomed him back to the Gothic fold with emotion and
+enthusiasm.
+
+"You and I, John, are almost the only ones left," the architect had
+said, feelingly.
+
+"Come, come, Stephen, you mustn't talk as if I was William de Morgan.
+I'm not yet forty, and you're not yet forty-five," John had replied,
+slightly nettled by this ascription of them to a bygone period.
+
+Yet with all his absurdities and affectations Stephen was a fine fellow
+and a fine architect, and when soon after this he had agreed to take
+Hugh into his office John would have forgiven him if he had chosen to
+perambulate Chelsea in doublet and hose.
+
+Thinking of Stephen as he had known him for twenty years John had no
+qualms when on Monday morning he ascended the winding stone steps that
+led up to his office in the oldest portion of Staple Inn; nor apparently
+had Hugh, who came in as jauntily as ever and greeted his brother with
+genial self-possession.
+
+"I thought you'd blow in this morning. I betted Aubrey half-a-dollar
+that you'd blow in. He tells me you went off in rather a bad temper on
+Saturday night. But you were quite right, Johnnie; that port of George's
+is not good. You were quite right. I shall always respect your verdict
+on wine in future."
+
+"This is not the moment to talk about wine," said John, angrily.
+
+"I'm afraid that owing to George and his confounded elderberry ink I
+didn't put my case quite as clearly as I ought to have done," Hugh went
+on, serenely. "But don't worry. As soon as you've settled with Stevie, I
+shall tell you all about it. I think you'll be thrilled. It's a pity
+you've moved into Wardour Street, or you might have made a good story
+out of it."
+
+One of the clerks came back with an invitation for John to follow him
+into Mr. Crutchley's own room, and he was glad to escape from his
+brother's airy impenitence.
+
+"Wonderful how Stevie acts up to the part, isn't it?" commented Hugh,
+when he saw John looking round him at the timbered rooms with their
+ancient furniture and medieval blazonries through which they were
+passing.
+
+"I prefer to see Crutchley alone," said John, coldly. "No doubt he will
+send for you when your presence is required."
+
+Hugh nodded amiably and went over to his desk in one of the latticed
+oriel windows, the noise of the Holborn traffic surging in through which
+reminded the listener that these perfectly medieval rooms were in the
+heart of modern London.
+
+"I should rather like to live in chambers here myself," thought John. "I
+believe they would give me the very atmosphere I require for Joan of
+Arc; and I should be close to the theaters."
+
+This project appealed to him more than ever when he entered the
+architect's inmost sanctum, which containing nothing that did not belong
+to the best period of whatever it was, wrought iron or carved wood or
+embroidered stuff, impressed John's eye for a scenic effect. Nor was
+there too much of it: the room was austere, not even so full as a
+Carpaccio interior. Modernity here wore a figleaf; wax candles were
+burned instead of gas or electric light; and even the telephone was
+enshrined in a Florentine casket. When the oaken door covered with huge
+nails and floriated hinges was closed, John sat down upon what is called
+a Glastonbury chair and gazed at his friend who was seated upon a gilt
+throne under a canopy of faded azure that was embroidered with golden
+unicorns, wyverns, and other fabulous monsters in a pasture of silver
+fleurs-de-lys.
+
+"Have a cigar," said the Master, as he liked to be called, pushing
+across the refectory table that had come out of an old Flemish monastery
+a primitive box painted with scenes of saintly temptations, but lined
+with cedar wood and packed full of fat Corona Coronas.
+
+"It seems hardly appropriate to smoke cigars in this room," John
+observed. "Even a churchwarden-pipe would be an anachronism here."
+
+"Yes, yes," Stephen assented, tossing back his hair with the authentic
+Vikingly gesture. "But cigars are the chief consolation we have for
+being compelled to exist in this modern world. I haven't seen you,
+John, since you returned from America. How's work?"
+
+"_Lucretia_ went splendidly in New York. And I'm in the middle of _Joan
+of Arc_ now."
+
+"I'm glad, I'm glad," the architect growled as fiercely as one of the
+great Victorians. "But for Heaven's sake get the coats right. Theatrical
+heraldry is shocking. And get the ecclesiastical details right.
+Theatrical ritual is worse. But I'm glad you're giving 'em Joan of Arc.
+Keep it up, keep it up. The modern drama wants disinfecting."
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't care to advise me about the costumes and
+processions and all that," John suggested, offering his friend a pinch
+of his romantic Sanitas.
+
+"Yes, I will. Of course, I will. But I must have a free hand. An
+absolutely free hand, John. I won't have any confounded play-actor
+trying to tell me that it doesn't matter if a bishop in the fifteenth
+century does wear a sixteenth century miter, because it's more effective
+from the gallery. Eh? I know them. You know them. A free hand or you can
+burn Joan on an asbestos gasfire, and I won't help you."
+
+"Your help would be so much appreciated," John assured him, "that I can
+promise you an absolutely short hand."
+
+The architect stared at the dramatist.
+
+"What did I say? I mean free hand--extraordinary slip," John laughed a
+little awkwardly. "Yes, your name, Stephen, is just what we shall
+require to persuade the skeptical that it is worth while making another
+attempt with Joan of Arc. I can promise you some fine opportunities.
+I've got a particularly effective tableau to show the miserable
+condition of France before the play begins. The curtain will rise upon
+the rearguard of an army marching out of a city, heavy snow will fall,
+and above the silence you will hear the howling of the wolves following
+in the track of the troops. This is an historical fact. I may even
+introduce several wolves upon the stage. But I rather doubt if trained
+wolves are procurable, although at a pinch we could use large dogs--but
+don't let me run away with my own work like this. I did not come here
+this morning to talk about Joan of Arc, but about my brother Hugh."
+
+John rose from his chair and walked nervously up and down the room,
+while Stephen Crutchley managed to exaggerate a slight roughness at the
+back of his throat into a violent fit of coughing.
+
+"I see you feel it as much as I do," John murmured, while the architect
+continued to express his overwrought feelings in bronchial spasms.
+
+"I would have spared you this," the architect managed to gasp at last.
+
+"I'm sure you would," said John, warmly. "But since in what I hope was a
+genuine impulse of contrition not entirely dictated by motives of
+self-interest Hugh has confessed his crime to me, I am come here this
+morning confident that you will allow me to--in other words--what was
+the exact sum? I shall of course remove him from your tutelage this
+morning."
+
+John's eloquence was not spontaneous; he had rehearsed this speech on
+the way from Hampstead that morning, and he was agreeably surprised to
+find that he had been able owing to his friend's coughing-fit to
+reproduce nearly all of it. He had so often been robbed of a prepared
+oration by some unexpected turn of the conversation that he felt now
+much happier than he ought under the weight of a family scandal.
+
+"Your generosity...." he continued.
+
+"No, no," interrupted the architect, "it is you who are generous."
+
+The two romantics gazed at one another with an expression of nobility
+that required no words to enhance it.
+
+"We can afford to be generous," said John, which was perfectly true,
+though the reference was to worth of character rather than to worth of
+capital.
+
+"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence," Crutchley murmured. "But I blame
+myself. I should not have left an old check book lying about. It was
+careless--it was, I do not hesitate to say so, criminally careless. But
+you know my attitude towards money. I am radically incapable of dealing
+with money."
+
+"Of course you are," John assented with conviction. "So am I. Money with
+me is merely a means to an end."
+
+"Exactly what it is with me," the architect declared. "Money in itself
+conveys nothing to me. What I always say to my clients is that if they
+want the best work they must pay for it. It's the work that counts, not
+the money."
+
+"Precisely my own attitude," John agreed. "What people will not
+understand is that an artist charges a high price when he does not want
+to do the work. If people insist on his doing it, they must expect to
+pay."
+
+"And of course," the architect added, "we owe it to our fellows to
+sustain the dignity of our professions. Art in England has already been
+too much cheapened."
+
+"You've kept all your old enthusiasms," John told his friend. "It's
+splendid to find a man who is not spoilt by success. Eighty-one pounds
+you said? I've brought my check book."
+
+"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence, yes. It was like you, John, to
+come forward in this way. But I wish you could have been spared. You
+understand, don't you, that I intended to say nothing about it and to
+blame myself in silence for my carelessness? On the other hand, I could
+not treat your brother with my former confidence. This terrible business
+disturbed our whole relationship."
+
+"I am not going to enlarge on my feelings," said John as he handed the
+architect the stolen sum. "But you will understand them. I believe the
+shock has aged me. I seem to have lost some of my self-reliance. Only
+this morning I was thinking to myself that I must really get a private
+secretary."
+
+"You certainly should have one," the architect agreed.
+
+"Yes, I must. The only thing is that since this dreadful escapade of
+Hugh's I feel that an unbusinesslike creature such as I am ought not to
+put himself in the hands of a young man. What is your experience of
+women? From a business point of view, I mean."
+
+"I think that a woman would do your work much better than a man," said
+the architect, decidedly.
+
+"So do I. I'm very glad to have your advice though."
+
+After this John felt no more reluctant at parting with eighty-one pounds
+six and eightpence than he would have felt in paying a specialist two
+guineas for advising him to take a long rest when he wanted to take a
+long rest. His friend's aloofness from money had raised to a higher
+level what might easily have been a most unpleasant transaction: not
+even one of his heroes could have extricated himself from an involved
+situation more poetically and more sympathetically. It now only remained
+to dispose of the villain.
+
+"Shall we have Hugh in?" John asked.
+
+"I wish I could keep him with me," the architect sighed. "But I don't
+think I have a right to consult my personal feelings. We must consider
+his behavior in itself."
+
+"In any case," said John, quickly, "I have made arrangements about his
+future; he is going to be a mahogany-planter in British Honduras."
+
+"Of course I don't use mahogany much in my work, but if ever ..." the
+architect was beginning, when John waved aside his kindly intentions.
+
+"The impulse is generous, Stephen, but I should prefer that so far as
+you are concerned Hugh should always be as if he had never been. In
+fact, I'm bound to say frankly that I'm glad you do not use mahogany in
+your work. I'm glad that I've chosen a career for Hugh which will cut
+him completely off from what to me will always be the painful
+associations of architecture."
+
+While they were waiting for the sinner to come in, John tried to
+remember the name of the mahogany-planter whom he had met in the
+_Murmania_; but he could get no nearer to it than a vague notion that it
+might have been Raikes, and he decided to leave out for the present any
+allusion to British Honduras.
+
+Hugh entered his chief's room without a blush: he could not have bowed
+his head, however sincere his repentance, because his collars would not
+permit the least abasement; though at least, his brother thought, he
+might have had the decency not to sit down until he was invited, and
+when he did sit down not to pull up his trousers in that aggressive way
+and expose those very defiant socks.
+
+Stephen Crutchley rose from his throne and shambled over to the
+fireplace, leaning against the stone hood of which he took up an
+attitude that would have abashed anybody but Hugh.
+
+"Touchwood," he began, "no doubt you have already guessed why I have
+asked you to speak to me."
+
+Hugh nodded encouragingly.
+
+"I do not wish to enlarge upon the circumstances of your behavior,
+because your brother, my old friend, has come forward to shield you from
+the consequences. Nor do I propose to animadvert upon the forgery
+itself. However lightly you embarked upon it, I don't doubt that by now
+you have sufficiently realized its gravity. What tempted you to commit
+this crime I do not hope to guess; but I fear that such a device for
+obtaining money must have been inspired by debts, whether for cards or
+for horse-racing, or perhaps even for women I do not pretend to know."
+
+"Add waistcoats and whisky and you've got the motive," Hugh chirped. "I
+say, I think your trousers are scorching," he added on a note of anxious
+consideration.
+
+"I do not propose to enlarge on any of these topics," said the
+architect, moving away from the fire and sniffing irritably the faint
+odor of overheated homespun. "What I do wish to enlarge upon is your
+brother's generosity in coming forward like this. Naturally I who have
+known him for twenty years expected nothing else, because he is a man of
+ideals, a writer of whom we are all proud, from whom we all expect great
+things and--however I am not going to enlarge upon his obvious
+qualities. What I do wish to say is that he and I have decided that
+after this business you must leave me. I don't suppose that you
+expected to remain; nor, even if you could, do I suppose that you would
+wish to remain. Perhaps you are not enough in sympathy with my
+aspirations for the future of English architecture to regret our
+parting; but I hope that this lesson you have had will be the means of
+bringing you to an appreciation of what your brother has done for you
+and that in British Honduras you will behave in such a way as to justify
+his generosity. Touchwood, good-by! I did not expect when you came to me
+three years ago that our last farewell would be fraught--would be so
+unpleasant."
+
+John was probably much more profoundly moved by Crutchley's sermon than
+Hugh; indeed he was so much moved that he rose to supplement it with one
+of his own in which he said the same things about the architect that the
+architect had said about him, after which the two romantics looked at
+each other admiringly, while they waited for Hugh to reply.
+
+"I suppose I ought to say I'm very sorry and all that," Hugh managed to
+mutter at last. "Good-by, Mr. Crutchley, and jolly good luck. I'll just
+toddle through the office and say good-by to all the boys, John, and
+then I dare say you'll be ready for lunch."
+
+He swaggered out of the room; when the two friends were left together
+they turned aside with mutual sympathy from the topic of Hugh to discuss
+Joan of Arc and a new transept that Crutchley was designing. When the
+culprit put his head round the door and called out to John that he was
+ready, the two old friends shook hands affectionately and parted with an
+increased regard for each other and themselves.
+
+"Look here, what's all this about British Honduras?" Hugh asked
+indignantly when he and his brother had passed under the arched entry of
+Staple Inn and were walking along Holborn. "I see you're bent on
+gratifying your appetite for romance even in the choice of a colony.
+British Honduras! British humbug!"
+
+"I prefer not do discuss anything except your immediate future," said
+John.
+
+"It's such an extraordinary place to hit on," Hugh grunted in a tone of
+irritated perplexity."
+
+"The immediate future," John repeated, sharply. "To-night you will go
+down to Hampshire and if you wish for any more help from me, you will
+remain there in the strictest seclusion until I have time to settle your
+ultimate future."
+
+"Oh, I shan't at all mind a few weeks in Hampshire. What I'm grumbling
+at is British Honduras. I shall rather enjoy Hampshire in fact. Who's
+there at present?"
+
+John told him, and Hugh made a grimace.
+
+"I shall have to jolly them up a bit. However it's a good job that
+Laurence has lost his faith. I shall be spared his Chloral Eucharists,
+anyway. Where are we going to lunch?"
+
+"Hugh!" exclaimed his outraged brother stopping short in the middle of
+the crowded pavement. "Have you no sense of shame at all? Are you
+utterly callous?"
+
+"Look here, Johnnie, don't start in again on that. I know you had to
+take that line with Stevie, and you'll do me the justice of admitting
+that I backed you up; but when we're alone, do chuck all that. I'm very
+grateful to you for forking out--by the way, I hope you noticed the nice
+little touch in the sum? Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence. The six
+and eightpence was for my lawyer."
+
+"Do you adopt this sickeningly cynical attitude," John besought.
+"Forgery is not a joke."
+
+"Well, this forgery was," Hugh contradicted. "You see, I got hold of
+Stevie's old check book and found he had quite a decent little account
+in Croydon. So I faked his signature--you know how to do that?"
+
+"I don't want to know."
+
+"You copy the signature upside down. Yes, that's the way. Then old
+Aubrey disguised himself with blue glasses and presented the check at
+the bank, just allowing himself five minutes to catch the train back to
+town. I was waiting at the station in no end of a funk. But it was all
+right. The clerk blinked for a minute, but old Aubrey blinked back at
+him as cool as you please, and he shoveled out the gold. Aubrey came
+jingling on to the platform like a milk-can just as the train was
+starting."
+
+"I wish to hear no more."
+
+"And then I found that Stevie was cocking his eye at this check book and
+scratching his head and looking at me and--well, he suspected me. The
+fact of the matter is that Stevie's as keen on his cash as anybody. I
+suppose this is a side account for the benefit of some little lady or
+other."
+
+"Silence," John commanded.
+
+"And then I lost my nerve, so that when Stevie started questioning me
+about his check book I must have looked embarrassed."
+
+"I'm surprised to hear that," John put in, bitterly.
+
+"Yes, I dare say I could have bluffed it out, because I'd taken the
+precaution to cash the check through Aubrey whom Stevie knows nothing
+about. But I don't know. I lost my nerve. Well, thanks very much for
+stumping up, Johnnie; I'm only glad you got so much pleasure out of it
+yourself."
+
+"What do you mean--pleasure?"
+
+"Shut up--don't pretend you didn't enjoy yourself, you old Pharisee.
+Look here where _are_ we going to lunch? I'm carrying a bag full of
+instruments, you know."
+
+John told Hugh that he declined to lunch with him in his present mood of
+bravado, and at the corner of Chancery Lane they parted.
+
+"Mind," John warned him, "if you wish for any help from me you are to
+remain for the present at Ambles."
+
+"My dear chap, I don't want to remain anywhere else; but I wish you
+could appreciate the way in which the dark and bloody deed was done, as
+one of your characters would say. You haven't uttered a word of
+congratulation. After all, it took some pluck, you know, and the
+signature was an absolutely perfect fake--perfect. The only thing that
+failed was my nerve afterwards. But I suppose I should be steadier
+another time."
+
+John hurried away in a rage and walked up the Strand muttering:
+
+"What _was_ the name of that mahogany-planter? _Was_ it Raikes or wasn't
+it? I must find his card."
+
+It was not until he had posted the following letter that he recovered
+some of his wonted serenity.
+
+36 CHURCH ROW,
+
+Hampstead, N.W.,
+
+_Nov. 28, 1910._
+
+MY DEAR MISS HAMILTON,--In case I am too shy to broach the subject at
+lunch on Wednesday I am writing to ask you beforehand if in your wildest
+dreams you have ever dreamt that you could be a private secretary. I
+have for a long time been wanting a secretary, and as you often spoke
+with interest of my work I am in hopes that the idea will not be
+distasteful to you. I should not have dared to ask you if you had not
+mentioned shorthand yesterday and if Mrs. Hamilton had not said
+something about your typewriting. This seems to indicate that at any
+rate you have considered the question of secretarial work. The fact of
+the matter is that in addition to my plays I am much worried by family
+affairs, so much so that I am kept from my own work and really require
+not merely mechanical assistance, but also advice on many subjects on
+which a woman is competent to advise.
+
+I gathered also from your mother's conversation that you yourself were
+sometimes harassed by family problems and I thought that perhaps you
+might welcome an excuse to get away from them for awhile.
+
+My notions of the salary that one ought to offer a private secretary are
+extremely vague. Possibly our friend Miss Merritt would negotiate the
+business side, which to me as an author is always very unpleasant. I
+should of course accept whatever Miss Merritt proposed without
+hesitation. My idea was that you would work with me every morning at
+Hampstead. I have never yet attempted dictation myself, but I feel that
+I could do it after a little practice. Then I thought you could lunch
+with me, and that after lunch we could work on the materials--that is to
+say that I should give you a list of things I wanted to know, which you
+would search for either in my own library or at the British Museum. Does
+this strike you as too heavy a task? Perhaps Miss Merritt will advise
+you on this matter too.
+
+If Mrs. Hamilton is opposed to the idea, possibly I might call upon her
+and explain personally my point of view. In the meantime I am looking
+forward to our lunch and hoping very much that you will set my mind at
+rest by accepting the post. I think I told you I was working on a play
+with Joan of Arc as the central figure. It is interesting, because I am
+determined not to fall into the temptation of introducing a factitious
+love-interest, which in my opinion spoilt Schiller's version.
+
+Yours sincerely,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When after lunch on Wednesday afternoon John relinquished Miss Hamilton
+to the company of her friend Miss Merritt at Charing Cross Station, he
+was relinquishing a secretary from whom he had received an assurance
+that the very next morning she would be at his elbow, if he might so
+express himself. In his rosiest moments he had never expected so swift a
+fulfilment of his plan, and he felt duly grateful to Miss Merritt, to
+whose powers of persuasion he ascribed the acceptance in spite of Mrs.
+Hamilton's usually only too effective method of counteracting any kind
+of independent action on her daughter's part. On the promenade deck of
+the _Murmania_ Miss Merritt had impressed John with her resolute
+character; now she seemed to him positively Napoleonic, and he was more
+in awe of her than ever, so much so indeed that he completely failed to
+convey his sense of obligation to her good offices and could only beam
+at her like a benevolent character in a Dickens novel. Finally he did
+manage to stammer out his desire that she would charge herself with the
+financial side of the agreement and was lost in silent wonder when she
+had no hesitation in suggesting terms based on the fact that Miss
+Hamilton had no previous experience as a secretary.
+
+"Later on, if you're satisfied with her," she said, "you must increase
+her salary; but I will be no party to over-payment simply because she is
+personally sympathetic to you."
+
+How well that was put, John thought. Personally sympathetic! How
+accurately it described his attitude toward Miss Hamilton. He took leave
+of the young women and walked up Villiers Street, cheered by the
+pleasant conviction that the flood of domestic worries which had
+threatened to destroy his peace of mind and overwhelm his productiveness
+was at last definitely stayed.
+
+"She's exactly what I require," he kept saying to himself, exultantly.
+"And I think I may claim without unduly flattering myself that the post
+I have offered her is exactly what she requires. From what that very
+nice girl Miss Merritt said, it is evidently a question of asserting
+herself now or never. With what a charming lack of self-consciousness
+she agreed to the salary and even suggested the hours of work herself.
+Oh, she's undoubtedly practical--very practical; but at the same time
+she has not got that almost painfully practical exterior of Miss
+Merritt, who must have broken in a large number of difficult employers
+to acquire that tight set of her mouth. Probably I shall be easy to
+manage, so working for me won't spoil her unbusinesslike appearance.
+To-morrow we are to discuss the choice of a typewriter; and by the way,
+I must arrange which room she is to use for typing. The noise of a
+machine at high speed would be as prejudicial to composition as Viola's
+step-dancing. Yes, I must arrange with Mrs. Worfolk about a room."
+
+John's faith in his good luck was confirmed by the amazing discovery
+that Mrs. Worfolk had known his intended secretary as a child.
+
+"Her old nurse in fact!" he exclaimed joyfully, for such a melodramatic
+coincidence did not offend John's romantic palate.
+
+"No, sir, not her nurse. I never was not what you might call a nurse
+proper. Well, I mean to say, though I was always fond of children I
+seemed to take more somehow to the house itself, and so I never got
+beyond being a nursemaid. After that I gave myself up to rising as high
+as a housemaid _can_ rise until I married Mr. Worfolk. Perhaps you may
+remember me once passing the remark that I'd been in service with a
+racing family? Well, after I left them I took a situation as upper
+housemaid with a very nice family in the county of Unts, and who came up
+to London for the season to Grosvenor Gardens. Then I met Mr. Worfolk
+who was a carpenter and he made packing-cases for Mr. Hamilton who was
+your young lady's pa. Oh, I remember him well. There was a slight
+argument between Mr. Worfolk and I--well, not argument, because ours was
+a very happy marriage, but a slight conversation as to whether he was to
+make cases for Chi-ner or Chi-nese knick-knacks, and Mr. Worfolk was
+wrong."
+
+"But were you in service with Mr. Hamilton? Did he live in
+Huntingdonshire?"
+
+"No, no, sir. You're getting very confused, if you'll pardon the
+obsivation. Very confused, you're getting. This Mr. Hamilton was a
+customer of Mr. Worfolk and through him coming to superintend his
+Chi-nese valuables being packed I got to know his little girl--your
+secretary as is to be. Oh, I remember her perfickly. Why, I mended a
+hole in her stocking once. Right above the garter it was, and she was so
+fond of our Tom. Oh, but he _was_ a beautiful mouser. I've heard many
+people say they never saw a finer cat nowhere."
+
+"You have a splendid memory, Mrs. Worfolk."
+
+"Yes, sir. I have got a good memory. Why, when I was a tiny tot I can
+remember my poor grandpa being took sudden with the colic and rolling
+about on the kitchen hearth-rug, groaning, as you might say, in a agony
+of pain. Well, he died the same year as the Juke of Wellington, but
+though I was taken to the Juke's funeral by my poor mother, I've
+forgotten that. Well, one can't remember everything, and that's a fact;
+one little thing will stick and another little thing won't. Well, I mean
+to say, it's a good job anybody can't remember everything. I'm shaw
+there's enough trouble in the world as it is."
+
+Mrs. Worfolk startled the new secretary when she presented herself at 36
+Church Row next day by embracing her affectionately in the hall before
+she had explained the reason for such a demonstration. It soon
+transpired, however, that Miss Hamilton's memory was as good as Mrs.
+Worfolk's and that she had not forgotten those jolly visits to the
+carpenter long ago, nor even the big yellow Tomcat. As for the master
+of the house, he raised his housekeeper's salary to show what importance
+he attached to a good memory.
+
+For a day or two John felt shy of assigning much work to his secretary;
+but she soon protested that, if she was only going to type thirty to
+fifty lines of blank verse every other morning, she should resign her
+post on the ground that it was an undignified sinecure.
+
+"What about dictating your letters? You made such a point of my knowing
+shorthand."
+
+"Yes, I did, didn't I?" John agreed.
+
+Dictation made him very nervous at first; but with a little practice he
+began to enjoy it, and ultimately it became something in the nature of a
+vice. He dictated immensely long letters to friends whose very existence
+he had forgotten for years, the result of which abrupt revivals of
+intercourse was a shower of appeals to lend money to these companions of
+his youth. Yet this result did not discourage him from the habit of
+dictating for dictation's sake, and every night before he turned over to
+go to sleep he used to poke about in the rubbish-heap of the past for
+more forgotten friends. As a set off to incommoding himself with a host
+of unnecessary correspondents he became meticulously businesslike, and
+after having neglected Miss Janet Bond for several weeks he began to
+write to her daily about the progress of the play, which notwithstanding
+his passion for dictation really was progressing at last. Indeed he
+worked up the manageress of the Parthenon to such a pitch of excitement
+that one morning she appeared suddenly at Church Row and made a dramatic
+entrance into the library when John, who had for the moment exhausted
+his list of friends, was dictating a letter to _The Times_ about the
+condition of some trees on Hampstead Heath.
+
+"I've broken in upon your inspiration," boomed Miss Bond in tones that
+she usually reserved for her most intensely tragic moments.
+
+In vain did the author asseverate that he was delighted to see her; she
+rushed away without another word; but that evening she wrote him an
+ecstatic letter from her dressing-room about what it had meant to her
+and what it always would mean to her to think of his working like that
+for her.
+
+"But we mustn't deride Janet Bond," said the author to his secretary,
+who was looking contemptuously at the actress's heavy caligraphy. "We
+must remember that she will create Joan of Arc."
+
+"Yes, it's a pity, isn't it?" Miss Hamilton commented, dryly.
+
+"Oh, but won't you allow that she's a great actress?"
+
+"I will indeed," she murmured with an emphatic nod.
+
+Carried along upon his flood of correspondence John nevertheless managed
+to steer clear of his relations, and in his present frame of mind he was
+inclined to attribute his successful course like everything else that
+was prospering just now to the advent of Miss Hamilton. However, it was
+too much to expect that with his newly discovered talent he should
+resist dictating at any rate one epistolary sermon to his youngest
+brother, of whose arrival at Ambles he had been sharply notified by
+Hilda. This weighty address took up nearly a whole morning, and when it
+was finished John was disconcerted by Miss Hamilton's saying:
+
+"You don't really want me to type all this out?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me that whatever he's done this won't
+make him repent. You don't mind my criticizing you?"
+
+"I asked you to," he reminded her.
+
+"Well, it seems to me a little false--a little, if I may say so,
+complacently wrathful. It's the sort of thing I seem to remember reading
+and laughing at in old-fashioned books. Of course, I'll type it out at
+once if you insist, but it's already after twelve o'clock, and we have
+to go over the material for the third act. I can't somehow fit in what
+you've just been dictating with what you were telling me yesterday about
+the scene between Gilles de Rais and Joan. I'm so afraid that you'll
+make Joan preach, and of course she mustn't preach, must she?"
+
+"All right," conceded John, trying not to appear mortified. "If you
+think it isn't worth sending, I won't send it."
+
+He fancied that she would be moved by his sensitiveness to her judgment;
+but, without a tremor, she tore the pages out of her shorthand book and
+threw them into the waste-paper basket. John stared at the ruthless
+young woman in dismay.
+
+"Didn't you mean me to take you at your word?" she asked, severely.
+
+He was not altogether sure that he had, but he lacked the courage to
+tell her so and checked an impulse to rescue his stillborn sermon from
+the grave.
+
+"Though I don't quite like the idea of leaving my brother at Ambles with
+nothing to occupy his energies," John went on, meditatively, "I'm
+doubtful of the prudence of exposing him to the temptations of
+idleness."
+
+"If you want to give him something to do, why don't you intrust him with
+getting ready the house for your Christmas party? You are always
+worrying about its emptiness."
+
+"But isn't that putting in his way temptations of a more positive kind?"
+he suggested.
+
+"Not if you set a limit to your expenditure. Can you trust his taste? He
+ought to be an adept at furnishings."
+
+"Oh, I think he'd do the actual furnishing very well. But won't it seem
+as if I am overlooking his abominable behavior too easily?"
+
+With a great effort John kept his eyes averted from the waste-paper
+basket.
+
+"You must either do that or refuse to have anything more to do with
+him," Miss Hamilton declared. "You can't expect him to be the mirror of
+your moral superiority for the rest of his life."
+
+"You seem to take quite an interest in him," said John, a little
+resentfully.
+
+Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"All right," he added, hurriedly. "I'll authorize him to prepare the
+house for Christmas. He must fight his own battles with my sister,
+Hilda. At any rate, it will annoy her."
+
+Miss Hamilton shook her head in mock reproof.
+
+"Act Three. Scene One," the dramatist announced in the voice of a mystic
+who has at last shaken himself free from earthly clogs and is about to
+achieve levitation. It was consoling to perceive that his secretary's
+expression changed in accord with his own, and John decided that she
+really was a most attractive young woman and not so unsympathetic as he
+had been upon the verge of thinking. Moreover, she was right. The
+important thing at present, the only thing, in fact, was the progress of
+the play, and it was for this very purpose that he had secured her
+collaboration--well, perhaps collaboration was too strong a word--but,
+indeed, so completely had she identified herself with his work that
+really he could almost call it collaboration. He ought not to tax his
+invention at this critical point with such a minor problem as the
+preparation of Ambles for a family reunion. Relations must go to the
+deuce in their own way, at any rate until the rough draft of the third
+act was finished, which, under present favorable conditions, might
+easily happen before Christmas. His secretary was always careful not to
+worry him with her own domestic bothers, though he knew by the way she
+had once or twice referred to her mother that she was having her own
+hard fight at home. He had once proposed calling upon the old lady; but
+Doris had quickly squashed the suggestion. John liked to think about
+Mrs. Hamilton, because through some obscure process of logic it gave him
+an excuse to think about her daughter as Doris. In other connections he
+thought of her formally as Miss Hamilton, and often told himself how
+lucky it was that so charming and accomplished a young woman should be
+so obviously indifferent to--well, not exactly to himself, but surely he
+might allege to anything except himself as a romantic playwright.
+
+Meanwhile, the play itself marched on with apparent smoothness, until
+one morning John dictated the following letter to his star:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOND,--Much against my will, I have come to the conclusion
+that without a human love interest a play about Joan of Arc is
+impossible. You will be surprised by my abrupt change of front, and you
+will smile to yourself when you remember how earnestly I argued against
+your suggestion that I might ultimately be compelled to introduce a
+human love interest. The fact of the matter is that now I have arrived
+at the third act I find patriotism too abstract an emotion for the
+stage. As you know, my idea was to make Joan so much positively
+enamoured of her country that the ordinary love interest would be
+superseded. I shall continue to keep Joan herself heart free; but I do
+think that it would be effective to have at any rate two people in love
+with her. My notion is to introduce a devoted young peasant who will
+follow her from her native village, first to the court at Chinon, and so
+on right through the play until the last fatal scene in the market place
+at Rouen. I'm sure such a simple lover could be made very moving, and
+the contrast would be valuable; moreover, it strikes me as a perfectly
+natural situation. Further, I propose that Gilles de Rais should not
+only be in love with her, but that he should actually declare his love,
+and that she should for a brief moment be tempted to return it, finally
+spurning him as a temptation of the Devil, and thereby reducing him to
+such a state of despair that he is led into the horrible practices for
+which he was finally condemned to death. Let me know your opinion soon,
+because I am at this moment working on the third act.
+
+Yours very sincerely,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To which Miss Bond replied by telegram:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Complete confidence in you, and think suggestion magnificent, there
+should be exit speech of renunciation for Joan to bring down curtain of
+third act.
+
+JANET BOND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You agree with these suggestions?" John asked his secretary.
+
+"Like Miss Bond, I have complete confidence in you," she replied.
+
+He looked at her earnestly to see if she was laughing at him, and put
+down his pen.
+
+"Do you know that in some ways you yourself remind me of Joan?"
+
+It was a habit of John's, who had a brain like a fly's eye, to perceive
+historical resemblances that were denied to an ordinary vision.
+Generally he discovered these reincarnations of the past in his own
+personality. While he was writing _The Fall of Babylon_ he actually
+fretted himself for a time over a fancied similarity between his
+character and Nebuchadnezzar's, and sometimes used to wonder if he was
+putting too much of himself into his portrayal of that dim potentate;
+and during his composition of _Lucretia_ he was so profoundly convinced
+that Cæsar Borgia was simply John Touchwood over again in a more
+passionate period and a more picturesque costume that, as the critics
+pointed out, he presented the world with an aspect of him that would
+never have been recognized by Machiavelli. Yet, even when Harold was
+being most unpleasant, or when Viola and Bertram were deafening his
+household, John could not bring himself to believe that he and Gilles de
+Rais, who was proved to have tortured over three hundred children to
+death, had many similar traits; nor was he willing to admit more than a
+most superficial likeness to the feeble Dauphin Charles. In fact, at one
+time he was so much discouraged by his inability to adumbrate himself in
+any of his personages that he began to regret his choice of Joan of Arc
+and to wish that he had persevered in his intention to write a play
+about Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom, allowing for the sundering years,
+he felt he had more in common than with any other historical figure.
+Therefore he was relieved to discover this resemblance between his
+heroine and his secretary, in whom he was beginning to take nearly as
+much interest as in himself.
+
+"Do you mean outwardly?" asked Miss Hamilton, looking at an engraving of
+the bust from the church of St. Maurice, Orleans. "If so, I hope her
+complexion wasn't really as scaly as that."
+
+"No, I mean in character."
+
+"I suppose a private secretary ought not to say 'what nonsense' to her
+employer, but really what else can I say? You might as well compare Ida
+Merritt to Joan of Arc; in fact, she really is rather like my conception
+of her."
+
+"I'm sorry you find the comparison so far-fetched," John said, huffily.
+"It wasn't intended to be uncomplimentary."
+
+"Have you decided to introduce those wolves in the first act, because I
+think I ought to begin making inquiries about suitable dogs?"
+
+When Miss Hamilton rushed away from the personal like this, John used to
+regret that he had changed their relationship from one of friendship to
+one of business. Although he admired practicalness, he realized that it
+was possible to be too practical, and he sighed sometimes for the tone
+that his unknown admirers took when they wrote to him about his work.
+Only that morning he had received a letter from one of these, which he
+had tossed across the table for his secretary's perusal before he
+dictated a graceful reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HILLCREST,
+
+Highfield Road,
+
+Hornsey, N.,
+
+_Dec. 14, 1910_.
+
+DEAR SIR:--I have never written to an author before, but I cannot help
+writing to ask you _when_ you are going to give us another play. I
+cannot tell you how much I enjoy your plays--they take me into another
+world. Please do not imagine that I am an enthusiastic schoolgirl. I am
+the mother of four dear little children, and my husband and I both act
+in a dramatic club at Hornsey. We are very anxious to perform one of
+your plays, but the committee is afraid of the expense. I suppose it
+would be asking too much of you to lend us some of the costumes of _The
+Fall of Babylon_. I think it is your greatest work up till now, and I
+simply live in all those wonderful old cities now and read everything I
+can find about them. I was brought up very strictly when I was young and
+grew to hate the Bible--please do not be shocked at this--but since I
+saw _The Fall of Babylon_ I have taken to reading it again. I went nine
+times--twice in the gallery, three times in the pit, twice in the upper
+circle and twice in the dress circle, once in the fifth row at the side
+and once right in the middle of the front row! I cut out the enclosed
+photo of you from _The Tatler_, and, would it be asking too much to sign
+your name? Hoping for the pleasure of a reply, I remain,
+
+Your sincere admirer,
+
+(MRS.) ENID FOSTER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What extraordinary lunatics there are in this world," Miss Hamilton had
+commented. "Have you noticed the one constant factor in these letters?
+All the women begin by saying that it is the first time they have ever
+written to an author; of course, they would say the same thing to a man
+who kissed them. The men, however, try to convey that they're in the
+habit of writing to authors. I think there's a moral to be extracted
+from that observation."
+
+Now, John had not yet attained--and perhaps it was improbable that he
+ever would attain--those cold summits of art out of reach alike of the
+still, sad music and the hurdy-gurdies of humanity, so that these
+letters from unknown men and women, were they never so foolish,
+titillated his vanity, which he called "appealing to his imagination."
+
+"One must try to put oneself in the writer's place," he had urged,
+reproachfully.
+
+"Um--yes, but I can't help thinking of Mrs. Enid Foster living in those
+wonderful old cities. Her household will crash like Babylon if she isn't
+careful, and her family will be reduced to eating grass like
+Nebuchadnezzar, if the green-grocer's book is neglected any longer."
+
+"You won't allow the suburbs to be touched by poetry?"
+
+John had tried to convey in his tone that Miss Hamilton in criticizing
+the enthusiasm of Mrs. Foster was depreciating his own work. But she had
+seemed quite unconscious of having rather offended him and had taken
+down his answer without excusing herself. Now when in a spirit that was
+truly forgiving he had actually compared her to his beloved heroine, she
+had scoffed at him as if he was a kind of Mrs. Foster himself.
+
+"You're very matter-of-fact," he muttered.
+
+"Isn't that a rather desirable quality in a secretary?"
+
+"Yes, but I think you might have waited to hear why you reminded me of
+Joan of Arc before you began talking about those confounded wolves,
+which, by the way, I have decided to cut out."
+
+"Don't cut out a good effect just because you're annoyed with me," she
+advised.
+
+"Oh no, there are other reasons," said John, loftily. "It is possible
+that in an opening tableau the audience may not appreciate that they are
+wolves, and if they think they're only a lot of stray dogs, the effect
+will go for nothing. It was merely a passing idea, and I have discarded
+it."
+
+Miss Hamilton left him to go and type out the morning's correspondence,
+and John settled down to a speech by the Maid on the subject of
+perpetual celibacy: he wrote a very good one.
+
+"She may laugh at me," said the author to himself, "but she _is_ like
+Joan--extraordinarily like. Why, I can hear her making this very
+speech."
+
+Miss Hamilton might sometimes profane John's poetic sanctuaries and
+sometimes pull his leg when he was on tiptoe for a flight like Mr.
+Keats' sweetpeas, but she made existence much more pleasant for him, and
+he had already reached the stage of wondering how he had ever managed to
+get along without her. He even went so far in his passion for historical
+parallels as to compare his situation before she came to the realm of
+France before Joan of Arc took it in hand. He knew in his heart that
+these weeks before Christmas were unnaturally calm; he had no hope of
+prolonging this halcyon time much further; but while it lasted he would
+enjoy it to the full. Any one who had overheard John announcing to his
+reflection in the glass an unbridled hedonism for the immediate future
+might have been pardoned for supposing that he was about to amuse
+himself in a very desperate fashion. As a matter of fact, the averred
+intention was due to nothing more exciting than the prospect of a long
+walk over the Heath with Miss Hamilton to discuss an outline of the
+fourth act, which John knew would gradually be filled in with his plans
+for writing other plays and finally be colored by a conversation, or,
+anyhow, a monologue about himself as a human being without reference to
+himself as an author.
+
+"What is so delightful about Miss Hamilton," he assured that credulous
+and complaisant reflection, "is the way one can talk to her without
+there being the least danger of her supposing that one has any ulterior
+object in view. Notwithstanding all the rich externals of the past, I'm
+bound to confess that the relations between men and women are far more
+natural nowadays. I suppose it was the bicycle that began female
+emancipation; had bicycles been invented in the time of Joan of Arc she
+would scarcely have had to face so much ecclesiastical criticism of her
+behavior."
+
+The walk was a success; amongst other things, John discovered that if he
+had had a sister like Miss Hamilton, most of his family troubles would
+never have arisen. He shook his head sadly at the thought that once upon
+a time he had tried to imagine a Miss Hamilton in Edith, and in a burst
+of self-revelation, like the brief appearance of two or three acres of
+definitely blue sky overhead, he assured his secretary that her coming
+had made a difference to his whole life.
+
+"Well, of course you get through much more in the day now," she agreed.
+
+John would have liked a less practical response, but he made the best of
+it.
+
+"I've got so much wrapped up in the play," he said, "that I'm wondering
+now if I shall be able to tear myself away from London for Christmas. I
+dread the idea of a complete break--especially with the most interesting
+portion just coming along. I think I must ask you to take your holiday
+later in the year, if you don't mind."
+
+He had got it out, and if he could have patted himself on the back
+without appearing ridiculous in a public thoroughfare he would have done
+so. His manner might have sounded brusque, but John was sure that the
+least suggestion of any other attitude except that of an employer
+compelled against his will to seem inconsiderate would have been fatal.
+
+"That would mean leaving my mother alone," said Miss Hamilton,
+doubtfully.
+
+John looked sympathetic, but firm, when he agreed with her.
+
+"She would understand that literary work takes no account of the church
+calendar," he pointed out. "After all, what is Christmas?"
+
+"Unfortunately, my mother is already very much offended with me for
+working with you at all. Oh, well, bother relations!" she exclaimed,
+vehemently. "I'm going to be selfish in future. All right, if you
+insist, I must obey--or lose my job, eh?"
+
+"I might have to engage a locum tenens. You see, now that I've got into
+the habit of dictating my letters and relying upon somebody else to keep
+my references in order and--"
+
+"Yes, yes," she interrupted. "I quite see that it would put you to great
+inconvenience if I cried off. All the same, I can't help being worried
+by the notion of leaving mother alone on Christmas Day itself. Why
+shouldn't I join you on the day after?"
+
+"The very thing," John decided. "I will leave London on Christmas Eve,
+and you shall come down on Boxing Day. But I should travel in the
+morning, if I were you. It's apt to be unpleasant, traveling in the
+evening on a Bank Holiday. Hullo, here we are! This walk has given me a
+tremendous appetite, and I do feel that we've made a splendid start with
+the fourth act, don't you?"
+
+"The fourth act?" repeated his secretary. "It seems to me that most of
+the time you were talking about the position of women in modern life."
+
+John laughed gayly.
+
+"Ah, I see you haven't even yet absolutely grasped my method of work. I
+was thinking all the while of Joan's speech to her accusers. I can
+assure you that all my remarks were entirely relevant to what I had in
+my head. That's the way I get my atmosphere. I told you that you
+reminded me of her, but you wouldn't believe me. In doublet and hose you
+would be Joan."
+
+"Should I? I think I should look more like Dick Whittington in a touring
+pantomime. My legs are too thin for tights."
+
+"By the way, I wonder if Janet Bond has good legs?" said John,
+pensively.
+
+It was charming to be able to talk about women's legs like this without
+there being the slightest suggestion that they had any; yet, somehow the
+least promising topics were rehabilitated by the company of Miss
+Hamilton, and most of them, even the oldest, acquired a new and
+absorbing interest. John had registered a vow on the first day his
+secretary came that he would watch carefully for the least signs of
+rosifying her and he had renewed this vow every morning before his
+glass; but it was sometimes difficult not to attribute to her all sorts
+of mysterious fascinations, as on those occasions when he would have
+kept her working later than usual in the afternoon and when she would
+have been persuaded to stay for tea, for which she made a point of
+getting home to please her mother, who gave it a grand importance. John
+was convinced that even James would forgive him for thinking that in all
+England there was not a more competent, a more charming, a more--he used
+to pull himself up guiltily at about the third comparative and stifle
+his fancies in the particularly delicious cake that Mrs. Worfolk always
+seemed to provide on the days when his secretary stayed to tea.
+
+It was on one of these rosified afternoons, full of candlelight and
+firelight and the warmed scent of hyacinths that Miss Hamilton rallied
+John about his exaggerated dread of his relations.
+
+"For I've been working with you now for nearly three weeks, and you've
+not been bothered by them once," she declared.
+
+"My name! My name!" he cried. "Touchwood?"
+
+"I begin to think it's nothing but an affectation," she persisted.
+"_You're_ not pestered by charitable uncles who want to boast of what
+they've done for their poor brother's only daughter. _You're_ not made
+to feel that you've wrecked your mother's old age by earning your own
+living."
+
+"Yes, they have been quiet recently," he admitted. "But there was such a
+terrible outbreak of Family Influenza just before you came that some
+sort of prostration for a time was inevitable. I hope you don't expect
+my brother, Hugh, to commit a forgery every week. Besides, that
+excellent suggestion of yours about preparing Ambles for Christmas has
+kept him busy, and probably all the rest of them down there too. But
+it's odd you should raise the subject, because I was going to propose
+your having supper here some Sunday soon and inviting my eldest brother
+and his wife to meet you."
+
+"To-morrow is the last Sunday before Christmas. The Sunday after is
+Christmas Day."
+
+"Is it really? Then I must dictate an invitation for to-morrow, and I
+must begin to see about presents on Monday. By Jove, how time has
+flown!"
+
+"After all, what is Christmas?" she laughed.
+
+"Oh, you must expect children to be excited about it," John murmured. "I
+don't like to disappoint _them_. But I'd no idea Christmas was on top of
+us like this. You'll help me with my shopping next week? I hope to
+goodness Eleanor won't come and bother me. She'll be getting back to
+town to-morrow. It's really extraordinary, the way the time has passed."
+
+John dictated an urgent invitation to James and Beatrice to sup with
+them the following evening, and since it was too late to let them know
+by post, he decided to see Miss Hamilton as far as the tube and leave
+the note in person at Hill Road.
+
+James arrived for supper in a most truculent mood, and this being
+aggravated by his brother's burgundy, of which he drank a good deal,
+referring to it all the while as poison, much to John's annoyance,
+embroiled him half way through supper in an argument with Miss Hamilton
+on the subject of feminine intelligence.
+
+"Women are not intelligent," he shouted. "The glimmering intelligence
+they sometimes appear to exhibit is only one of their numerous sexual
+allurements. A woman thinks with her nerves, reasons with her emotions,
+and speculates with her sensations."
+
+"Rubbish," said Miss Hamilton, emphatically.
+
+"Now, Jimmie dear," his wife put in, "you'll only have indigestion if
+you get excited while you're eatin'."
+
+"I shall have indigestion anyway," growled her husband. "My liver will
+be like dough to-morrow after this burgundy. I ought to drink a light
+moselle."
+
+"Well, you can have moselle," John began.
+
+"I loathe moselle. I'd as soon drink syrup of squills," James bellowed.
+
+"All right, you shall have syrup of squills next time."
+
+"Oh, Johnnie," Beatrice interposed with a wide reproachful smile.
+"Jimmie's only joking. He doesn't really like syrup of squills."
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't try to analyze my tastes," said James to his
+wife.
+
+John threw a glance at Miss Hamilton, which was meant to express "What
+did I tell you?" But she was blind to his signal and only intent upon
+attacking James on behalf of her sex.
+
+"Women have not the same kind of intelligence as men," she began,
+"because it is denied to them by their physical constitution. But they
+have, I insist, a supplementary intelligence without which the great
+masculine minds would be as ineffective as convulsions of nature. Women
+work like the coral polyps...."
+
+"Bravo!" John cried. "A capital comparison!"
+
+"An absurd comparison!" James contradicted. "A ludicrous comparison!
+Woman is purely individualistic. The moment she begins to take up with
+communal effort, she tends to become sterile."
+
+"Do get on with your supper, dear," urged Beatrice, who had only
+understood the last word and was anxious not "to be made to feel small,"
+as she would have put it, in front of an unmarried woman.
+
+John perceived her mortification and jumped through the argument as a
+clown through a paper hoop.
+
+"Remember I'm expecting you both at Ambles on Christmas Eve," he said,
+boisterously. "We're going to have a real old-fashioned Christmas
+party."
+
+James forgot all about women in his indignation; but before he could
+express his opinion Beatrice held up another paper hoop for the
+distraction of the audience.
+
+"I'm simply longin' for the country," she declared. "Christmas with a
+lot of children is the nicest thing I know."
+
+John went through the hoop with aplomb and refused to be unseated by his
+brother.
+
+"James will enjoy it more than any of us," he chuckled.
+
+"What!" shouted the critic. "I'd sooner be wrecked on a desert island
+with nothing to read but a sixpenny edition of the Christmas Carol.
+Ugh!"
+
+John looked at Miss Hamilton again, and this time his appeal was not
+unheeded; she said no more about women and let James rail on at
+sentimental festivities, which, by the time he had finished with them,
+looked as irreparable as the remains of the tipsy-cake. There seemed no
+reason amid the universal collapse of tradition to conserve the habit of
+letting the ladies retire after dinner. As there was no drawing-room in
+his bachelor household, it would have been more comfortable to smoke
+upstairs in the library; but James returned to Fielding after
+demolishing Dickens and protested against being made to hurry over his
+port; so his host had to watch Beatrice escort Miss Hamilton from the
+dining-room with considerable resentment at what he thought was her
+unjustifiably protective manner.
+
+"As my secretary," he felt, "Miss Hamilton is more at home in my house
+than Beatrice is. I suppose, though, that like everything else I have my
+relations are going to take possession of her now."
+
+"Where did you pick up your lady-help?" James asked, when he and his
+brother were left alone with the wine.
+
+"If you're alluding to Miss Hamilton," John said, sharply, "I met her on
+board the _Murmania_, crossing the Atlantic."
+
+"I never heard any good come of traveling acquaintances. She has a good
+complexion; I suppose she took your eye by not being seasick. Beware of
+women with good complexions who aren't seasick, Johnnie. They always
+flirt."
+
+"Are you supposed to be warning me against my secretary?"
+
+"Any woman who finds herself at a man's elbow is dangerous. Nurses, of
+course, are the most notoriously dangerous--but a secretary who isn't
+seasick is nearly as bad."
+
+"Thanks very much for your brotherly concern," said John, sarcastically.
+"You will be relieved to hear that the relationship between Miss
+Hamilton and myself is a purely practical one, and likely to remain
+so."
+
+"Platonism was never practical," James answered with a snort. "It was
+the most impractical system ever imagined."
+
+"Fortunately Miss Hamilton is sufficiently interested in her work and in
+mine not to bother her head about the philosophy of the affections."
+
+James was irritating when he was criticizing contemporary literature;
+but his views of modern life were infuriating.
+
+"I'm not accusing your young woman--how old is she, by the way? About
+twenty-nine, I should guess. A damned dangerous age, Johnnie. However,
+as I say, I'm not accusing her of designs upon you. But a man who writes
+the kind of plays that you do is capable of any extravagance, and you're
+much too old by now to be thinking about marriage."
+
+"I don't happen to be thinking about marriage," John retorted. "But I
+refuse to accept your dictum about my age. I consider that the effects
+of age have been very much exaggerated by the young. You cannot call a
+man of forty-two old."
+
+"You look much more than forty-two. However, one can't write plays like
+yours without exposing oneself to a good deal of emotional wear and
+tear. No, no, you're making a great mistake in introducing a woman into
+the house. Believe me, Johnnie, I'm speaking for your good. If I hadn't
+married, I might have preserved my illusions about women and compounded
+just as profitable a dose of dramatic nux vomica as yourself."
+
+"What do you mean by a dose of dramatic nux vomica?"
+
+"That's my name for the sort of plays you write, which unduly accelerate
+the action of the heart and make a sane person retch. However, don't
+take my remarks in ill part. I was simply commenting on the danger of
+letting a good-looking young woman make herself indispensable."
+
+"I'm glad you allow her good looks," John said, witheringly. "Any one
+who was listening to our conversation would get the impression that she
+was as ugly and voracious as a harpy."
+
+"Yes, yes. She's quite good-looking. Very nice ankles."
+
+"I haven't noticed her ankles," John said, austerely.
+
+"You will, though," his brother replied with an encouraging laugh. "By
+the way, what's that rascal, Hugh, been doing? I hear you've replanted
+him in the bosom of the family. Isn't Hugh rather too real for one of
+your Christmas parties?"
+
+John, after some hesitation, had decided not to tell any of the others
+the details of Hugh's misdemeanor; he had even denied himself the
+pleasure of holding him up to George as a warning; hence the renewal of
+his interest in Hugh had struck the family as a mere piece of
+sentimentality.
+
+"Crutchley didn't seem to believe he'd ever make much of architecture,"
+he explained to James. "And I'm thinking of helping him to establish
+himself in British Honduras."
+
+"Bah! For less than he'll cost you in British Honduras you could
+establish me as the editor of a new critical weekly," James grunted.
+
+"There is still time for Hugh to make something of his life," John
+replied. He had not had the slightest intention of trying to score off
+his eldest brother by this remark, and he was shocked to see what a
+spasm of ill will twisted up his face.
+
+"I suppose your young woman is responsible for this sudden solicitude
+for Hugh's career? I suppose it's she who has persuaded you that he has
+possibilities? You take care, Johnnie. You can't manipulate the villain
+in life as you can on the stage."
+
+Now, Miss Hamilton, though she had not met him, had shown just enough
+interest in Hugh to give these remarks a sting; and John must have been
+obviously taken aback, for the critic at once recovered his good humor
+and proposed joining the ladies upstairs. Beatrice was sitting by the
+fire; her husband's absence had allowed her to begin the digestion of an
+unusually good dinner in peace, and the smoothness of her countenance
+made her look more than ever like a cabinet photograph of the early
+'nineties. Miss Hamilton, on the other hand, seemed bored, and very
+soon she declared that she must go home lest her mother should be
+anxious.
+
+"Oh, you have a mother?" James observed in such a tone that John thought
+it was the most offensive remark of the many he had heard him make that
+evening. He hoped that Miss Hamilton would not abandon him after this
+first encounter with his relations, and he tried to ascertain her
+impressions while she was putting on her things in the hall.
+
+"I'm afraid you've had a very dull evening," he murmured,
+apologetically. "I hope my sister-in-law wasn't more tiresome than
+usual. What did she talk about?"
+
+"She was warning me--no, I won't be malicious--she was explaining to me
+the difficulties of an author's wife."
+
+"Yes, poor thing; I'm afraid my brother must be very trying to live
+with. I hope you were sympathetic?"
+
+"So sympathetic," Miss Hamilton replied, with a mocking glance, "that I
+told her I was never likely to make the experiment. Good night, Mr.
+Touchwood. To-morrow as usual."
+
+She hurried down the steps and was gone before he could utter a word.
+
+"I don't think she need have said that," he murmured to himself on his
+way back to the library. "I've no doubt Beatrice was very trying; but I
+really don't think she need have said that to me. It wasn't worth
+repeating such a stupid remark. That's the way things acquire an undue
+importance."
+
+With John's entrance the conversation returned to Miss Hamilton; but,
+though it was nearly all implied criticism of his new secretary, he had
+no desire to change the topic. She was much more interesting than the
+weekly bills at Hill Road, and he listened without contradiction to his
+brother's qualms about her experience and his sister-in-law's regrets
+for her lack of it.
+
+"However," said John to his reflection when he was undressing, "they've
+got to make the best of her, even if they all think the worse. And the
+beauty of it is that they can't occupy her as they can occupy a house. I
+must see about getting Hugh off to the Colonies soon. If I don't find
+out about British Honduras, he can always go to Canada or Australia. It
+isn't good for him to hang about in England."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Whether it was due to the Christmas card look of his new house or merely
+to a desire to flaunt a romantic hospitality in the face of his eldest
+brother, it is certain that John had never before in his life gone so
+benevolently mad as during the week that preceded Christmas in the year
+1910. Mindful of that afternoon in the town of Galton when he had tried
+to procure for Harold and Frida gifts of such American appearance as
+would excuse his negligence, he was determined not to expose himself for
+a second time to juvenile criticism, and in the selection of toys he
+pandered to every idiosyncrasy he had so far observed in his nephews and
+nieces. Thus, for Bertram he bought a large stamp album, several sheets
+of tropical stamps, a toy theater, representatives of every species in
+the great genus marbles, a set of expensive and realistic masks, and a
+model fireman's outfit. For Viola he filled a trunk with remnants of
+embroideries and all kinds of stuffs, placing on top two pairs of ebony
+castanets and the most professional tambourine he could find; and, in
+order that nature might not be utterly subordinated to art, he bought
+her a very large doll, rather older in appearance than Viola herself; in
+fact, almost marriageable. In the hope of obliterating the
+disappointment of those china animals, he chose for Frida a completely
+furnished dolls' house with garage and stables attached, so grand a
+house, indeed, that by knocking all the rooms into one, she could with
+slight inconvenience have lived in it herself; this residence he
+populated with gentleman-dolls, lady-dolls, servant-dolls, nurse-dolls,
+baby-dolls, horses, carriages, and motors; nor did he omit to provide a
+fishmonger's shop for the vicinity. For Harold he bought a butterfly
+collector's equipment, a vacuum pistol, a set of climbing-irons, a
+microscope, and at the last moment a juvenile diver's equipment with
+air pumps and all accessories, which was warranted perfectly safe,
+though the wicked uncle wondered if it really was.
+
+"I don't want a mere toy for the bathroom," he explained.
+
+"Quite so, sir," the shopman assented, with a bow. "This is guaranteed
+for any ordinary village pond or small stream."
+
+For his grown-up relations John bought the kind of presents that one
+always does buy for grown-up relations, the kind of presents that look
+very ornamental on the counter, seem very useful when the shopman
+explains what they are for, puzzle the recipient and the donor when the
+shopman is no longer there, and lie about the house on small tables for
+the rest of the year. In the general odor of Russia leather that clung
+to his benefactions John hoped that Miss Hamilton would not consider too
+remarkable the attaché case that he intended to give her, nor amid the
+universal dazzle of silver object to the few little luxuries of the
+writing-desk with which he had enhanced it. Then there were the presents
+for the servants to choose, and he counted much on Miss Hamilton's
+enabling him to introduce into these an utilitarian note that for two or
+three seasons had been missing from his donations, which to an outsider
+might have seemed more like lures of the flesh than sober testimonials
+to service. He also counted upon her to persuade Mrs. Worfolk to
+accompany Maud down to Ambles: Elsa was to be left in Church Row with
+permission to invite to dinner the policeman to whom she was betrothed
+and various friends and relations of the two families.
+
+When the presents were settled John proceeded to lay in a store of
+eatables and drinkables, in the course of which enterprise he was
+continually saying:
+
+"I've forgotten for the moment what I want next, but meanwhile you'd
+better give me another box of Elvas plums."
+
+"Another drum? Yes, sir," the shopman would reply, licking his pencil in
+a way that was at once obsequious and pedantic, though it was not
+intended to suggest more than perfect efficiency.
+
+When the hall and the adjacent rooms at 36 Church Row had been turned
+into rolling dunes of brown paper, John rushed about London in a last
+frenzy of unbridled acquisitiveness to secure plenty of amusement for
+the children. To this end he obtained a few well-known and well-tried
+favorites like the kinetoscope and the magic lantern, and a number of
+experimental diversions which would have required a trained engineer or
+renowned scientist to demonstrate successfully. Finally he bargained for
+the wardrobe of a Santa Claus whose dignified perambulations round the
+Christmas Bazaar of a noted emporium had attracted his fancy on account
+of the number of children who followed him everywhere, laughing and
+screaming with delight. It was not until he had completed the purchase
+that he discovered it was not the exterior of the Santa Claus which had
+charmed his little satellites, but the free distribution of bags of
+coagulated jujubes.
+
+"I expect I'd better get the Christmas tree in the country," said John,
+waist-deep in the still rising drift of parcels. "I dare say the Galton
+shops keep those silver and magenta globes you hang on Christmas trees,
+and I ought to patronize the local tradesmen."
+
+"If you have any local shopping to do, I'm sure you would be wise to go
+down to-day," Miss Hamilton suggested, firmly. "Besides, Mrs. Worfolk
+won't want to arrive at the last minute."
+
+"No, indeed, I shan't, Miss," said the housekeeper. "Well, I mean to
+say, I don't think we ever shall arrive, not if we wait much longer. We
+shall require a performing elephant to carry all these parcels, as it
+is."
+
+"My idea was to go down in the last train on Christmas Eve," John
+argued. "I like the old-fashioned style, don't you know?"
+
+"Yes, old-fashioned's the word," Mrs. Worfolk exclaimed. "Why, who's to
+get the house ready if we all go trooping down on Christmas Eve? And if
+I go, sir, you must come with me. You know how quick Mrs. Curtis always
+is to snap any one up. If I had my own way, I wouldn't go within a
+thousand miles of the country; that's a sure thing."
+
+John began to be afraid that his housekeeper was going back on her word,
+and he surrendered to the notion of leaving town that afternoon.
+
+"I say, what is this parcel like a long drain-pipe?" he asked in a final
+effort to detain Miss Hamilton, who was preparing to make her farewells
+and leave him to his packing.
+
+"Ah, it would take some finding out," Mrs. Worfolk interposed. "I've
+never seen so many shapes and sizes of parcels in all my life."
+
+"They must have made a mistake," said John. "I don't remember buying
+anything so tubular as this."
+
+He pulled away some of the paper wrapping to see what was inside.
+
+"Ah, of course! They're two or three boxes of Elvas plums I ordered. But
+please don't go, Miss Hamilton," he protested. "I am relying upon you to
+get the tickets to Waterloo."
+
+In spite of a strenuous scene at the station, in the course of which
+John's attempts to propitiate Mrs. Worfolk led to one of the porters
+referring to her as his mother, they managed to catch the five o'clock
+train to Wrottesford. After earnestly assuring his secretary that he
+should be perfectly ready to begin work again on Joan of Arc the day
+after her arrival and begging her on no account to let herself be
+deterred from traveling on the morning of Boxing Day, John sank back
+into the pleasant dreams that haunt a warm first-class smoking
+compartment when it's raining hard outside in the darkness of a December
+night.
+
+"We shall have a green Christmas this year," observed one of his fellow
+travelers.
+
+"Very green," John assented with enthusiasm, only realizing as he spoke
+that the superlative must sound absurd to any one who was unaware of his
+thoughts and hiding his embarrassment in the _Westminster Gazette_,
+which in the circumstances was the best newspaper he could have chosen.
+
+John was surprised and depressed when the train arrived at Wrottesford
+to find that the member of the Ambles party who had elected to meet him
+was Hilda; and there was a long argument on the platform who should
+drive in the dogcart and who should drive in the fly. John did not want
+to ride on the back seat of the dogcart, which he would have to do
+unless he drove himself, a prospect that did not attract him when he saw
+how impatiently the mare was dancing about through the extreme lateness
+of the train. Hilda objected to driving with his housekeeper in the fly,
+and in the end John was compelled to let Maud and Mrs. Worfolk occupy
+the dogcart, while he and Hilda toiled along the wet lanes in the fly.
+It was decided to leave the greater portion of the luggage to be fetched
+in the morning, but even so it was after eight o'clock before they got
+away from the station, and John, when he found himself immured with
+Hilda in the musty interior of the hired vehicle was inclined to
+prophesy a blue Christmas this year. To begin with, Hilda would try to
+explain the system she had pursued in allotting the various bedrooms to
+accommodate the large party that was expected at Ambles. It was bad
+enough so long as she confined herself to a verbal exposition, but when
+she produced a map of the house, evidently made by Hugh on an idle
+evening, and to illuminate her dispositions struck away most of John's
+matches, it became exasperating. His brain was already fatigued by the
+puzzle of fitting into two vehicles four pieces, one of which might not
+move to the square next two of the remaining pieces, and another of
+which could not move backward.
+
+"I leave it entirely to you," he declared, introducing at last into the
+intellectual torment of chess some of the happy irresponsibleness of
+bridge. "You mustn't set me these chess problems in a jolting fly before
+dinner."
+
+"Chess!" Hilda sniffed with a shiver. "Draughts would be a better name."
+
+She did not often make jokes, and before John had recovered sufficiently
+from his surprise to congratulate her with a hearty laugh, she was off
+again upon her querulous and rambling narration of the family news.
+
+"If everything _had_ been left to me, I might have managed, but Hugh's
+interference, apparently authorized by you, upset all my poor little
+arrangements. I need hardly say that Mama was so delighted to have her
+favorite at home with her that she has done everything since his arrival
+to encourage his self-importance. It's Hughie this and Hughie that,
+until I get quite sick of the sound of his name. And he's very unkind to
+poor little Harold. Apart from being very coarse and sarcastic in front
+of him, he is sometimes quite brutal. Only this morning he shot him in
+the upper part of the leg with a pellet from the poor little man's own
+air-gun."
+
+John did laugh this time, and shouted "Merry Christmas!" to a passing
+wagon.
+
+"I dare say it sounds very funny to you. But it made Harold cry."
+
+"Come, come, Hilda, it's just as well he should learn the potentialities
+of his own instrument. He'll sympathize with the birds now."
+
+"Birds," she scoffed. "Fancy comparing Harold with a bird!"
+
+"It is rather unfair," John agreed.
+
+"However, you won't be so ready to take Hugh's part when you see what
+he's been doing at Ambles."
+
+"Why, what has he been doing?"
+
+"Oh, never mind. I'd rather you judged for yourself," said Hilda,
+darkly. "Of course, I don't know what Hugh has been up to in London that
+you've had to send him down to Hampshire. I always used to hear you vow
+that you would have nothing more to do with him. But I know that
+successful people are allowed to change their minds more often than the
+rest of us. I know success justifies everything. And it isn't as if Hugh
+was grateful for your kindness. I can assure you that he criticizes
+everything you do. Any stranger who heard him talking about your plays
+would think that they were a kind of disgrace to the family. As for
+Laurence, he encourages him, not because he likes him, but because Hugh
+fills him up with stories about the stage. Though I think that a
+clergyman who has got into such a muddle with his bishops would do
+better not to make himself so conspicuous. The whole neighborhood is
+talking about him."
+
+"What is Laurence's latest?"
+
+"Why, stalking about in a black cloak, with his hair hanging down over
+his collar, stopping people in quiet lanes and reciting Shakespeare to
+them. It's not surprising that half the county is talking about his
+behavior and saying that he was turned out of Newton Candover for being
+drunk when the bishop took a confirmation, and _some_ even say that he
+kept a ballet girl at the vicarage. But do you think that Edith objects?
+Oh, no! All that Laurence does must be right, because it's Laurence. She
+prays for him to get back his belief in the Church of England, though
+who's going to offer him another living I'm sure I don't know, so she
+might just as well spare her knees. And when she's not praying for him,
+she's spoiling him. She actually came out of her room the other morning
+with her finger up to her lips, because Laurence wasn't to be disturbed
+at that moment. I need hardly tell you I paid no attention and went on
+saying what I had to say to Huggins about the disgraceful way he's let
+the pears get so sleepy."
+
+"It's a pity you didn't succeed in waking them up instead of Laurence,"
+John chuckled.
+
+"It's all very well for you to laugh, John, but if you could see the way
+that Edith is bringing up Frida! She's turning her into a regular little
+molly-coddle. I'm sure poor Harold does his best to put some life into
+the child, but she shrinks and twitches whenever he comes near her. I
+told Edith that it wasn't to be wondered at if Harold did tease her
+sometimes. She encourages him to tease her by her affectations. I used
+to think that Frida was quite a nice little girl when I only saw her
+occasionally, but she doesn't improve on acquaintance. However, I blame
+her mother more than I do her. Why, Edith doesn't even make the child
+take her cod-liver oil regularly, whereas Harold drinks his up like a
+little Trojan."
+
+"Never mind," said John, soothingly. "I'm sure we shall all feel more
+cheerful after Christmas. And now, if you don't mind, I'm afraid I must
+keep quiet for the rest of the drive. I've got a scene to think about."
+
+The author turned up the collar of his coat and retired into the further
+corner while Hilda chewed her veil in ruminative indignation until the
+mellow voice of Laurence, who had taken up a statuesque pose of welcome
+by the gate, broke the dank silence of the fly.
+
+"Ah, John, my dear fellow, we are delighted to see you. The rain has
+stopped."
+
+If Laurence had still been on good terms with his Creator, John might
+have thought from his manner that he had personally arranged this break
+in the weather.
+
+"Is Harold there?" asked Hilda, sharply.
+
+"Here I am, mother; I've just caught a Buff-tip, and it won't go into my
+poison-bottle."
+
+"And what is a Buff-tip?" inquired Laurence in a tone of patronizing
+ignorance.
+
+"Oh, it's a pretty common moth."
+
+"Harold, darling, don't bother about moths or butterflies to-night. Come
+and say how d'ye do to dear Uncle John."
+
+"I've dropped the cork of my poison-bottle. Look out, Frida, bother you,
+I say, you'll tread on it."
+
+The combined scents of cyanide of potassium and hot metal from Harold's
+bull's-eye lantern were heavy upon the moist air; when the cork was
+found, Harold lost control over the lantern which he flashed into
+everybody's face in turn, so that John, rendered as helpless as a
+Buff-tip, walked head foremost into a sopping bush by the side of the
+path. However, the various accidents of arrival all escaped being
+serious, and the thought of dinner shortened the affectionate greetings.
+Remembering how Hugh had paid out Harold with his own air-gun, John
+greeted his youngest brother more cordially than he could ever have
+supposed it was possible to greet him again.
+
+By general consent, the owner of the house was allowed to be tired that
+evening, and all discussion of the Christmas preparations was postponed
+until the next day. Harold made a surreptitious attempt to break into
+the most promising parcel he could find, but he was ill rewarded by the
+inside, which happened to be a patent carpet sweeper.
+
+Before old Mrs. Touchwood went to bed, she took John aside and
+whispered:
+
+"They're all against Hughie. But I've tried to make the poor boy feel
+that he's at home, and dear Georgie will be coming very soon, which will
+make it pleasanter for Hugh, and I've thought of a nice way to manage
+Jimmie."
+
+"I think you worry yourself needlessly over Hugh, Mama; I can assure you
+he's perfectly capable of looking after himself."
+
+"I hope so," the old lady sighed. "All my patience came out beautifully
+this evening. So I hope Hughie will be all right. He seemed to think you
+were a little annoyed with him."
+
+"Did he tell you why?"
+
+"Not exactly, but I understand it was something to do with money. You
+mustn't be too strict with Hugh about money, John. You must always
+remember that he hasn't got all the money he wants, and you must make
+allowances accordingly. Ah, dear, peace on earth, good-will towards men!
+But I don't complain. I'm very happy here with my patience, and I dare
+say something can be done to get rid of the bees that have made a nest
+in the wall just under my bedroom window. They're asleep now, but when
+they begin to buzz with the warm weather Huggins must try and induce
+them to move somewhere else. Good-night, my dear boy."
+
+Next morning when John leaned out of his window to inhale the Hampshire
+air and contemplate his domain he was shocked to perceive upon the lawn
+below a large quadrangular excavation in which two workmen were actually
+digging.
+
+"Hi! What are you doing?" he shouted.
+
+The workmen stared at John, stared at one another, stared at their
+spades, and went on with their digging.
+
+"Hi! What the devil are you doing?"
+
+The workmen paid no attention; but the voice of Harold came trickling
+round the corner of the house with a gurgle of self-satisfaction.
+
+"_I_ didn't do it, Uncle John. I began geology last week, but I haven't
+dug up _anything_. Mother wouldn't let me. It was Uncle Hugh and Uncle
+Laurence. Mother knew you'd be angry when you saw what a mess the garden
+was in. It does look untidy, doesn't it? Huggins said he should complain
+to you, first thing. He says he'd just as soon put brown sugar on the
+paths as _that_ gravel. Did you know that Ambles is built on a gravel
+subsoil, Uncle John? Aren't you glad, because my geology book says that
+a gravel subsoil is the healthiest...."
+
+John removed himself abruptly out of earshot.
+
+"What is that pernicious mess on the front lawn?" he demanded of Hugh
+half-an-hour later at breakfast.
+
+"Ah, you noticed it, did you?"
+
+"Noticed it? I should think I did notice it. I understand that you're
+responsible."
+
+"Not entirely," Laurence interposed, gently. "Hugh and I must accept a
+joint responsibility. The truth is that for some time now I've felt that
+my work has been terribly at the mercy of little household noises, and
+Hugh recommended me to build myself an outside study. He has made a very
+clever design, and has kindly undertaken to supervise its erection. As
+you have seen, they are already well on with the foundations. The design
+which I shall show you after breakfast is in keeping with the house, and
+of course you will have the advantage of what I call my little Gazebo
+when I leave Ambles. Have I told you that I'm considering a brief
+experience of the realities of the stage? After all, why not?
+Shakespeare was an actor."
+
+If John had been eating anything more solid than a lightly boiled egg at
+the moment he must have choked.
+
+"You can call it your little Gazebo as much as you like, but it's
+nothing but a confounded summerhouse," he shouted.
+
+"Look here, Johnnie," said Hugh, soothingly. "You'll like it when it's
+finished. This isn't one of Stevie's Gothic contortions. I admit that to
+get the full architectural effect there should be a couple of them. You
+see, I've followed the design of the famous dovecotes at...."
+
+"Dovecoats be damned," John exploded. "I instructed you to prepare the
+house for Christmas; I didn't ask you to build me a new one."
+
+"Laurence felt that he was in the way indoors," Edith explained,
+timidly.
+
+"The impression was rather forced upon me," said Laurence with a glance
+at Hilda, who throughout the dispute had been sitting virtuously silent;
+nor did she open her thin lips now.
+
+"He was going to pay for his hermitage out of the money he ought to have
+made from writing _Lamp-posts_," Edith went on in a muddled exposition
+of her husband's motives. "He wasn't thinking of himself at all. But of
+course if you object to his building this Gas--oh, I am so bad at proper
+names--he'll understand. Won't you, dear?"
+
+"Oh, I shall understand," Laurence admitted with an expression of
+painfully achieved comprehension. "Though I may fail to see the
+necessity for such strong language."
+
+Frida wiggled in the coils of an endless whisper from which her mother
+extricated her at last by murmuring:
+
+"Hush, darling, Uncle John is a little vexed about something."
+
+Hilda and her son still sat in mute self-righteousness; and Grandmama,
+who always had her breakfast in bed, was not present to defend Hugh.
+
+"If it had been anywhere except on the lawn right in front of my room,"
+John began more mildly.
+
+"We tried to combine suitability of site with facility of access,"
+Laurence condescended to explain. "But pray do not say another word," he
+added, waving his fingers like magic wands to induce John's silence.
+"The idea of my little Gazebo does not appeal to you. That is enough. I
+do not grudge the money already spent upon the foundations. Further
+discussion will irritate us all, and I for one have no wish to disturb
+the harmony of the season." Then exchanging his tone of polite martyrdom
+for the suave jocularity of a vicar, he continued: "And when are we to
+expect our Yuletide guests? I hear that the greater portion of your
+luggage is still in the care of the station-master at Wrottesford. If I
+can do anything to aid in the transport of what rumor says is our
+Christmas commissariat, do not hesitate to call upon my services. I am
+giving the Muse a holiday and am ready for anything. Harold, pass the
+marmalade, please."
+
+John felt incapable of further argument with Laurence and Hugh in
+combination, and having gained his point, he let the subject of the
+Gazebo drop. He was glad that Miss Hamilton was not here; he felt that
+she might have been rather contemptuous of what he tried to believe was
+"good-nature," but recognized in his heart as "meekness," even
+"feebleness."
+
+"When are Cousin Bertram and Cousin Viola coming?" Harold asked.
+
+"Wow-wow-wow!" Hugh imitated, and he was probably expressing the general
+opinion of Harold's re-entry into the breakfast-table conversation.
+
+"For goodness' sake, boy, don't talk about them as if they were elderly
+colonial connections," John commanded with the resurgent valor that
+Harold always inspired. "Bertram and Viola are coming to-morrow. By the
+way, Hilda, is there any accommodation for a monkey? I don't know for
+certain, but Bertram talked vaguely of bringing a monkey down. Possibly
+a small annex could be attached to the chickenhouse."
+
+"A monkey?" Edith exclaimed in alarm. "Oh, I hope it won't attack dear
+Frida."
+
+"I shall shoot him, if he does," Harold boasted. "I shot a mole last
+week."
+
+"No, you didn't, you young liar," Hugh contradicted. "It was killed by
+the trap."
+
+"Harold is always a very truthful little boy," said his mother, glaring.
+
+"Is he? I hadn't noticed it," Hugh retorted.
+
+"Far be it from me to indulge in odious comparisons," Laurence
+interposed, grandly. "But I cannot help being a trifle--ah--tickled by
+so much consideration's being exhibited on account of the temporary
+lodging of a monkey and so much animus--however, don't let us rake up a
+disagreeable topic."
+
+John thought it was a pity that his brother-in-law had not felt the same
+about raking up the lawn when after breakfast he was telling Huggins to
+fill in the hole and hearing that it was unlikely to lose the scar for a
+long time.
+
+"You could have knocked me down with a feather, sir, when they started
+in hacking away at a lovely piece of turf like that."
+
+"I'm sure I could," John agreed, warmly.
+
+"But what's done can't be undone, and the best way to mend a bad job
+would be to make a bed for ornamental annuals. Yes, sir, a nice bed in
+the shape of a star--or a shell."
+
+"No thanks, Huggins, I should prefer grass again, even if for a year or
+two the lawn does look as if it had been recently vaccinated."
+
+John's Christmas enthusiasm had been thoroughly damped by the atmosphere
+of Ambles and he regretted that he had let himself be persuaded into
+coming down two days earlier than he had intended. It had been Mrs.
+Worfolk's fault, and when his housekeeper approached him with a
+complaint about the way things were being managed in the kitchen John
+told her rather sharply that she must make the best of the present
+arrangements, exercise as much tact as possible, and remember that
+Christmas was a season when discontent was out of fashion. Then he
+retreated to the twenty-acre field to lose a few golf-balls. Alas, he
+had forgotten that Laurence had proclaimed himself to be in a holiday
+humor and was bored to find that this was so expansive as to include an
+ambition to see if golf was as difficult as people said.
+
+"You can try a stroke if you really want to," John offered, grudgingly.
+
+"I understand that the theory of striking involves the correct
+application of the hands to the club," said the novice. "I set much
+store by the old adage that well begun is half done."
+
+"The main thing is to hit the ball."
+
+"I've no doubt whatever about being able to hit the ball; but if I
+decide to adopt golf as a recreation from my dramatic work I wish to
+acquire a good style at the outset," Laurence intoned, picking up the
+club as solemnly as if he was going to baptize it. "What is your advice
+about the forefinger of my left hand? It feels to me somewhat
+ubiquitous. I assume that there is some inhibition upon excessive
+fidgeting."
+
+"Keep your eye on the ball," John gruffly advised him. "And don't shift
+your position."
+
+"One, two, three," murmured Laurence, raising the club above his
+shoulder.
+
+"Fore!" John shouted to a rash member of the household who was crossing
+the line of fire.
+
+A lump of turf was propelled a few feet in the direction of the
+admonished figure, and the ball was hammered down into the soft earth.
+
+"You distracted me by counting four," Laurence protested. "My intention
+was to strike at three. However, if at first you don't succeed...."
+
+But John could stand no more of it and escaped to Galton, where he
+bought a bushel of lustrous ornaments for the Christmas tree that was
+even now being felled by Huggins in a coppice remote from Harold's
+myopic explorations. Then for two days the household worked feverishly
+and unitedly in a prevalent odor of allspice; the children were decoyed
+from the house while the presents were mysteriously conveyed to the
+drawing-room, which had been consecrated to the forthcoming revelry;
+Harold, after nearly involving himself in a scandal by hiding himself
+under the kitchen-table during one of the servant's meals in order to
+verify the cubic contents of their several stockings, was finally
+successful in contracting with Mrs. Worfolk for the loan of one of hers;
+Frida whispered as ceaselessly as a grove of poplars; everybody's
+fingers were tattooed by holly-pricks; and the introduction of so much
+decorative vegetation into the house brought with it a train of
+somnambulant insects.
+
+On Saturday afternoon the remaining guests arrived, and when John heard
+Bertram and Viola shouting merrily up and down the corridors he
+recognized the authentic note of Christmas gayety at last. James was
+much less disagreeable than he had expected, and did not even freeze
+Beatrice when she gushed about the loveliness of the holly and reminded
+everybody that she was countrified herself; Hilda and Eleanor were
+brought together by their common dread of Hugh's apparent return to
+favor; George exuded a gross reproduction of the host's good-will and
+wandered about the room reading jokes from the Christmas numbers to
+those who would listen to him; Laurence kissed all the ladies under the
+mistletoe, bending down to them from his majesty as patronizingly as in
+the days of his faith he used to communicate the poor of the parish;
+Edith clapped her hands every time that Laurence brought off a kiss and
+talked in a heart-felt tremolo about the Christmas-tides of her
+girlhood; Frida conceived an adoration for Viola; Hugh egged on Bertram
+to tease, threaten, and contradict Harold on every occasion; Grandmama
+in a new butter-colored gown glowed in the lamplight, and purred over
+her fertility, as if on the day she had accepted Robert Touchwood's
+hand nearly half a century ago she had foreseen this gathering and had
+never grumbled when she found she was going to have another baby.
+
+"Snapdragon will be ready at ten," John proclaimed, "and then to bed, so
+that we're all fit for Christmas Day."
+
+He was anxious to get the household out of the way, because he had
+formed a project to dress himself up that night as Santa Claus and, as
+he put it to himself, stimulate the children's fancy in case they should
+be awake when their stockings were being filled.
+
+The clock struck ten; Mrs. Worfolk gave portentous utterance to the
+information that the snapdragon was burning beautiful; there was a rush
+for the pantry where the ceremony was to take place. Laurence picked out
+his raisins as triumphantly as if he were snatching souls from a
+discredited Romish purgatory. Harold notwithstanding his bad sight
+seemed to be doing well until Bertram temporarily disabled him by
+snatching a glowing raisin from the fiercest flame and ramming it down
+his neck. But the one who ate most of all, more even than Harold, was
+George, whose fat fingers would scoop up half-a-dozen raisins at a go,
+were they never so hot, until gradually the blue flames flickered less
+alertly and finally went out altogether in a pungency of burnt brandy.
+
+"Half-past ten," John, who was longing to dress himself up, cried
+impatiently.
+
+His efforts to urge the family up to bed were rather interfered with by
+Laurence, who detained Eleanor with numerous questions about going on
+the stage with a view to correcting a few technical deficiencies in his
+dramatic craftsmanship.
+
+"I'm anxious to establish by personal experience the exact length of the
+interval required to change one's costume, and also the distance from
+one's green-room to the--ah--wings. I do not aim high. I should be
+perfectly satisfied with such minor parts as Rosencrantz or Metellus
+Cimber. Perhaps, Eleanor, you will introduce me to some of your
+theatrical friends after the holidays? There is a reduced day return up
+to town every Thursday. We might lunch together at one of those little
+Bohemian restaurants where rumor says that an excellent lunch is to be
+had for one and sixpence."
+
+Eleanor promised she would do all she could, because John evidently
+wanted her to go to bed, and he was the uncle of her children.
+
+"Thank you, Eleanor. I hope that as a catechumen I shall do honor to
+you. By the way, you will be interested in the part of Pontius Pilate's
+wife in my play. In fact I'm hoping that you will--ah--interpret it
+ultimately."
+
+"Did you ever think of writing a play about Polonius's wife?" James
+growled on his way upstairs. "Good-night."
+
+When the grown-ups were safely in their rooms, John could not understand
+why the children were allowed to linger in the passage, gossiping and
+bragging; they would never go to sleep at this rate.
+
+"I've got two cocoons of a Crimson-underwing," Harold was saying.
+
+"Poof!" Viola scoffed. "What are they. Bertram touched the nose of a
+kangaroo last time we went to the Zoo."
+
+"Yes, and I prodded a crocodile with V's umbrella," added Bertram,
+acknowledging her testimonial by awarding his sister a kind of share in
+the exploit.
+
+"Well, I was bitten by a squirrel once," related Harold in an attempt to
+keep his end up. "And that was in its nest, not in a cage."
+
+"A squirrel!" Viola sneered. "Why, the tallest giraffe licked Bertram's
+fingers with his tongue, and they stayed wet for hours afterwards."
+
+"Well, so could I, if I went to the Zoo," Harold maintained with a sob
+at the back of his throat.
+
+"No, you couldn't," Bertram contradicted. "Because your fingers are too
+smelly."
+
+"Much too smelly!" Viola corroborated.
+
+Various mothers emerged at this point and put a stop to the contest; the
+hallowed and gracious silence of Christmas night descended upon Ambles,
+and John went on tiptoe up to his bedroom.
+
+"The beard, I suppose, is the most important item," he said to himself,
+when he had unpacked his costume.
+
+It was a noble beard, and when John had fixed it to his cheeks with a
+profusion of spirit-gum, he made up his mind that it became him so well
+that he would grow one of his own, which whitening with the flight of
+time would in another thirty years make him look what he hoped to
+be--the doyen of romantic playwrights. The scarlet robe of Santa Claus
+with its trimming of bells, icicles, and holly and its ruching of snow
+had been made in a single piece without buttons, so that when John put
+it over his head the beard caught in the folds and part of it was
+thinned out by an icicle. In trying to disentangle himself John managed
+to get one sleeve stuck to his cheek much more firmly than the beard had
+ever been. Nor were his struggles to free himself made easier by the
+bells, which tinkled with every movement and made him afraid that
+somebody would knock at the door soon and ask if he had rung. Finally he
+got the robe in place, plucked several bits of sleeve from his cheek,
+renovated the beard, gathered together the apples, oranges, sweets, and
+small toys he had collected for the stockings, looked at his watch,
+decided that it was at least an hour too early to begin, and lay down
+upon his bed, where notwithstanding the ticking of his beard he fell
+asleep. When he woke, it was after one o'clock; the house was absolutely
+still. He walked cautiously to the little room occupied by Frida, turned
+the handle, and felt his way breathlessly along the bed to where the
+stocking should be hung. Unfortunately, the bed had somehow got twisted
+round or else his beard had destroyed his sense of direction, for while
+he was groping for the stocking he dropped an orange on Frida's face,
+who woke with a loud scream.
+
+"Hush, my little dear," John growled in what he supposed to be the
+correct depth for the character. "It's only Santa Claus."
+
+"Go away, go away," shrieked the horrified child.
+
+John tried to strike a match to reassure her, and at the cost of a
+shower of apples on the floor, which sounded like bombs in the tense
+darkness, he managed to illuminate his appearance for an instant. The
+effect on Frida was appalling; she screamed a thousand times louder than
+before and fled from the room. John ran after her to stop her before she
+woke up everybody else and spoilt his fantasy; but he was hampered by
+the costume and Frida gained the sanctuary of her parents' bedroom.
+
+"I only hope the little idiot will frighten them more than I frightened
+her," muttered John, hurrying as fast as he could back to his own room.
+
+Suddenly from the hall below he heard a sound of sleigh-bells that put
+to shame the miserable little tinkle that attended his own progress;
+above the bells rose peals of hearty laughter, and above the laughter
+Hugh's voice could be heard shouting:
+
+"Wake up! Wake up! Good people all! Here's Santa Claus! Santa Claus!
+Wake up!"
+
+Just as John reached his own room, Hugh appeared at the head of the
+stairs brandishing a lighted torch, while close behind him dragging
+Harold's toboggan loaded with toys was a really superb Santa Claus.
+
+John locked his door and undressed himself savagely, tearing off his
+beard in handfuls and flinging all the properties into a corner.
+
+"Anyway, whoever it is," he said, "he'll get the credit of driving Frida
+mad. That's one thing. But who is it? I suppose it's Laurence showing us
+how well he can act."
+
+But it was Aubrey Fenton whom Hugh had invited down to Ambles for
+Christmas and smuggled into the house like this to sweeten the
+unpleasant surprise. What annoyed John most was that he himself had
+never thought of using the toboggan; but the new Santa Claus was an
+undoubted success with the children, and Frida's sanity was soon
+restored by chocolates. The mystery of the apples and oranges strewn
+about her bedroom remained a mystery, though Hilda tried to hint that
+her niece had abstracted them from the sideboard.
+
+John was able to obtain as much sympathy as he wanted from the rest of
+the family over Hugh's importation of his friend. In fact they were so
+eager to express their disapproval of such calm self-assurance, not to
+mention the objectionable way in which he had woken everybody up in the
+middle of the night, that John's own indignation gradually melted away
+in the heat of their malice. As for Grandmama, she shut herself up in
+her bedroom on Christmas morning and threatened not to appear all day,
+so deep was her hatred of that young Fenton who was the author of all
+Hugh's little weaknesses--not even when she could shift the blame could
+she bring herself to call her son's vices and crimes by any stronger
+name. Aubrey, who lacked Hugh's serene insolence, wanted to go back to
+London and was so much abashed in his host's presence and so
+appreciative of what he had done in the affair of the check that John's
+compassion was aroused and he made the intruder welcome. His hospitality
+was rewarded, because it turned out that Aubrey's lifelong passion for
+mechanical toys saved the situation for many of John's purchases, nearly
+all of which he managed to set in motion; nor could it be laid to his
+account that one of the drawing-room fireworks behaved like an
+out-of-door firework, because while Aubrey was lighting it at the right
+end Harold was lighting it simultaneously at the other.
+
+On the whole, the presentation of the Christmas gifts passed off
+satisfactorily. The only definite display of jealousy occurred over the
+diver's equipment given to Harold, which was more than Bertram
+notwithstanding his own fireman's outfit could suppress.
+
+"I'll swop with you, if you like," he began mildly enough.
+
+But Harold clutched the diver's mask to his breast and shrank from the
+proposal.
+
+"I think you'd rather be a fireman," Bertram persisted. "Anybody can be
+a diver, can't they, V?"
+
+Viola left her doll in a state of semi-nudity and advanced to her
+brother's support.
+
+"You'd look much nicer as a fireman, Harold," she said, coaxingly. "I
+wish I could be a fireman."
+
+"Well, you can if you like," he answered, sullenly, looking round with a
+hunted expression for his mother, who unluckily for her son was in
+another part of the house arguing with Mrs. Worfolk about the sauce for
+the plum-pudding.
+
+"But wouldn't you rather wear a pretty brass helmet?" Viola went on.
+
+"No, I wouldn't," said Harold, desperately wrapping himself in the
+rubber tubes that was so temptingly conspicuous a portion of his
+equipment.
+
+"Oh, you little idiot," Viola burst out, impatiently. "What's the good
+of your dressing up as a diver? In those goggles you always look like a
+diver."
+
+"I don't, do I, Frida?" Harold implored.
+
+Now Frida was happy with her dolls'-house; she had no reason to be loyal
+to Harold, who had always treated her shamefully; but the spirit of the
+squaw rose in her breast and she felt bound to defend the wigwam against
+outside criticism. Therefore she assured Harold that in ordinary life he
+did not look in the least like a diver.
+
+"Well," Bertram announced, throwing aside the last pretense of
+respecting property, "V and I want that diver's dress, because we often
+act _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_."
+
+"Well, I can act _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ too."
+
+"No you can't because you haven't read it."
+
+"Yes, I have."
+
+"What a bung!" exclaimed Bertram. "You've only read _A Journey to the
+Center of the Earth_ and _Round the World in Eighty Days_."
+
+Then he remembered Frida's attitude. "Look here, if you take the
+fireman's uniform you can set fire to Frida's house."
+
+Frida yelled her refusal.
+
+"And put it out, you little idiot," Bertram added.
+
+"And put it out," Viola echoed.
+
+Frida rushed to her mother.
+
+"Mother, mother, don't let them burn my dolls'-house! Mother, you won't,
+will you? Bertram wants to burn it."
+
+"Naughty Bertram!" said Edith. "But he's only teasing you, darling."
+
+"Good lummy, what a sneak," Bertram commented, bitterly, to his sister.
+
+Viola eyed her cousin with the scorn of an Antigon.
+
+"Beastly," she murmured. "Come on, Bertram, you don't want the diver's
+dress!"
+
+"Rather not. And anyway it won't work."
+
+"It will. It will," cried Harold, passionately. "I'm going to practice
+in a water-butt the first fine day we have."
+
+It happened that John was unable to feel himself happily above these
+childish jealousies, because at that moment he was himself smarting with
+resentment at his mother's handing over to James all that she still
+retained of family heirlooms. His eldest brother already had the
+portraits, and now he was to have what was left of the silver, which
+would look utterly out of place in Hill Road. If John had been as young
+as Bertram, he would have spoken his mind pretty freely on the subject
+of giving James the silver and himself a checkered woolen kettle-holder.
+It was really too disproportionate, and he did mildly protest to the old
+lady that she might have left a few things at Ambles.
+
+"But Jimmie is the eldest, and I expect him to take poor Hugh's part.
+The poor boy will want somebody when I'm gone, and Jimmie is the
+eldest."
+
+"He may be the eldest, but I'm the one who has to look after Hugh--and
+very often James for that matter."
+
+"Ah well, you're the lucky one, but Jimmie is the eldest and Hugh is the
+baby."
+
+"But James hasn't any children."
+
+"Nor have you, my dear boy."
+
+"But I might have," said John.
+
+If this sort of thing went on much longer, he would, too--dozens of
+children.
+
+"Bertram," John called out. "Come here, my boy, and listen to me. When I
+go back to London, you shall have a diving-suit too if I can find
+another."
+
+Eleanor tossed her head back like a victorious game-cock; she would have
+crowed, if she could.
+
+"Dinner is ready," announced Hilda fresh from a triumph over Mrs.
+Worfolk about the sauce and happily ignorant of the dreadful relegation
+of her son. After an unusually large meal even for Christmas the company
+lay about the drawing-room like exhausted Roman debauchees, while the
+pink and green paper caps out of the crackers one by one fluttered from
+their brows to the carpet. Snores and the occasional violent whizz of an
+overwound toy were all that broke the stillness. At tea-time everybody
+woke up, and Bertram was allowed to put on his fireman's uniform in
+order to extinguish a bonfire that Huggins had hoped would burn slowly
+over the holidays. After a comparatively light supper games were played;
+drawing-room fireworks were let off; Laurence blacked his nose in the
+magic lantern; and George walking ponderously across the room to fetch
+himself a cigar was struck on the ear by a projectile from the vacuum
+pistol, the red mark of which was visible for some time even on his
+florid countenance. Then, when the children became too quarrelsome to be
+any longer tolerated out of bed, a bowl of punch was brought in and Auld
+Lang Syne was sung. After which everybody agreed that it had been a very
+merry Christmas, and Grandmama was led weeping up to bed.
+
+The next morning about midday John announced that he was driving to
+Wrottesford for the purpose of meeting Miss Hamilton.
+
+"For though it is holiday time, I must do a certain amount of work," he
+explained.
+
+"Miss Hamilton?" said Grandmama. "And who may Miss Hamilton be?"
+
+Hilda, Edith, Eleanor, and Beatrice all looked very solemn and
+mysterious; James chuckled; Hugh brightened visibly.
+
+"Well, I suppose we mustn't mind a stranger's coming to spoil our happy
+party," Hilda sighed.
+
+"Ah, this will be your new secretary of whom rumor has already spoken,"
+said Laurence. "Possibly she will give me some advice on the subject of
+the typing of manuscripts."
+
+"Miss Hamilton will be very busy while she is staying here," said John,
+curtly.
+
+Everybody looked at everybody else, and there was an awkward pause,
+which was relieved by Harold's saying that he would show her where he
+thought a goldfinch would make a nest in spring.
+
+"Dear little man," murmured his mother with a sigh for his childish
+confidence.
+
+"Shall _I_ drive in to meet her?" Hugh suggested.
+
+"No, thank you," said John, quickly.
+
+"That's right, Johnnie," James guffawed. "You stick to the reins
+yourself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+John did not consider himself a first-class whip: if he had been offered
+the choice between swimming to meet his love like Leander, climbing into
+her father's orchard like Romeo, and driving to meet her with a
+dog-cart, he would certainly, had the engagement shown signs of being a
+long one, have chosen any mode of trysting except the last. This
+morning, however, he was not as usual oppressed by a sense of imperfect
+sympathy between himself and the mare; he did not think she was going to
+have hysterics when she blew her nose, nor fancy that she was on the
+verge of bolting when she tossed her chestnut mane; the absence of
+William the groom seemed a matter for congratulation rather than for
+regret; he felt as reckless as Phaeton, as urgent as Jehu, and the mare
+knew it. Generally, when her master held the reins, she would try to
+walk up steep banks or emulate in her capricious greed the lofty
+browsings of the giraffe; this morning at a steady swinging trot she
+kept to the middle of the road, passed two motor-cars without trying to
+box the landscape, and did not even shy at the new hat of the vicar's
+wife.
+
+Later on, however, when John was safe in the station-yard and saw the
+familiar way in which Miss Hamilton patted the mare he decided not to
+take any risk on the return journey and in spite of his brother's
+parting gibe to hand over the reins to his secretary; nor was the
+symbolism of the action distasteful. How charming she looked in that
+mauve frieze! How well the color was harmonizing with the purple
+hedgerows! How naturally she seemed to haunt the woodland scene!
+
+"Oh, this exquisite country," she sighed. "Fancy staying in London when
+you can write here!"
+
+"It does seem absurd," the lucky author agreed. "But the house is very
+full at present. We shall be rather exposed to interruptions until the
+party breaks up."
+
+He gave her an account of the Christmas festival, to which she seemed
+able to listen comfortably and appreciatively in spite of the fact that
+she was driving. This impressed John very much.
+
+"I hope your mother wasn't angry at your leaving town," he said,
+tentatively. "I thought of telegraphing an invitation to her; but there
+really isn't room for another person."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't say that she was gracious about my desertion of her.
+Indeed, she's beginning to put pressure on me to give up my post. Quite
+indirectly, of course, but one feels the effect just the same. Who
+knows? I may succumb."
+
+John nearly fell out of the dog-cart.
+
+"Give up your post?" he gasped. "But, my dear Miss Hamilton, the
+dog-roses won't be in bloom for some months."
+
+"What have dog-roses got to do with my post?"
+
+He laughed a little foolishly.
+
+"I mean the play won't be finished for some months. Did I say dog-roses?
+I must have been thinking of the dog-cart. You drive with such admirable
+unconcern. Still, you ought to see these hedgerows in summer. Now the
+time I like for a walk is about eight o'clock on a June evening. The
+honeysuckle smells so delicious about eight o'clock. There's no doubt it
+is ridiculous to live in London. I hope you made it quite clear to your
+mother you had no intention of leaving me?"
+
+"Ida Merritt did most of the arguing."
+
+"Did she? What a very intelligent girl she is, by the way. I confess I
+took a great fancy to her."
+
+"You told mother once that she frightened you."
+
+"Ah, but I'm always frightened by people when I meet them first. Though
+curiously enough I was never frightened of you. Some people have told me
+that _I_ am frightening at first. You didn't find that did you?"
+
+"No, I certainly did not. And I can't imagine anybody else's doing so
+either."
+
+Although John rather plumed himself upon the alarm he was credited with
+inspiring at first sight, he did not argue the point, because he really
+never had had the least desire to frighten his secretary.
+
+"And your relations don't seem to find you very frightening," she
+murmured. "Good gracious, what an assemblage!"
+
+The dog-cart had just drawn clear of the beechwood, and the whole of the
+Ambles party could be seen vigilantly grouped by the gate to receive
+them, which John thought was a lapse of taste on the part of his guests.
+Nor was he mollified by the way in which after the introductions were
+made Hugh took it upon himself to conduct Miss Hamilton indoors, while
+he was left shouting for William the groom. If it was anybody's business
+except his own to escort her into the house, it was Hilda's.
+
+"What a very extraordinary thing," said John, fretfully, "that the
+_only_ person who's wanted is not here. Where is that confounded boy?"
+
+"I'm here," cried Bertram, responding to the epithet instinctively.
+
+"Not you. Not you. I wanted William to take the mare."
+
+When lunch was over John found that notwithstanding his secretary's
+arrival he was less eager to begin work again upon his play than he had
+supposed.
+
+"I think I must be feeling rather worn out by Christmas," he told her.
+"I wonder if a walk wouldn't do you good after the journey."
+
+"Now that's a capital notion," exclaimed Hugh, who was standing close by
+and overheard the suggestion. "We might tramp up to the top of Shalstead
+Down."
+
+"Oh yes," Harold chimed in. "I've never been there yet. Mother said it
+was too far for me; but it isn't, is it, Uncle John?"
+
+"Your mother was right. It's at least three miles too far," said John,
+firmly. "Oh, by the way, Hugh, I've been thinking over your scheme for
+that summerhouse or whatever you call it, and I'm not sure that I don't
+rather like the idea after all. You might put it in hand this afternoon.
+You'd better keep Laurence with you. I want him to have it in the way he
+likes it, although of course I shall undertake the expense. Where's
+Bertram? Ah, there you are. Bertram, why don't you and Viola take Harold
+down to the river and practice diving? I dare say Mr. Fenton will
+superintend the necessary supply of air and reduce the chances of a
+fatal accident."
+
+"But the water's much too cold," Hilda protested in dismay.
+
+"Oh well, there's always something to amuse one by a river without
+actually going into the water," John said. "You like rivers, don't you,
+Fenton? I'm afraid we can't offer you a very large one, but it wiggles
+most picturesquely."
+
+Aubrey Fenton, who was still feeling twinges of embarrassment on account
+of his uninvited stay at Ambles, was prepared to like anything his host
+put forward for his appreciation, and he spoke with as much enthusiasm
+of a promenade along the banks of the small Hampshire stream as if he
+were going to view the Ganges for the first time. John, having disposed
+of him, looked around for other possible candidates for a walk.
+
+"You look like hard work, James," he said, approvingly.
+
+"I've a bundle of trash here for review," the critic growled.
+
+"I'm sorry. I was going to propose a stroll up Shalstead Down. Never
+mind. You'll have to walk into your victims instead." And, by gad, he
+would walk into them too, John thought, after that dinner yesterday.
+
+Beatrice and Eleanor were not about; old Mrs. Touchwood was unlikely at
+her age to venture up the third highest elevation in Hampshire; Hilda
+was occupied with household duties; Edith had a headache. Only George
+now remained unoccupied, and John was sure he might safely risk an
+invitation to him; he looked incapable of walking two yards.
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't care for a constitutional, George?" he inquired,
+heartily.
+
+"A constitutional?" George repeated, gaping like a chub at a large
+cherry. "No, no, no, no. I always knit after lunch. Besides I never walk
+in the country. It ruins one's boots."
+
+George always used to polish his own boots with as much passionate care
+as he would have devoted to the coloring of a meerschaum pipe.
+
+"Well, if nobody wants to climb Shalstead Down," said John beaming
+happily, "what do you say, Miss Hamilton?"
+
+A few minutes later they had crossed the twenty-acre field and were
+among the chalk-flecked billows of the rising downs.
+
+"You're a terrible fraud," she laughed. "You've always led me to believe
+that you were completely at the mercy of your relations. Instead of
+which, you order them about and arrange their afternoon and really bully
+them into doing all sorts of things they never had any intention of
+doing, or any wish to do, what's more."
+
+"Yes, I seemed to be rather successful with my strategy to-day," John
+admitted. "But they were stupefied by their Christmas dinner. None of
+them was really anxious for a walk, and I didn't want to drag them out
+unwillingly."
+
+"Ah, it's all very well to explain it away like that, but don't ever ask
+me to sympathize with you again. I believe you're a replica of my poor
+mother. Her tyranny is deeply rooted in consideration for others. Why do
+you suppose she is always trying to make me give up working for you? For
+her sake? Oh, dear no! For mine."
+
+"But _you_ don't forge my name and expect her to pay me back. _You_
+don't arrive suddenly and deposit children upon her doorstep."
+
+"I dare say I don't, but for my mother Ida Merritt represents all the
+excesses of your relations combined in one person. I'm convinced that if
+you and she were to compare notes you would find that you were both
+suffering from acute ingratitude and thoroughly enjoying it. But come,
+come, this is not a serious conversation. What about the fourth act?"
+
+"The fourth act of what?" he asked, vaguely.
+
+"The fourth act of Joan of Arc."
+
+"Oh, Joan of Arc. I think I must give her a rest. I don't seem at all in
+the mood for writing at present. The truth is that I find Joan rather
+lacking in humanity and I'm beginning to think I made a mistake in
+choosing such an abnormal creature for the central figure of a play."
+
+"Then what have I come down to Hampshire for?" she demanded.
+
+"Well, it's very jolly down here, isn't it?" John retorted in an
+offended voice. "And anyway you can't expect me to burst into blank
+verse the moment you arrive, like a canary that's been uncovered by the
+housemaid. It would be an affectation to pretend I feel poetical this
+afternoon. I feel like a jolly good tramp before tea. I can't stand
+writers who always want to be literary. I have the temperament of a
+country squire, and if I had more money and fewer relations I should
+hardly write at all."
+
+"Which would be a great pity," said his secretary.
+
+"Would it?" John replied in the voice of one who has found an unexpected
+grievance and is determined to make the most of it. "I doubt if it
+would. What is my work, after all? I don't deceive myself. There was
+more in my six novels than in anything I've written since. I'm a failure
+to myself. In the eyes of the public I may be a success, but in the
+depths of my own heart--" he finished the sentence in a long sigh, all
+the longer because he was a little out of breath with climbing.
+
+"But you were so cheerful a few minutes ago. I'm sure that country
+squires are not the prey to such swift changes of mood. I think you must
+be a poet really."
+
+"A poet!" he exclaimed, bitterly, with what he fancied was the kind of
+laugh that is called hollow. "Do I look like a poet?"
+
+"If you're going to talk in that childish way I sha'n't say any more,"
+she warned him, severely. "Oh, there goes a hare!"
+
+"Two hares," said John, trying to create an impression that in spite of
+the weight of his despondency he would for her sake affect a
+light-hearted interest in the common incidents of a country walk.
+
+"And look at the peewits," she said. "What a fuss they make about
+nothing, don't they?"
+
+"I suppose you are comparing me to a peewit now?" John reproachfully
+suggested.
+
+"Well, a moment ago you compared yourself to an uncovered canary; so if
+I've exceeded the bounds of free speech marked out for a secretary, you
+must forgive me."
+
+"My dear Miss Hamilton," he assured her, "I beg you to believe that you
+are at liberty to compare me to anything you like."
+
+Having surrendered his personality for the exercise of her wit John felt
+more cheerful. The rest of the walk seemed to offer with its wide
+prospects of country asleep in the winter sunlight a wider prospect of
+life itself; even Joan of Arc became once again a human figure.
+
+It was to be feared that John's manipulation of his guests after lunch
+might have had the effect of uniting them against the new favorite; and
+so it had. When he and Miss Hamilton got back to the house for tea the
+family was obviously upon the defensive, so obviously indeed that it
+gave the impression of a sculptor's group in which each figure was
+contributing his posture to the whole. There was not as yet the least
+hint of attack, but John would almost have preferred an offensive action
+to this martyred withdrawal from the world in which it was suggested
+that he and Miss Hamilton were living by themselves. It happened that a
+neighbor, a colorless man with a disobedient and bushy dog, called upon
+the Touchwoods that afternoon, and John could not help being aware that
+to the eyes of his relations he and his secretary appeared equally
+intrusive and disturbing; the manner in which Hilda offered Miss
+Hamilton tea scarcely differed from the manner in which she propitiated
+the dog with a bun; and it would have been rash to assert that she was
+more afraid of the dog's biting Harold than of the secretary's doing so.
+
+"Don't worry Miss Hamilton, darling. She's tired after her long walk.
+Besides, she isn't used to little boys. And don't make Mr. Wenlow's dog
+eat sugar if it doesn't want to."
+
+Eleanor would ordinarily have urged Bertram to prove that he could
+achieve what was denied to his cousin. Yet now in the face of a common
+enemy she made overtures to Hilda by simultaneously calling off her
+children from the intruders.
+
+"If I'd known that animals were so welcomed down here," James grumbled,
+"I should have brought Beyle with us."
+
+It was not a polite remark; but the disobedient dog in an effusion of
+cordiality had just licked the back of James' neck, and he was not
+nearly so rude as he would have been about a human being who had
+surprised him, speaking figuratively, in the same way.
+
+"Lie down, Rover," whispered the colorless neighbor with so rich a blush
+that until it subsided the epithet ceased to be appropriate.
+
+Rover unexpectedly paid attention to the command, but chose Grandmama's
+lap for his resting place, which made Viola laugh so ecstatically that
+Frida felt bound to imitate her, with the result that a geyser of tea
+spurted from her mouth and descended upon her father's leg. Laurence
+rose and led his daughter from the room, saying:
+
+"Little girls who choke in drawing-rooms must learn to choke outside."
+
+"I'm afraid she has adenoids, poor child," said Eleanor, kindly.
+
+"I know what that word means," Harold bragged with gloating knowledge.
+
+"Shut up!" cried Bertram. "You know everything, glass-eyes. But you
+don't know there are two worms in your tea-cup."
+
+"There aren't," Harold contradicted.
+
+"All right, drink it up and see. I put them there myself."
+
+"Eleanor!" expostulated the horrified mother. "_Do_ you allow Bertram to
+behave like this?"
+
+She hurriedly poured away the contents of Harold's cup, which proved
+that the worms were only an invention of his cousin. Yet the joke was
+successful in its way, because there was no more tea, and therefore
+Harold had to go without a third cup. Edith, whose agitation had been
+intense while her husband was brooding in the passage over Frida's
+chokes, could stay still no longer, but went out to assist with tugs and
+taps of consolation. The colorless visitor departed with his disobedient
+dog, and soon a thin pipe was heard in vain whistles upon the twilight
+like the lisp of reeds along the dreary margin of a December stream.
+
+John welcomed this recrudescence of maternal competition, which seemed
+likely to imperil the alliance, and he was grateful to Bertram and Viola
+for their provocation of it. But he had scarcely congratulated himself,
+when Hugh came in and at once laid himself out to be agreeable to Miss
+Hamilton.
+
+"You've put the summerhouse in hand?" John asked, fussily, in order to
+make it perfectly clear to his brother that he was not the owner of
+Ambles.
+
+Hugh shook his head.
+
+"My dear man, it's Boxing Day. Besides, I know you only wanted to get
+rid of me this afternoon. By the way, Aubrey's going back to town
+to-night. Can he have the dog-cart?"
+
+John looked round at the unbidden guest with a protest on his lips; he
+had planned to keep Aubrey as a diversion for Hugh, and had taken quite
+a fancy to him. Aubrey however, had to be at the office next day, and
+John was distressed to lose the cheerful young man's company, although
+it had been embarrassing when Grandmama had shuddered every time he
+opened his mouth. Another disadvantage of his departure was the
+direction of the old lady's imagination toward an imminent marriage
+between Hugh and Miss Hamilton, which was extremely galling to John,
+especially as the rest of the family was united in suggesting a similar
+conjunction between her and himself.
+
+"I don't want to say a word against her, Johnnie," Grandmama began to
+mutter one evening about a week later when every game of patience had
+failed in turn through congestion of the hearts. "I'm not going to say
+she isn't a lady, and perhaps she doesn't mean to make eyes at Hughie."
+
+John would have liked to tell his mother that she was on the verge of
+senile decay; but the dim old fetish of parental respect blinked at him
+from the jungle of the past, and in a vain search for a way of stopping
+her without being rude he let her ramble on.
+
+"Of course, she has very nice eyes, and I can quite understand Hughie's
+taking an interest in her. I don't grudge the dear boy his youth. We all
+get old in time, and its natural that with us old fogies round him he
+_should_ be a little interested in Miss Hamilton. All the same, it
+wouldn't be a prudent match. I dare say she thinks I shall have
+something to leave Hugh, but I told her only yesterday that I should
+leave little or nothing."
+
+"My dear Mama, I can assure you that my secretary--my secretary," John
+repeated with as much pomposity as might impress the old lady, "is not
+at all dazzled by the glamour of your wealth or James' wealth or
+George's wealth or anybody's wealth for that matter."
+
+He might have said that the donkey's ears were the only recognizable
+feature of Midas in the Touchwood family had there been the least chance
+of his mother's understanding the classical allusion.
+
+"I don't mean to hint that she's _only_ after Hugh's money. I've no
+doubt at all that she's excessively in love with him."
+
+"Really?" John exclaimed with such a scornfully ironical intonation that
+his mother asked anxiously if he had a sore throat.
+
+"You might take a little honey and borax, my dear boy," she advised, and
+immediately continued her estimate of the emotional situation. "Yes, as
+I say, excessively in love! But there can't be many young women who
+resist Hugh. Why, even as a boy he had his little love affairs. Dear me,
+how poor papa used to laugh about them. 'He's going to break a lot of
+hearts,' poor papa used to say."
+
+"I don't know about hearts," John commented, gruffly. "But he's broken
+everything else, including himself. However, I can assure you, Mama,
+that Miss Hamilton's heart is not made of pie-crust, and that she is
+more than capable of looking after herself."
+
+"Then you agree with me that she has a selfish disposition. I _am_ glad
+you agree with me. I didn't trust her from the beginning; but I thought
+you seemed so wrapped up in her cleverness--though when I was young
+women didn't think it necessary to be clever--that you were quite blind
+to her selfishness. But I _am_ glad you agree with me. There's nobody
+who has more sympathy for true love than I have. But though I always
+said that love makes the world go round, I've never been partial to
+vulgar flirtations. Indeed, if it had to be, I'd rather they got engaged
+properly, even if it did mean a long engagement--but leading poor Hughie
+on like this--well, I must speak plainly, Johnnie, for, after all, I am
+your mother, though I know it's the fashion now to think that children
+know more than their parents, and, in my opinion, you ought to put your
+foot down. There! I've said what I've been wanting to say for a week,
+and if you jump down my throat, well, then you must, and that's all
+there is to it."
+
+Now, although John thought his mother fondly stupid and was perfectly
+convinced when he asked himself the question that Miss Hamilton was as
+remote from admiring Hugh as he was himself, he was nevertheless unable
+to resist observing Hugh henceforth with a little of the jealousy that
+most men of forty-two feel for juniors of twenty-seven. He was not
+prepared to acknowledge that his opinion of Miss Hamilton was colored by
+any personal emotion beyond the unqualified respect he gave to her
+practical qualities, and he was sure that the only reason for anxiety
+about possible developments between her and Hugh was the loss to himself
+of her valuable services.
+
+"I've reached an age," he told his reflection, whose crow's-feet were
+seeming more conspicuous than usual in the clear wintry weather, "when a
+man becomes selfish in small matters. Let me be frank with myself. Let
+me admit that I do dislike the idea of an entanglement with Hugh,
+because I _have_ found in Miss Hamilton a perfect secretary whom I
+should be extremely sorry to lose. Is that surprising? No, it is quite
+natural. Curious! I noticed to-day that Hugh's hair is getting very thin
+on top. Mine, however, shows no sign of baldness, though fair men nearly
+always go bald before dark men. But I'm inclined to fancy that few
+observers would give me fifteen years more than Hugh."
+
+If John had really been conscious of a rival in his youngest brother, he
+might have derived much encouragement from the attitude of all the other
+members of the family, none of whom seemed to think that Hugh had a look
+in. But, since he firmly declined to admit his secretary's potentiality
+for anything except efficient clerical work, he was only irritated by
+it.
+
+"Are you going to marry Miss Hamilton?" Harold actually wanted to know
+one evening. He had recently been snubbed for asking the company what
+was the difference between gestation and digestion, and was determined
+to produce a conundrum that could not be evaded by telling him that he
+would not understand the answer. John's solution was to look at his
+watch and say it was time for him and Bertram to be in bed, hoping that
+Bertram would take it out of his cousin for calling attention to their
+existence. One of Bertram's first measures at Ambles had been to
+muffle, impede, disorganize and finally destroy the striking of the
+drawing-room clock. When this had been accomplished he could count every
+night on a few precious minutes snatched from the annihilation of bed
+during which he sat mute as a mummy in a kind of cataleptic ecstasy. The
+betrayer of this profound peace sullenly gathered up the rubbish with
+which he was wont to litter the room every night, and John saw Bertram's
+eye flash like a Corsican sharpening the knife of revenge. But whatever
+was in store for Harold lacked savor when John heard from the group of
+mothers, aunts, sisters, and sisters-in-law the two words "Children
+know" dying away in a sibilance of affirmative sighs.
+
+After that it was small consolation to hear a scuffle outside in the
+hall followed by the crash of Harold's dispersed collections and a wail
+of protest. For the sake of a childish quarrel Hilda and Eleanor were
+not going to break up the alliance to which they were now definitely
+committed.
+
+"It's so nice for poor Harold to have Bertram to play with him,"
+volunteered one mother.
+
+"Yes, and it's nice for Bertram too, because Harold's such a little
+worker," the other agreed.
+
+Even George's opaque eyes glimmered with an illusion of life when he
+heard his wife praise her nephew; she had not surprised him so
+completely since on a wet afternoon, thirteen years ago, she accepted
+his hand. It was even obvious to Edith that she must begin to think
+about taking sides; and, having exhausted her intelligence by this
+discovery, she had not enough wit left to see that now was her
+opportunity to trade upon John's sentimental affection for herself, but
+proceeded to sacrifice her own daughter to the success of the hostile
+alliance.
+
+"I think perhaps it's good for Frida to be teased sometimes," she
+ventured.
+
+As for Beatrice, she was not going to draw attention to her
+childlessness by giving one more woman the chance of feeling superior to
+herself, and her thwarted maternity was placed at the disposal of the
+three mothers. Indeed it was she who led the first foray, in which she
+was herself severely wounded, as will be seen.
+
+Among the unnecessary vexations and unsatisfactory pleasures which the
+human side of John inflicted upon the well-known dramatist, John
+Touchwood, was the collection of press-cuttings about himself and his
+work; one of Miss Hamilton's least congenial tasks was to preserve in a
+scrap-book these tributes to egoism.
+
+"You don't really want me to stick in this paragraph from _High Life_?"
+she would protest.
+
+"Which one is that?"
+
+"Why, this ridiculous announcement that you've decided to live on the
+upper slopes of the Andes for the next few months in order to gather
+material for a tragedy about the Incas."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. It's rather amusing, I think," John would insist,
+apologetically. Then, rather lamely, he would add, "You see, I
+subscribe."
+
+Miss Hamilton, with a sigh, would dip her brush in the paste.
+
+"I can understand your keeping the notices of your productions, which I
+suppose have a certain value, but this sort of childish gossip...."
+
+"Gossip keeps my name before the public."
+
+Then he would fancy that he caught a faint murmur about "lack of
+dignity," and once even he thought she whispered something about "lack
+of humor."
+
+Therefore, in view of the importance he seemed to attach to the most
+irrelevant paragraph, Miss Hamilton could not be blamed for drawing his
+attention to a long article in one of those critical quarterlies or
+monthlies that are read in club smoking-rooms in the same spirit of
+desperation in which at railway stations belated travelers read
+time-tables. This article was entitled _What Is Wrong With Our Drama?_
+and was signed with some obscurely allusive pseudonym.
+
+"I suppose I am involved in the general condemnation?" said John, with
+an attempt at a debonair indifference.
+
+Had he been alone he might have refrained from a descent into
+particulars, but having laid so much stress upon the salvage of
+worthless flotsam, he could not in Miss Hamilton's presence ignore this
+large wreck.
+
+"_Let us pause now to contemplate the roundest and the rosiest of our
+romantic cherubs._ Ha-ha! I suppose the fellow thinks that will irritate
+me. As a matter of fact, I think it's rather funny, don't you? Rather
+clever, I mean. Eh? _But, after all, should we take Mr. Touchwood
+seriously? He is only an exuberant schoolboy prancing about with a
+pudding-dish on his head and shouting 'Let's pretend I'm a
+Knight-at-Arms' to a large and susceptible public. Let us say to Mr.
+Touchwood in the words of an earlier romantic who was the fount and
+origin of all this Gothic stucco:_
+
+    _'O what can ail thee, Knight-at-Arms,_
+    _So staggered by the critics' tone?_
+    _The pit and gallery are full,_
+    _And the play has gone.'_
+
+"I don't mind what he says about _me_," John assured his secretary. "But
+I do resent his parodying Keats. Yes, I do strongly resent that. I
+wonder who wrote it. I call it rather personal for anonymous criticism."
+
+"Shall I stick it in the book?"
+
+"Certainly," the wounded lion uttered with a roar of disdain. At least
+that was the way John fancied he said "certainly."
+
+"Do you really want to know who wrote this article?" she asked,
+seriously, a minute or two later.
+
+"It wasn't James?" the victim exclaimed in a flash of comprehension.
+
+"Well, all I can tell you is that two or three days ago your brother
+received a copy of the review and a letter from the editorial offices. I
+was sorting out your letters and noticed the address on the outside.
+Afterwards at breakfast he opened it and took out a check."
+
+"James would call me a rosy cherub," John muttered. "Moreover, I did
+tell him about Bertram and the pudding-dish when he was playing at
+Perseus. And--no, James doesn't admire Keats."
+
+"Poor man," said Miss Hamilton, charitably.
+
+"Yes, I suppose one ought to be sorry for him rather than angry," John
+agreed, snatching at the implied consolation. "All the same, I think I
+ought to speak to him about his behavior. Of course, he's quite at
+liberty to despise my work, but I don't think he should take advantage
+of our relationship to introduce a note of personal--well, really, I
+don't think he has any right to call me a round and rosy cherub in
+print. After all, the public doesn't know what a damned failure James
+himself is. I shouldn't so mind if it really was a big pot calling the
+kettle black. I could retaliate then. But as it is I can do nothing."
+
+"Except stick it in your press-cutting book," suggested Miss Hamilton,
+with a smile.
+
+"And then my mother goes and presents him with all the silver! No, I
+will not overlook this lapse of taste; I shall speak to him about it
+this morning. But suppose he asks me how I found out?"
+
+"You must tell him."
+
+"You don't mind?"
+
+"I'm your secretary, aren't I?"
+
+"By Jove, Miss Hamilton, you know, you really are...."
+
+John stopped. He wanted to tell her what a balm her generosity was to
+his wound; but he felt that she would prefer him to be practical.
+
+It was like the critic to welcome with composure the accusation of what
+John called his duplicity, or rather of what he called duplicity in the
+privacy of his own thoughts: to James he began by referring to it as
+exaggerated frankness.
+
+"I said nothing more than I've said a hundred times to your face," his
+brother pointed out.
+
+"That may be, but you didn't borrow money from me on the strength of
+what you said. You told me you had an article on Alfred de Vigny
+appearing shortly. You didn't tell me that you were raising the money as
+a post obit on my reputation."
+
+"My dear Johnnie, if you're going to abuse me in metaphors, be just at
+any rate. Your reputation was a corpse before I dissected it."
+
+"Very well, then," cried John, hotly, "have it your own way and admit
+that you're a body-snatcher."
+
+"However," James continued, with a laugh that was for him almost
+apologetic, "though I hate excuses, I must point out that the money I
+borrowed from you was genuinely on account of Alfred de Vigny and that
+this was an unexpected windfall. And to show I bear you no ill will,
+which is more than can be said for most borrowers, here's the check I
+received. I'm bound to say you deserve it."
+
+"I don't want the money."
+
+"Yet in a way you earned it yourself," the critic chuckled. "But let me
+be quite clear. Is this a family quarrel? I don't want to quarrel with
+you personally. I hate your work. I think it false, pretentious and
+demoralizing. But I like you very much. Do, my dear fellow, let us
+contract my good taste in literature and bad taste in manners with your
+bad taste in literature and good taste in manners. Like two pugilists,
+let's shake hands and walk out of the ring arm-in-arm. Even if I hit you
+below the belt, you must blame your curves, Johnnie. You're so plump and
+rosy that...."
+
+"That word is becoming an obsession with you. You seem to think it
+annoys me, but it doesn't annoy me at all."
+
+"Then it is a family quarrel. Come, your young lady has opened her
+campaign well. I congratulate her. By the way, when am I to congratulate
+you?"
+
+"This," said John, rising with grave dignity, "is going too far."
+
+He left his brother, armed himself with a brassey, proceeded to the
+twenty-acre field, and made the longest drive of his experience. At
+lunch James announced that he and Beatrice must be getting back to town
+that afternoon, a resolution in which his host acquiesced without even a
+conventional murmur of protest. Perhaps it was this attitude of John's
+that stung Beatrice into a challenge, or perhaps she had been egged on
+by the mothers who, with their children's future to consider, were not
+anxious to declare open war upon the rich uncle. At any rate, in her
+commonest voice she said:
+
+"It's plain that Jimmie and I are not wanted here any longer."
+
+The mothers looked down at their plates with what they hoped was a
+strictly neutral expression. Yet it was impossible not to feel that they
+were triumphantly digging one another in the ribs with ghostly fingers,
+such an atmosphere of suppressed elation was discernible above the
+modest attention they paid to the food before them. Nobody made an
+effort to cover the awkwardness created by the remark, and John was
+faced with the alternative of contradicting it or acknowledging its
+truth; he was certainly not going to be allowed to ignore it in a burst
+of general conversation.
+
+"I think that is rather a foolish remark, Beatrice," was his comment.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders so emphatically that her stays creaked in the
+horrid silence that enveloped the table.
+
+"Well, we can't all be as clever as Miss Hamilton, and most of us
+wouldn't like to be, what's more."
+
+"The dog-cart will be round at three," John replied, coldly.
+
+His sister-in-law, bursting into tears, rushed from the room. James
+guffawed and helped himself to potatoes. The various mothers reproved
+their children for breaches of table manners. George looked nervously at
+his wife as if she was on the point of following the example of
+Beatrice. Grandmama, who was daily receding further and further into the
+past, put on her spectacles and told John, reproachfully, that he ought
+not to tease little Beatrice. Hugh engaged Miss Hamilton in a
+conversation about Bernard Shaw. John, forgetting he had already dipped
+twice in mustard the morsel of beef upon his fork, dipped it again, so
+that his eyes presently filled with tears, to which the observant Harold
+called everybody's attention.
+
+"Don't make personal remarks, darling," his mother whispered.
+
+"That's what Johnnie said to me this morning," James chuckled.
+
+When the dog-cart drove off with James and Beatrice at three o'clock to
+catch the 3:45 train up to town, John retired to his study in full
+expectation that when the mare came back she would at once turn round
+for the purpose of driving Miss Hamilton to catch the 5:30 train up to
+town: no young woman in her position would forgive that vulgar scene at
+lunch. But when he reached his desk he found his secretary hard at work
+upon the collection of material for the play as if nothing had happened.
+In the presence of such well-bred indifference the recollection of
+Beatrice's behavior abashed him more than ever, and, feeling that any
+kind of even indirect apology from him would be distasteful to Miss
+Hamilton, he tried to concentrate upon the grouping of the trial scene
+with an equal show of indifference to the mean events of family life. He
+was so far successful that the afternoon passed away without any
+allusion to Beatrice, and when the gong sounded for tea his equanimity
+was in order again.
+
+After tea, however, Eleanor managed to get hold of John for what she
+called a little chat about the future, but which he detected with the
+mind's nose as an unpleasant rehash of the morning's pasticcio. He
+always dreaded this sister-in-law when she opened with zoological
+endearments, and his spirits sank to hear her exclaim boisterously:
+
+"Now, look here, you poor wounded old lion, I'm going to talk to you
+seriously about Beatrice."
+
+"There's nothing more to be said," John assured her.
+
+"Now don't be an old bear. You've already made one poor aunt cry; don't
+upset me too."
+
+Anybody less likely to be prostrated by grief than Eleanor at that
+moment John could not have imagined. She seemed to him the incarnation
+of a sinister self-assurance.
+
+"Rubbish," he snapped. "In any case, yours would only be stage tears,
+you old crocodile--if I may copy your manner of speech."
+
+"Isn't he in a nasty, horrid, cross mood?" she demanded, with an
+affected glance at an imaginary audience. "No, but seriously, John! I do
+want to give you a little advice. I suppose it's tactless of me to talk
+about advising the great man, but don't bite my head off."
+
+"In what capacity?" the great man asked. "You've forgotten to specify
+the precise carnivore that will perform the operation."
+
+"Oh dear, aren't we sarcastic this afternoon?" she asked, opening wide
+her eyes. "However, you're not going to frighten me, because I'm
+determined to have it out with you, even if you order the dog-cart
+before dinner. Johnnie, is it fair to let a complete stranger make
+mischief among relations?"
+
+John played the break in Eleanor's voice with beautiful ease.
+
+"I will not have Miss Hamilton's name dragged into these sordid family
+squabbles," he asseverated.
+
+"I'm not going to say a word against Miss Hamilton. I think she's a
+charming young woman--a little too charming perhaps for you, you
+susceptible old goose."
+
+"For goodness sake," John begged, "stick to the jungle and leave the
+farmyard alone."
+
+"Now you're not going to rag me out of what I'm going to say. You know
+that I'm a real Bohemian who doesn't pay attention to the stupid little
+conventionalities that, for instance, Hilda or Edith might consider.
+Therefore I'm sure you won't misunderstand me when I warn you about
+people talking. Of course, you and I are accustomed to the freedom of
+the profession, and as far as I'm concerned you might engage half a
+dozen handsome lady secretaries without my even noticing it. But the
+others don't understand. They think it's funny."
+
+"Good heavens, what are you trying to suggest?" John demanded.
+
+He could manage the break, but this full pitch made him slog wildly.
+
+"_I_'m not trying to suggest anything. I'm simply telling you what other
+people may think. You see, after all, Hilda and Edith couldn't help
+noticing that you did allow Miss Hamilton to make mischief between you
+and your brother. I dare say James was in the wrong; but is it a part of
+a secretary's duties to manage her employer? And James _is_ your
+brother. The natural deduction for conventional people like Hilda and
+Edith was that--now, don't be annoyed at what I'm going to say, but I
+always speak out--I'm famous for my frankness. Well, to put it frankly,
+they think that Miss Hamilton can twist you round her little finger.
+Then, of course, they ask themselves why, and for conventional people
+like Hilda and Edith there's only one explanation. Of course, I told
+them it was all nonsense and that you were as innocent as an old lamb. I
+dare say you don't mind people talking. That's your business, but I
+shouldn't have been a good pal if I hadn't warned you that people will
+talk, if they aren't talking already."
+
+"You've got the mind of an usher," said John. "I can't say worse than
+that of anybody. Wasn't it you who suggested a French governess should
+be given the freedom of Church Row and who laughed at me for being an
+old beaver or some other prudish animal because I objected? If I can be
+trusted with a French governess, I can surely be trusted with a
+confidential secretary. Besides, we're surrounded by an absolute
+_chevaux de frise_ of chaperons, for I suppose that Hilda and Edith may
+fairly be considered efficient chaperons, even if you are still too
+youthfully Bohemian for the post."
+
+Eleanor's age was the only vulnerable spot in her self-confidence, and
+John took advantage of it to bring her little chat to a bitter end.
+
+"My dear Johnnie," she said, tartly, "I'm not talking about the present.
+I'm warning you about the future. However, you're evidently not in the
+mood to listen to anybody."
+
+"No, I'm not," he assented, warmly. "I'm as deaf as an old adder."
+
+The next day John, together with Mrs. Worfolk and Maud, left for
+Hampstead, and his secretary traveled with him up to town.
+
+"Yes," his housekeeper was overheard observing to Elsa in the hall of 36
+Church Row, "dog-cart is a good name for an unnatural conveyance, but
+give me a good old London cab for human beings. Turn again, Whittington,
+they say, and they're right. They may call London noisy if they like,
+but it's as quiet as a mouse when you put it alongside of all that
+baaring and mooing and cockadoodledoing in the country. Well, I mean to
+say, Elsa, I'm getting too old for the country. And the master's getting
+too old for the country, in my opinion. I'm in hopes he'll settle down
+now, and not go wearing himself out any more with the country. Believe
+me or not as you will, Elsa, when I tell you that the pore fellow had to
+play at ball like any little kid to keep himself amused."
+
+"Fancy that, Mrs. Worfolk," Elsa murmured with a gentle intake of
+astonished breath.
+
+"Yes, it used to make me feel all over melancholy to see him. All by
+himself in a great field. Pore fellow. He's lonely, that's what it is,
+however...."
+
+At this point the conversation born upon whispers and tut-tut passed out
+of John's hearing toward the basement.
+
+"I suppose my own servants will start gossiping next," he grumbled to
+himself. "Luckily I've learnt to despise gossip. Hullo, here's another
+bundle of press-cuttings.
+
+"_It is rumored that John Touchwood's version of Joan of Arc which he is
+writing for that noble tragedienne, Miss Janet Bond, will exhibit the
+Maid of Orleans in a new and piquant light. The distinguished dramatist
+has just returned from France where he has been obtaining some
+startling scenic effects for what is confidently expected will be the
+playwright's most successful production. We are sorry to hear that Miss
+Bond has been suffering from a sharp attack of 'flu, but a visit to Dr.
+Brighton has--_"
+
+These and many similar paragraphs were all pasted into the album by his
+secretary the next morning, and John was quite annoyed when she referred
+to them as worthless gossip.
+
+"You don't know what gossip is," he said, thinking of Eleanor. "I ignore
+real gossip."
+
+Miss Hamilton smiled to herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+After the Christmas party at Ambles John managed to secure a
+tranquillity that, however brief and deceptive he felt it was like to
+be, nevertheless encouraged him sufficiently to make considerable
+progress with the play while it lasted. Perhaps Eleanor's warning had
+sunk deeper than she might have supposed from the apparent result of
+that little chat with her brother-in-law about his future; at any rate,
+he was so firmly determined not to give the most evil mind the least
+opportunity for malicious exaggeration that in self-defense he devoted
+to Joan of Arc a more exclusive attention than he had hitherto devoted
+to any of his dramatic personages. Moreover, in his anxiety to prove how
+abominably unjust the insinuations of his family were, he imparted to
+his heroine some of his own temporary remoteness from the ordinary
+follies and failings of humanity.
+
+"We are too much obsessed by sex nowadays," he announced at the club one
+afternoon, and was tempted to expatiate upon his romantic shibboleth to
+several worn out old gentlemen who had assented to this proposition.
+"After all," he argued, "life is not all sex. I've lately been
+enormously struck by that in the course of my work. Take Joan of Arc for
+instance. Do we find any sex obsession in her? None. But is she less
+psychologically interesting on that account? No. Sex is the particular
+bane of modern writers. Frankly, I cannot read a novel nowadays. I
+suppose I'm old-fashioned, but I'd rather be called old-fashioned than
+asked to appreciate one of these young modern writers. I suppose there's
+no man more willing than myself to march with the times, but I like the
+high roads of literature, not the muddy lanes...."
+
+"The John Longs and John Lanes that have no turnings," a club wag put
+in.
+
+"Look at Stevenson," the dramatist continued, without paying any
+attention to the stupid interruption. "When Stevenson wrote a love scene
+he used to blush."
+
+"So would any one who had written love scenes as bad as his," sniggered
+a young man, who seemed oblivious of his very recent election to the
+club.
+
+The old members looked at him severely, not because he had sneered at
+Stevenson, but because, without being spoken to, he had volunteered a
+remark in the club smoking-room at least five years too soon.
+
+"I've got a young brother who thinks like you," said John, with friendly
+condescension.
+
+"Yes, I know him," the young man casually replied.
+
+John was taken aback; it struck him as monstrous that a friend of Hugh's
+should have secured election to _his_ club. The sanctity of the retreat
+had been violated, and he could not understand what the world was coming
+to.
+
+"How is Hugh?" the young man went on, without apparently being the least
+conscious of any difference between the two brothers. "Down at your
+place in Hampshire, isn't he? Lucky chap; though they tell me you
+haven't got many pheasants."
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"You don't preserve?"
+
+"No, I do not preserve." John would have liked to add "except the
+decencies of intercourse between old and young in a club smoking-room";
+but he refrained.
+
+"Perhaps you're right," said the young man. "These are tough times for
+landed proprietors. Well, give my love to Hugh when you see him," he
+added, and turning on his heel disappeared into the haze of a more
+remote portion of the smoking-room.
+
+"Who is that youth?" John demanded.
+
+The old members shook their heads helplessly, and one of the waiters was
+called up to be interrogated.
+
+"Mr. Winnington-Carr, I believe, sir," he informed them.
+
+"How long has he been a member?"
+
+"About a week, I believe, sir."
+
+John looked daggers of exclamation at the other members.
+
+"We shall have perambulators waiting in the lobby before we know where
+we are," he said, bitterly.
+
+Everybody agreed that these ill-considered elections were a scandal to a
+famous club, and John, relinquishing the obsession of sex as a topic,
+took up the obsession of youth, which he most convincingly proved to be
+the curse of modern life.
+
+It was probably Mr. Winnington-Carr's election that brought home to John
+the necessity of occupying himself immediately with his brother's
+future; at this rate he should find Hugh himself a member of his club
+before he knew where he was.
+
+"I'm worrying about my young brother," he told Miss Hamilton next day,
+and looked at her sharply to watch the effect of this remark.
+
+"Why, has he been misbehaving himself again?"
+
+"No, not exactly misbehaving; but a friend of his has just been elected
+to my club, and I don't think it's good for Hugh to be hanging about in
+idleness. I do wish I could find the address of that man Raikes from
+British Honduras."
+
+"Where is it likely to be?"
+
+"It was a visiting-card. It might be anywhere."
+
+"If it was a visiting-card, the most likely place to find it is in one
+of your waistcoat-pockets."
+
+John regarded his secretary with the admiration that such a practical
+suggestion justified, and rang the bell.
+
+"Maud, please bring down all my waistcoats," he told his valeting
+parlor-maid, who presently appeared in the library bowed down by a heap
+of clothes as a laborer is bowed down by a truss of hay.
+
+In the twenty-seventh waistcoat that was examined the card was found:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Sydney Ricketts.
+
+14 Lyonesse Road, Belize,
+
+Balam, S.W., British Honduras.
+
+"I thought his name was Raikes," John muttered, indignantly.
+
+"Never mind. A rose by any other name...." Miss Hamilton began.
+
+John might almost have been said to interrupt what she was going to say
+with an angry glare; but she only laughed merrily at his fierce
+expression.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon--I'd forgotten your objection to roses."
+
+Mr. Ricketts, who was fortunately still in London, accepted John's
+invitation to come and see him at Church Row on business. He was a
+lantern-jawed man with a tremendous capacity for cocktails, a sinewy
+neck, and a sentimental affection for his native suburb. At the same
+time, he would not hear a word against British Honduras.
+
+"I reckon our regatta at Belize is the prettiest little regatta in the
+world."
+
+"But the future of logwood and mahogany?" John insisted.
+
+"Great," the visitor assured him. "Why don't _you_ come out to us? You'd
+lose a lot of weight if you worked for a few months up the Zucara river.
+Here's a photograph of some of our boys loading logwood."
+
+"They look very hot," said John, politely.
+
+"They are very hot," said Mr. Ricketts. "You can't expect to grow
+logwood in Iceland."
+
+"No, of course not. I understand that."
+
+In the end it was decided that John should invest £2000 in the logwood
+and mahogany business and that sometime in February Hugh should be ready
+to sail with Mr. Ricketts to Central America.
+
+"Of course he'll want to learn something about the conditions of the
+trade at first. Yes, I reckon your brother will stay in Belize at
+first," said the planter, scratching his throat so significantly that
+John made haste to fill up his glass, thinking to himself that, if the
+cocktails at the Belize Yacht Club were as good as Mr. Ricketts boasted,
+Hugh would be unlikely ever to see much more of mahogany than he saw of
+it at present cut and rounded and polished to the shape of a solid
+dining-room table. However, the more attractive Belize, the less
+attractive England.
+
+"I think you told me this was your first visit home in fifteen years?"
+he asked.
+
+"That's right. Fifteen years in B.H."
+
+"B.H.?" repeated the new speculator, nervously.
+
+"British Honduras."
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon. The initials associated themselves in my mind
+for the moment with another place. B.H. you call it. Very appropriate I
+should think. I suppose you found many changes in Balham on your
+return?"
+
+"Wouldn't have known it again," said Mr. Ricketts. "For one thing they'd
+changed all the lamp-posts along our road. That's the kind of thing to
+teach a man he's growing old."
+
+Perhaps Hugh wouldn't recognize Hampstead after fifteen years, John
+thought, gleefully; he might even pass his nearest relations in the
+street without a salute when like a Rip van Winkle of the tropics he
+returned to his native country after fifteen years.
+
+"I suppose the usual outfit for hot climates will be necessary?"
+
+Mr. Ricketts nodded; and John began to envisage himself equipping Hugh
+from the Army and Navy Stores.
+
+"I always think there is something extraordinarily romantic about a
+tropical outfit," he ventured.
+
+"It's extraordinarily expensive," said Mr. Ricketts. "But everything's
+going up. And mahogany's going up when I get back to B.H., or my name
+isn't Sydney Ricketts."
+
+"There's nothing you particularly recommend?"
+
+"No, they'll tell you everything you want at the Stores and a bit over,
+except--oh, yes, by the way, don't let him forget his shaker."
+
+"Is that some special kind of porous overcoat?"
+
+Mr. Ricketts laughed delightedly.
+
+"Well, if that isn't the best thing I've heard since I was home. Porous
+overcoat! No, no, a shaker is for mixing drinks."
+
+"Humph!" John grunted. "From what I know of my brother, he won't require
+any special instrument for doing that. Good-by, Mr. Ricketts; my
+solicitor will write to you about the business side. Good-by."
+
+When John went back to his work he was humming.
+
+"Satisfactory?" his secretary inquired.
+
+"Extremely satisfactory. I think Hugh is very lucky. Ricketts assures me
+that in another fifteen years--that is about the time Hugh will be
+wanting to visit England again--there is no reason why he shouldn't be
+making at least £500 a year. Besides, he won't be lonely, because I
+shall send Harold out to British Honduras in another five years. It must
+be a fascinating place if you're fond of natural history, B.H.--as the
+denizens apparently call it among themselves," he added, pensively.
+
+It could not be claimed that Hugh was enraptured by the prospect of
+leaving England in February, and John who was really looking forward to
+the job of getting together his outfit was disappointed by his brother's
+lack of enthusiasm. He simply could not understand anybody's failure to
+be thrilled by snake-proof blankets and fever-proof filters, by
+medicine-chests and pith helmets and double-fly tents and all the
+paraphernalia of adventure in foreign parts. Finally he delivered an
+ultimatum to Hugh, which was accepted albeit with ill grace, and
+hardening his heart against the crossed letters of protest that arrived
+daily from his mother and burying himself in an Army and Navy Stores'
+catalogue, he was able to intrench himself in the opinion that he was
+doing the best that could be done for the scapegrace. The worst of
+putting Hugh on his feet again was the resentment such a brotherly
+action aroused among his other relations. After the quarrel with James
+he had hardly expected to hear from him for a long time; but no sooner
+had the news about British Honduras gone the round of the family than
+his eldest brother wrote to ask him for a loan of £1000 to invest in a
+projected critical weekly of which he was to be the editor. James added
+that John could hardly grudge him as much as that for log-rolling at
+home when he was prepared to spend double that amount on Hugh to roll
+logs abroad.
+
+"I can't say I feel inclined to help James after that article about my
+work," John observed to Miss Hamilton. "Besides, I hate critical
+weeklies."
+
+It happened that the post next morning brought a large check from his
+agent for royalties on various dramas that in various theaters all over
+the world were playing to big business; confronted by that bright-hued
+token of prosperity he could not bring himself to sit down and pen a
+flat refusal to his brother's demand. Instead of doing that he merely
+delayed for a few hours the birth of a new critical weekly by making an
+appointment to talk the matter over, and it was only a fleeting pleasure
+that he obtained from adding a postscript begging James not to bring his
+dog with him when he called at Church Row.
+
+"For if that wretched animal goes snorting round the room all the time
+we're talking," he assured his secretary, "I shall agree to anything in
+order to get rid of it. I shall find all my available capital invested
+in critical weeklies just to save the carpet from being eaten."
+
+James seemed to have entirely forgotten that his brother had any reason
+to feel sore with him; he also seemed entirely unconscious of there
+being the least likelihood of his refusing to finance the new venture.
+John remembering how angry James had been when on a former occasion he
+had reminded him that Hugh's career was still before him, was careful to
+avoid the least suggestion of throwing cold water upon the scheme.
+Therefore in the circumstances James' unusual optimism, which lent his
+sallow cheeks some of the playwright's roses, was not surprising, and
+before the conversation had lasted many minutes John had half promised a
+thousand pounds. Having done this, he did try to retrieve the situation
+by advising James to invest it in railway-stock and argued strongly
+against the necessity of another journal.
+
+"What are you going to call this further unnecessary burden upon our
+powers of assimilation?"
+
+"_I_ thought _The New Broom_ would be a good title."
+
+"Yes, I was positive you'd call it The New-Something-or-other. Why not
+The New Way to pay Old Scores? I'll back you to do that, even if you
+can't pay your old debts. However, listen to me. I'll lend the money to
+you personally. But I will not invest it in the paper. For security--or
+perhaps compensation would be a better word--you shall hand over to me
+the family portraits and the family silver."
+
+"I'd rather it was a business proposition," James objected.
+
+"My dear fellow, a new critical weekly can never be a business
+proposition. How many people read your books?"
+
+"About a dozen," James calculated.
+
+"Well, why should more people read your paper? No, you can have the
+money, but it must be regarded as a personal loan, and I must have the
+portraits and the silver."
+
+"I don't see why you should have them."
+
+"I don't see why you should start a new critical weekly."
+
+John could not help enjoying the power that his brother's ambition had
+put in his hands and he insisted firmly upon the surrender of the
+heritage.
+
+"All right, Jacob, I suppose I must sell my birthright for a mess of
+pottage."
+
+"A printer's pie would describe it better," said John.
+
+"Though why you want a few bad pictures and a dozen or so forks and
+spoons, I can't conceive."
+
+"Why do you want them?" John countered.
+
+"Because they're mine."
+
+"And the money is mine."
+
+James went away with a check for a thousand pounds in his pocket; but he
+went away less cheerful than he arrived. John, on the other hand, was
+much impressed by the manner in which he had dealt with his eldest
+brother; it was worth while losing a thousand pounds to have been able
+to demonstrate clearly to James once for all that his taste in
+literature was at the mercy of the romanticism he so utterly despised.
+And while he felt that he had displayed a nice dignity in forcing James
+to surrender the portraits and the silver, he was also pleasantly aware
+of an equally nice magnanimity in being willing to overlook that
+insulting article. But Miss Hamilton was at his elbow to correct the
+slightest tendency to be too well pleased with himself.
+
+"After all I couldn't disappoint poor old James," he said, fishing for
+an encomium and dangling his own good heart as the bait. His secretary,
+however, ignored the tempting morsel and swam away into the deeps of
+romantic drama where his munificence seemed less showy somehow.
+
+"You know best what you _want_ to do," she said, curtly. "And now, have
+you decided upon this soliloquy for Joan in her dungeon?"
+
+"What do you feel about it?"
+
+She held forth upon the advantages of a quiet front scene before the
+trial, and the author took her advice. He wished that she were as
+willing to discant upon his treatment of James, but he consoled himself
+for her lack of interest by supposing that she was diffident about
+giving the least color to any suggestion that she might be influencing
+him to her own advantage.
+
+Hugh came up to town in order to go more fully into the question of his
+future, and John regarding Miss Hamilton's attitude towards him tried to
+feel perfectly sure that she was going out of her way to be pleasant to
+Hugh solely with an idea of accentuating the strictly professional side
+of her association with himself. If this were not the case, he should be
+justified in thinking that she did really like Hugh very much, which
+would be an uncomfortable state of affairs. Still, explain it away as he
+might, John did feel a little uneasy, and once when he heard of a visit
+to the theater preceded by dinner he was upon the verge of pointing out
+to Hugh that until he was definitely established in mahogany and
+logwood he must be extremely careful about raising false hopes. He
+managed to refrain from approaching Hugh on the subject, because he knew
+that if he betrayed the least anxiety in that direction Hugh was capable
+of making it a matter of public jest. He decided instead to sound Miss
+Hamilton upon her views.
+
+"You've never had any longing for the tropics?" he asked, as casually as
+he was able.
+
+"Not particularly, though of course I should enjoy any fresh
+experience."
+
+"I was noticing the other day that you seemed to dislike spiders; and,
+of course, the spiders in hot countries are terrible. I remember reading
+of some that snare birds, and I'm not sure that in parts of South
+America they don't even attack human beings. Many people of course do
+not mind them. For instance, my brother-in-law Daniel Curtis wrote a
+very moving account of a spider as large as a bat, with whom he
+fraternized on the banks of the Orinoco. It's quite a little classic in
+its way."
+
+John noted with the warmest satisfaction that Miss Hamilton shuddered.
+
+"Your poor brother," she murmured.
+
+"Oh, he'll be all right," said John, hurriedly. "I'm equipping him with
+every kind of protection against insects. Only yesterday I discovered a
+most ingenious box which is guaranteed to keep one's tobacco from being
+devoured by cockroaches, and I thought Hugh looked very well in his pith
+helmet, didn't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid I really didn't notice," Miss Hamilton replied,
+indifferently.
+
+Soon after this conversation James' birthright was formally surrendered
+and John gave up contemplating himself upon a peak in Darien in order to
+contemplate himself as the head of an ancient and distinguished family.
+While the portraits were being hung in the library he discoursed upon
+the romance of lineage so volubly that he had a sudden dread of Miss
+Hamilton taking him for a snob, which he tried to counteract by putting
+into the mouth of Joan of Arc sentiments of the purest demophilism.
+
+"I shall aim at getting all the material for the play complete by April
+1st--my birthday, by the way. Yes, I shall be forty-three. And then I
+thought we might go into retreat and aim at finishing entirely by the
+end of June. That would enable Miss Bond to produce in September without
+hurrying the rehearsals. _Lucretia_ will be produced over here in April.
+I think it would be rather jolly to finish off the play in France.
+Domrèmy, Bourges, Chinon, Orleans, Compiègne, Rouen--a delightful tour.
+You could have an aluminum typewriter...."
+
+John's dreams of literature and life in France were interrupted by Mrs.
+Worfolk, who entered the room with a mystery upon her lips.
+
+"There's the Reverend Armitage waiting to see you in the hall, sir. But
+he was looking so queer that I was in two minds if I ought to admit him
+or not. It was Elsa who happened to open the door. Well, I mean to say,
+Maud's upstairs doing her rooms, and Elsa was a bit frightened when she
+saw him, through her being engaged to a policeman and so her mind
+running on murders and such like. Of course as soon as I saw it was the
+Reverend Armitage I quieted her down. But he really does look most
+peculiar, if you'll pardon the obsivation on Mrs. Armitage's husband. I
+don't think he's actually barmy _yet_; but you know, he gives any one
+the idea he will be soon, and I thought you ought to be told before he
+started to rave up and down the house. He's got a funny look in his eye,
+the same as what a man once had who sat opposite me in a bus and five
+minutes afterwards jumped off on Hammersmith Bridge and threw himself
+into the river. Quite a sensation it created, I remember, and we all had
+to alight, so as the conductor could give what information he had to a
+policeman who'd only heard the splash."
+
+Mrs. Worfolk had been too garrulous; before she had time to ascertain
+her master's views on the subject of admitting Laurence there was a tap
+at the door, and Laurence himself stalked into the room. Unquestionably,
+even to one who had not known him as a clergyman, he did present an odd
+appearance with his fur-lined cloak of voluminous black, his long hair,
+his bundle of manuscript and theatrical newspapers, and his tragic eye;
+the only article of attire that had survived his loss of faith was the
+clergyman's hat; but even that had lost its former meekness and now gave
+the effect of a farouche sombrero.
+
+"Well met," he intoned, advancing solemnly into the room and gripping
+his brother-in-law's hand with dramatic effect. "I would converse with
+you, John."
+
+"That's a blank verse line," said John. There really was not much else
+that he could have said to such an affected greeting.
+
+"Probably, probably," Laurence muttered, shaking his head. "It's
+difficult for me to talk in prose nowadays. But I have news for you,
+John, good news. _Thomas_ is finished."
+
+"You needn't wait, Mrs. Worfolk," said John.
+
+His housekeeper was standing by the door with a face wreathed in notes
+of interrogation and seemed unwilling to retire.
+
+"You needn't wait, Mrs. Worfolk," he repeated, irritably.
+
+"I thought you might have been wanting somebody fetched, sir."
+
+John made an impatient gesture and Mrs. Worfolk vanished.
+
+"You know Miss Hamilton, Laurence," said John, severely.
+
+"Ah, Miss Hamilton! Forgive my abstraction. How d'ye do? But--ah--I was
+anxious to have a few words in private."
+
+"Miss Hamilton is my confidential secretary."
+
+"I bow to your domestic arrangements," said Laurence. "But--ah--my
+business is of an extremely private nature. It bears in fact directly
+upon my future."
+
+John was determined to keep his secretary in the room. He had a feeling
+that money was going to be asked for, and he hoped that her presence
+would encourage him to hold out against agreeing to lend it.
+
+"If you have anything to say to me, Laurence, you must say it in front
+of my secretary. I cannot be continually shooing her from the room like
+a troublesome cat."
+
+The ex-vicar looked awkward for a moment; but his natural conceit
+reasserted itself and flinging back his cloak he laid upon the table a
+manuscript.
+
+"Fresh from Miss Quirk's typewriting office here is _Thomas_," he
+announced. "And now, my dear fellow, I require a little good advice."
+There was flowing into his voice the professional unction of the
+clergyman with a north transept to restore. "Who was it that first said
+'Charity begins at home'? Yes, a little good advice about my play. In
+deference to the Lord Chamberlain while reserving to my conscience the
+right to execrate his despotism I have expunged from my scenes the
+_central_ figures of the gospel story, and I venture to think that there
+is now no reason why _Thomas_ should not be--ah--produced."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't invite you to read it to me just at present,
+Laurence," said John, hurriedly. "No, not just at present, I'm afraid.
+When I'm working myself I'm always chary of being exposed to outside
+influences. _You_ wouldn't like and _I_ shouldn't like to find in _Joan
+of Arc_ echoes of _Thomas_. Miss Hamilton, however, who is thoroughly
+conversant with my point of view, would perhaps...."
+
+"I confess," Laurence interrupted, loftily, "that I do not set much
+store by its being read. No, no. You will acquit me of undue
+self-esteem, my dear fellow, if I say at once in all modesty that I am
+satisfied with my labors, though you may be a little alarmed when I
+confide in you my opinion that it is probably a classic. Still, such is
+my deliberate conviction. Moreover, I have already allowed our little
+party at Ambles to hear it. Yes, we spent a memorable evening before the
+manuscript was dispatched to Miss Quirk. Some of the scenes, indeed,
+proved almost too dramatic. Edith was quite exhausted by her emotion
+and scarcely slept all night. As for Hilda, I've never seen her so
+overcome by anything. She couldn't say anything when I finished. No, no,
+I sha'n't read it to you. In fact, to be--ah--blunt, I could scarcely
+endure the strain a second time. No, what I want you to do, my dear
+fellow, is to--ah--back it. The phrase is Hugh's. We have all been
+thrilled down at Ambles by rumors of your generosity, and I know you'll
+be glad of another medium for exercising it. Am I unduly proud of my
+work if I say that it seems to me a more worthy medium than British
+Honduras or weekly papers?"
+
+John had been gazing at Miss Hamilton with a mute appeal to save him
+while his brother-in-law was talking; she, however, bending lower every
+moment to hide her mirth made no attempt to show him a way of escape and
+John had to rely upon his own efforts.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better," he suggested, mildly, "to submit your play to a
+manager before we--before you try to put it on yourself? I have never
+invested any money in my own plays, and really I...."
+
+"My dear John, far be it from me to appear to cast the least slur--to
+speak in the faintest way at all slightingly of your plays, but I do not
+quite see the point of the comparison. Your plays--excellent as they
+are, most excellent--are essentially commercial transactions. My play is
+not a commercial transaction."
+
+"Then why should I be invited to lose my money over it?"
+
+Laurence smiled compassionately.
+
+"I thought you would be glad of the opportunity to show a disinterested
+appreciation of art. In years to come you will be proud to think that
+you were one of the first to give practical evidence of your belief in
+_Thomas_."
+
+"But perhaps I'm just as skeptical as your hero was. I may not believe
+in your play's immortality."
+
+Laurence frowned.
+
+"Come, my dear fellow, this is being petty. We are all counting on you.
+You wouldn't like to hear it said that out of jealousy you had tried to
+suppress a rival dramatist. But I must not let my indignation run away
+with me, and you must forgive my heat. I am overstrained. The magnitude
+of the subject has almost been too much for me. Besides, I should have
+explained at once that I intended to invest in _Thomas_ all that is left
+of my own little capital. Yes, I am even ready to do that. Then I shall
+spend a year as an actor, after which I shall indulge my more worldly
+self by writing a few frankly commercial plays before I begin my next
+great tragedy entitled _Paul_."
+
+John decided that his brother-in-law had gone mad; unable to think of
+any action more effective at such a crisis, he rang the bell. But when
+Maud came to inquire his need he could not devise anything to tell her
+except that Mr. Armitage was staying to lunch.
+
+It was a most uncomfortable meal, because Miss Hamilton in order to keep
+herself from laughing aloud had to be preternaturally grave, and John
+himself was in a continuous state of nervous irritation at Laurence, who
+would let everything on his plate grow cold while he droned on without a
+pause about the simplicity of the best art. It was more than tantalizing
+to watch him gradually build up a mouthful upon his fork, still talking;
+slowly raise it to his lips, still talking; and wave the overloaded fork
+to and fro before him, still talking. But it was an agony to watch the
+carefully accumulated mouthful drop back bit by bit upon his plate,
+until at last very slowly and still talking he would insert one cold and
+tiny morsel into his patient mouth, so tiny a morsel that the
+mastication of it did not prevent him from still talking.
+
+"I'm afraid you're not enjoying your lunch," his host said.
+
+"Don't wait for me, my dear fellow; when I am interested in something
+else I cannot gobble my food. Though in any case," he added in a
+resigned voice, "I shall have indigestion. One cannot write plays like
+_Thomas_ without exposing oneself to the ills that flesh is heir to."
+
+After lunch, much to John's relief, his brother-in-law announced that he
+had an appointment with Eleanor and would therefore be unable to stay
+even long enough to smoke a cigar.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Eleanor and I are going to interview one or two of her
+theatrical friends. No doubt I shall soon be able to proclaim myself a
+rogue and a vagabond. Yes, yes, poor Edith was quite distressed this
+morning when I told her that jestingly. However, she will be happy to
+hear to-night when I get back that her brother has been so large."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Not that Edith expected him to be otherwise. No, no, my dear fellow,
+Edith has a most exalted opinion of you, which indeed I share, if I may
+be permitted so to do. Good-by, John, and many thanks. Who knows? Our
+little lunch may become a red-letter day in the calendar of English
+dramatic art. Let me see, the tube-station is on the left as I go out?
+Good-by, John; I wish I could stay the night with you, but I have a
+cheap day-ticket which forbids any extension of my plans."
+
+When John got back to the library he turned in bewilderment to his
+secretary.
+
+"Look here. I surely never gave him the least idea that I was going to
+back his confounded play, did I?"
+
+"On the contrary, you made it perfectly clear that you were not."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say so, because he has gone away from here
+apparently under the delusion that I am. He'll brag about it to Eleanor
+this afternoon, and before I know where I am she will be asking me to
+set George up with a racing-stable."
+
+Eleanor did not go as far as that, but she did write to John and point
+out that the present seemed a suitable moment to deal with the question
+of George's health by sending him on a voyage round the world. She added
+that for herself she asked nothing; but John had an uneasy impression
+that it was only in the belief that he who asks not to him shall it be
+given.
+
+"Take down two letters, please, Miss Hamilton," he said, grimly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEAR LAURENCE,--I am afraid that you went away yesterday afternoon under
+a misapprehension. I do _not_ see my way to offer any financial
+contribution toward the production of your play. I myself passed a long
+apprenticeship before I was able to get one of my plays acted, and I do
+not think that you can expect to do otherwise. Do not imagine that I am
+casting any doubts upon the excellence of _Thomas_. If it is as good as
+you claim, you will have your reward without any help from me. Your idea
+of getting acquainted with the practical side of the stage is a good
+one. If you are not already engaged in the autumn, I think I can offer
+you one of the minor bishops in _Joan of Arc_.
+
+Your affectionate brother-in-law,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEAR ELEANOR,--I must say decidedly that I do not perceive any
+likelihood of George's health deriving much benefit from a voyage round
+the world. If he is threatened with sleeping sickness, it would be rash
+to expose him to a tropical climate. If he is suffering from a sluggish
+liver, he will get no benefit from lolling about in smoking-saloons,
+whatever the latitude and longitude. I have repeatedly helped George
+with his schemes to earn a living for himself and he has never failed to
+squander my money upon capricious race-horses. You know that I am always
+willing to come forward on behalf of Bertram and Viola; but their father
+must show signs of helping himself before I do anything more for him. I
+am sorry that I cannot offer you a good part in _Joan of Arc_; there is
+really nothing to suit you for I presume you would not care to accept
+the part of Joan's mother. However, it has now been decided to produce
+_Lucretia_ in April and I shall do my best to persuade Grohmann to
+offer you a part in that.
+
+Your affectionate brother-in-law,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+John did not receive an answer to either of these letters, and out of an
+atmosphere of pained silence he managed to conjure optimistically an
+idea that Laurence and Eleanor had realized the justice of his point of
+view.
+
+"You do agree with me that they were going too far?" he asked Miss
+Hamilton; but she declined to express an opinion.
+
+"What's the good of having a confidential secretary, if I can't ask her
+advice about confidential matters?" he grumbled.
+
+"Are you dissatisfied with me?"
+
+"No, no, no. I'm not dissatisfied. What an exaggeration of my remark!
+I'm simply a little puzzled by your attitude. It seems to me--I may be
+wrong--that instead of ... well, at first you were always perfectly
+ready to talk about my relations and about me, whereas now you won't
+talk about anything except Joan of Arc. I'm really getting quite bored
+with Joan of Arc."
+
+"I was only an amateur when I began," she laughed. "Now I'm beginning to
+be professional."
+
+"I think it's a great mistake," said John, decidedly. "Suppose I insist
+upon having your advice?"
+
+"You'd find that dictation bears two meanings in English, to only one of
+which are you entitled under the terms of our contract."
+
+"Look here, have I done anything to offend you?" he asked, pathetically.
+
+But she would not be moved and held her pencil so conspicuously ready
+that the author was impaled upon it before he could escape and was soon
+hard at work dictating his first arrangement of the final scene in a
+kind of indignant absent-mindedness.
+
+Soon after this John received a note from Sir Percy Mortimer, asking if
+he could spare time to visit the great actor-manager some evening in the
+course of the current week. Between nine-thirty and ten was indicated as
+a suitable time, inasmuch as Sir Percy would then be in his
+dressing-room gathering the necessary momentum to knock down all the
+emotional fabric carefully built up in the first two acts by the most
+cunning of contemporary dramatists. Sir Percy Mortimer, whose name was
+once Albert Snell, could command anybody, so it ought not to have been
+remarkable that John rather flustered by the invitation made haste to
+obey. Yet, he must have been aware of an implied criticism in Miss
+Hamilton's smile, which flashed across her still deep eyes like a sunny
+wind, for he murmured, apologetically:
+
+"We poor writers of plays must always wait upon our masters."
+
+He tried to convey that Sir Percy was only a mortal like himself, but he
+failed somehow to eliminate the deep-rooted respect, almost it might be
+called awe of the actor that was perceptible under the assumed
+carelessness of the author.
+
+"You see, it may be that he is anxious to hear some of my plans for the
+near future," he added.
+
+If Sir Percy Mortimer was impressive in the smoking-room of the Garrick
+Club as himself, he was dumbfounding in his dressing-room as Lord
+Claridge, the ambassador, about to enter Princess Thingumabobski's salon
+and with diplomatic wiles and smiles to settle the future of several
+couples, incidentally secure for himself the heart and hand of a young
+heiress. His evening-dress had achieved an immaculation that even Ouida
+never dreamed of; he wore the Grand Cross of the Victorian Order with as
+easy an assurance as his father had worn the insignia of a local
+friendly society in Birmingham; he was the quintessential diplomat of
+girlish dreams, and it was not surprising that women were ready to
+remove even their hats to see him perform at matinees.
+
+"Ah, it's very good of you to look me up, my dear fellow. I have just a
+quarter-of-an-hour. Godfrey!" He turned to address his valet, who might
+have been a cardinal driven by an ecclesiastical crisis like the spread
+of Modernism into attendance upon an actor.
+
+"Sir Percy?"
+
+"I do not wish to be disturbed until I am called for the third act."
+
+"Very good, Sir Percy."
+
+"And Godfrey!"
+
+"Sir Percy?"
+
+"The whisky and soda for Mr. Touchwood. Oh, and Godfrey!"
+
+"Sir Percy?"
+
+"If the Duke of Shropshire comes behind, tell His Grace that I am
+unavoidably prevented from seeing him until after the third act. I will
+_not_ be interrupted."
+
+"No, Sir Percy. I quite understand, Sir Percy."
+
+The valet set the decanter at John's elbow and vanished like the ghost
+of a king.
+
+"It's just this, my dear fellow," the actor-manager began, when John who
+had been trying to decide whether he should suggest Peter the Great or
+Augustus the Strong as the next part for his host was inclining towards
+Augustus. "It's just this. I believe that Miss Cartright, a former
+member of my company, is _also_ a relation of yours."
+
+"She is my sister-in-law," admitted John, swallowing both Peter and
+Augustus in a disappointed gulp.
+
+"In fact, I believe that in private life she is Mrs. George Touchwood.
+Correct me if I am wrong in my names."
+
+Sir Percy waited, but John did not avail himself of the offer, and he
+went on.
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, she has approached me upon a matter which I
+confess I have found somewhat embarrassing, referring as it does to
+another man's private affairs; but as one of the--as--how shall I
+describe myself?--" He fingered the ribbon of the Victorian Order for
+inspiration. "As an actor-manager of some standing, I felt that you
+would prefer me to hear what she had to say in order that I might
+thereby adjudicate--yes, I think that is the word--without any--no,
+forgive me--adjudicate is _not_ the word. Adjudicate is too strong. What
+is the word for outsiders of standing who are called in to assist at the
+settlement of a trade dispute? Whatever the word is, that is the word I
+want. I understand from Miss Cartright--Mrs. George Touchwood in private
+life--that her husband is in a very grave state of health and entirely
+without means." Sir Percy looked at himself in the glass and dabbed his
+face with the powder-puff. "Miss Cartright asked me to use my influence
+with you to take some steps to mitigate this unpleasant situation upon
+which, it appears, people are beginning to comment rather unfavorably.
+Now, you and I, my dear fellow, are members of the same club. You and I
+have high positions in our respective professions. Is it wise? There may
+of course be a thousand reasons for leaving your brother to starve with
+an incurable disease. But is it wise? As a man of the world, I think
+not." He touched his cheeks with the hare's-foot and gave them a richer
+bloom. "Don't allow me to make any suggestion that even borders upon the
+impertinent, but if you care to accept my mediation--_that_ is the word
+I couldn't remember." In his enthusiasm Sir Percy smacked his leg, which
+caused him a momentary anxiety for the perfection of his trousers.
+"Mediation! Of course, that's it--if you care, as I say, to accept my
+mediation I am willing to mediate."
+
+John stared at the actor-manager in angry amazement. Then he let himself
+go:
+
+"My brother is not starving--he eats more than any human being I know.
+Nor is he suffering from anything incurable except laziness. I do not
+wish to discuss with you or anybody else the affairs of my relations,
+which I regret to say are in most cases only too much my own affairs."
+
+"Then there is nothing for me to do," Sir Percy sighed, deriving what
+consolation he could from being unable to find a single detail of his
+dress that could be improved.
+
+"Nothing whatever," John agreed, emphatically.
+
+"But what shall I say to Miss Cartright, who you _must_ remember is a
+former member of my company, as well as your sister-in-law?"
+
+"I leave that to you."
+
+"It's very awkward," Sir Percy murmured. "I thought you would be sure to
+see that it is always better to settle these unpleasant matters--out of
+court, if I may use the expression. I'm so afraid that Miss Cartright
+will air her grievance."
+
+"She can wash as much dirty linen as she likes and air it every day in
+your theater," said John, fiercely. "But my brother George shall _not_
+go on a voyage round the world. You've nothing else to ask me? Nothing
+about my plans for the near future?"
+
+"No, no. I've a success, as you know, and I don't expect I shall want
+another play for months. You've seen my performance, of course?"
+
+"No," said John, curtly, "I've not."
+
+And when he left the actor-manager's dressing-room he knew that he had
+wounded him more deeply by that simple negative than by all the mighty
+insults imaginable.
+
+However, notwithstanding his successful revenge John left the theater in
+a rage and went off to his club with the hope of finding a sympathetic
+listener into whose ears he could pour the tale of Sir Percy's
+megalomania; but by ill luck there was nobody suitable in the
+smoking-room that night. To be sure, Sir Philip Cranbourne was snoring
+in an armchair, and Sir Philip Cranbourne was perhaps a bigger man in
+the profession than Sir Percy Mortimer. Yet, he was not so much bigger
+but that he would have welcomed a tale against the younger theatrical
+knight whose promotion to equal rank with himself he had resented very
+much. Sir Philip, however, was fast asleep, and John doubted if he hated
+Sir Percy sufficiently to welcome being woken up to hear a story against
+him--particularly a story by a playwright, one of that miserable class
+for which Sir Philip as an actor had naturally a very profound contempt.
+Moreover, thinking the matter over, John came to the conclusion that
+the story, while it would tell against Sir Percy would also tell against
+himself, and he decided to say nothing about it. When he was leaving the
+club he ran into Mr. Winnington-Carr, who greeted him airily.
+
+"Evening, Touchwood!"
+
+"Good evening."
+
+"What's this I hear about Hugh going to Sierra Leone? Bit tough, isn't
+it, sending him over to a plague spot like that? You saw that paragraph
+in _The Penguin_? Things we should like to know, don't you know? Why
+John Touchwood's brother is taking up a post in the tropics and whether
+John himself is really sorry to see him go."
+
+"No, I did not see that paragraph," said John, icily.
+
+Next morning a bundle of press-cuttings arrived.
+
+"There is nothing here but stupid gossip," said John to his secretary,
+flinging the packet into the fire. "Nothing that is worth preserving in
+the album, I mean to say."
+
+Miss Hamilton smiled to herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The buzz of gossip, the sting of scandalous paragraph, even the
+blundering impertinence of the actor-knight were all forgotten the
+following afternoon when a telegram arrived from Hampshire to say that
+old Mrs. Touchwood was dying. John left London immediately; but when he
+reached Ambles he found that his mother was already dead.
+
+"She passed away at five o'clock," Edith sobbed.
+
+Perhaps it was to stop his wife's crying that Laurence abandoned at any
+rate temporarily his unbelief and proclaimed as solemnly as if he were
+still Vicar of Newton Candover that the old lady was waiting for them
+all above. Hilda seemed chiefly worried by the fact that she had never
+warned James of their mother's grave condition.
+
+"I did telegraph Eleanor, who hasn't come; and how I came to overlook
+James and Beatrice I can't think. They'll be so hurt. But Mama didn't
+fret for anybody in particular. No, Hugh sat beside the bed and held her
+hand, which seemed to give her a little pleasure, and I was kept
+occupied with changing the hot-water bottles."
+
+In the dining-room George was knitting lugubriously.
+
+"You mustn't worry yourself, old chap," he said to John with his usual
+partiality for seductive advice. "You can't do anything now. None of us
+can do anything till the funeral, though I've written to Eleanor to
+bring my top-hat with her when she comes."
+
+The embarrassment of death's presence hung heavily over the household.
+The various members sat down to supper with apologetic glances at one
+another, and nobody took a second helping of any dish. The children were
+only corrected in whispers for their manners, but they were given to
+understand by reproachful head-shakes that for a child to put his
+elbows on the table or crumble his bread or drink with his mouth full
+was at such a time a cruel exhibition of levity. John could not help
+contrasting the treatment of children at a death with their treatment at
+a birth. Had a baby arrived upstairs, they would have been hustled out
+of sight and sound of the unclean event; but over death they were
+expected to gloat, and their curiosity was encouraged as the fit
+expression of filial piety.
+
+"Yes, Frida, darling, dear Grandmama will have lots and lots of lovely
+white flowers. Don't kick the table, sweetheart. Think of dear Grandmama
+looking down at you from Heaven, and don't kick the table-leg, my
+precious," said Edith in tremulous accents, gently smoothing back her
+daughter's indefinite hair.
+
+"Can people only see from Heaven or can they hear?" asked Harold.
+
+"Hush, my boy," his Uncle Laurence interposed. "These are mysteries into
+which God does not permit us to inquire too deeply. Let it suffice that
+our lightest actions are known. We cannot escape the omniscient eye."
+
+"I wasn't speaking about God," Harold objected. "I was asking about
+Grandmama. Does she hear Frida kicking the table, or does she only see
+her?"
+
+"At this solemn moment, Harold, when we should all of us be dumb with
+grief, you should not persist. Your poor grandmother would be pained to
+hear you being persistent like this."
+
+Harold seemed to think he had tricked his uncle into answering the
+question, for he relapsed into a satisfied silence; Edith's eyes flashed
+gladly through her tears to welcome the return of her husband's truant
+orthodoxy. All managed to abstain while they were eating from any more
+conspicuous intrusion of the flesh than was inevitable; but there was a
+painful scene after supper, because Frida insisted that she was
+frightened to sleep alone, and refused to be comforted by the offer of
+Viola for company. The terrible increase of Grandmama's powers of
+hearing and seeing might extend to new powers of locomotion in the
+middle of the night, in which case Viola would be no protection.
+
+"But Grandmama is in Heaven, darling," her mother urged.
+
+"I want to sleep with you. I'm frightened. I want to sleep with you,"
+she wailed.
+
+"Laurence!" murmured Edith, appealingly.
+
+"Death is a great leveler," he intoned. Grateful to the chance of being
+able to make this observation, he agreed to occupy his daughter's room
+and thereby allow her to sleep with her mother.
+
+"You're looking sad, Bertram," John observed, kindly, to his favorite
+nephew. "You mustn't take this too much to heart."
+
+"No, Uncle John, I'm not. Only I keep wishing Grandmama had lived a
+little longer."
+
+"We all wish that, old man."
+
+"Yes, but I only meant a very little longer, so that I needn't have gone
+back for the first week of term."
+
+John nervously hurried his nephew up to bed beyond the scorching of
+Laurence's rekindled flames of belief. Downstairs, he tried to extract
+from the attitude of the grown-up members of the family the attitude he
+would have liked to detect in himself. If a few months ago John had been
+told that his mother's death would affect him so little he would have
+been horrified by the suggestion; even now he was seriously shocked at
+himself. Yet, try as he might, he could not achieve the apotheosis of
+the old lady that he would have been so content to achieve. Undoubtedly
+a few months ago he would have been able without being conscious of
+self-deception to pretend that he believed not only in the reality of
+his own grief, but also in that of the others. He would have taken his
+part in the utterance of platitudes about life and death, separation and
+reunion. His own platitudes would have been disguised with poetic
+tropes, and he might have thought to himself how well such and such a
+phrase was put; but he would quickly have assured himself that it was
+well put because it was the just expression of a deep emotion. Now he
+could not make a single contribution to the woeful reflections of those
+round him. He believed neither in himself nor in them. He knew that
+George was faintly anxious about his top-hat, that Hilda was agitated at
+the prospect of having to explain to James and Beatrice her
+unintentional slight, that Laurence was unable to resist the opportunity
+of taking the lead at this sorrowful time by reverting to his priestly
+office. And Hugh, for whom the old lady had always possessed a fond
+unreasoning affection, did his countenance express more than a hardly
+concealed relief that it was all over? Did he not give the impression
+that he was stretching his legs after sitting still in one position for
+too long? Edith, to be sure, was feeling some kind of emotion that
+required an endless flow of tears, but it seemed to John that she was
+weeping more for the coming of death than for the going of her mother.
+And the children, how could they be expected to feel the loss of the old
+lady? There under the lamp like a cenotaph recording the slow hours of
+age stood her patience-cards in their red morocco case; there they would
+be allowed to stand for a while to satisfy the brief craving for
+reverence, and then one of the children realizing that Grandmama had no
+more need of playing would take possession of them; they would become
+grubby and dog-eared in younger hands; they would disappear one by one,
+and the memory of that placid presence would hardly outlive them.
+
+"It's so nice to think that her little annuity died with her," sighed
+Edith. She spoke of the annuity as if it were a favorite pug that had
+died out of sympathy with its mistress. "I should hate to feel I was
+benefiting from the death of somebody I loved," she explained presently.
+
+John shivered; that remark of his sister's was like a ghostly footstep
+upon his own grave, and from a few years hence, perhaps much less, he
+seemed to hear the family lawyer cough before he settled himself down to
+read the last will and testament of John Touchwood.
+
+"Of course, poor Mama had been dreadfully worried these last weeks,"
+Hilda said. "She felt very much the prospect of Hugh's going abroad--and
+other things."
+
+John regarded his elder sister, and was on the point of asking what she
+meant to insinuate by other things, when a lament from upstairs startled
+the assembled family.
+
+"Come to bed, mother, come to bed, I want you," Frida was shrieking over
+the balustrade. "The door of Grandmama's room made a noise just now."
+
+"You had better go," said Laurence in answer to his wife's unvoiced
+appeal; and Edith went off gratefully.
+
+"It will always be a consolation to me," said Laurence, "that Mama was
+able to hear _Thomas_ read to her. Yes, yes, she was so well upon that
+memorable evening. So very well. By the way, John, I shall arrange with
+the Vicar to read the burial service myself. It will add the last touch
+to the intimacy of our common grief."
+
+In his own room that night John tried hard not to criticize anybody
+except himself. It was he who was cynical, he who was hard, he who was
+unnatural, not they. He tried to evoke from the past early memories of
+his mother, but he could not recall one that might bring a tear to his
+eye. He remembered that once she had smacked him for something George
+had done, that she had never realized what a success he had made of his
+life's work, that she was--but he tore the unfilial thoughts from his
+brain and reminded himself how much of her personality endured in his
+own. George, Edith, and himself resembled her: James, Hilda, and Hugh
+resembled their father. John's brothers and sisters haunted the
+darkness; and he knew that deep down in himself he blamed his father and
+mother for bringing them all into the world; he could not help feeling
+that he ought to have been an only child.
+
+"I do resent their existence," John thought. "I'm a heartless egotist.
+And Miss Hamilton thinks I'm an egotist. Her manner towards me lately
+has been distant, even contemptuous. Could that suggestion of Hilda's
+have had any truth in it? Was Mama worried to death by Hugh's going
+abroad? Did James complain to her about my taking the portraits and the
+silver? Is it from any standpoint conceivable that my own behavior did
+hasten her end?"
+
+John's self-reproaches were magnified in the darkness, and he spent a
+restless and unhappy night, trying to think that the family was more
+important than the individual.
+
+"You feel it terribly, don't you, dear Johnnie?" Edith asked him next
+morning with an affectionate pressure upon his arm. "You're looking
+quite worn out."
+
+"We all feel it terribly," he sighed.
+
+During the three days before the funeral John managed to work himself up
+into a condition of sentimentality which he flattered himself was
+outwardly at any rate affecting. Continuous reminders of his mother's
+existence culminating in the arrival of a new cap she had ordered just
+before her last swift illness seemed to induce in him the illusion of
+sorrow; and without the least idea of what he intended to do with them
+afterwards he collected a quantity of small relics like spectacle-cases
+and caps and mittens, which he arranged upon his dressing-table and
+brooded over with brimming eyes. He indulged Harold's theories about the
+psychical state of his grandmother; he practiced swinging a golf club,
+but he never once took out a ball; he treated everybody to magnificent
+wreaths, and presented the servants as well as his nephews and nieces
+with mourning; he ordered black-edged note-paper; he composed an epitaph
+in the manner of Sir Thomas Browne with cadences and subtle
+alliterations. Then came the funeral, which ruined the last few romantic
+notions of grief that he had been able to preserve.
+
+To begin with, Beatrice arrived in what could only be described as a
+towering rage: no less commonplace epithet would have done justice to
+the vulgarity of her indignation. That James the eldest son and she his
+wife should not have been notified of the dangerous condition of Mama,
+but should have been summoned to the obsequies like mere friends of the
+family had outraged her soul, or, as Beatrice herself put it, had
+knocked her down like a feather. Oh yes, she had always been considered
+beneath the Touchwood standard of gentility, but poor Mama had not
+thought the worse of her for that; poor Mama had many times gone out of
+her way to be specially gracious towards her; poor Mama must have "laid"
+there wondering why her eldest daughter-in-law did not come to give her
+the last and longest farewell. She had not been lucky enough to be
+blessed with children, but poor Mama had sometimes congratulated her
+upon that fact; poor Mama had realized only too well that children were
+not always a source of happiness. She knew that the undeserved poverty
+which had always dogged poor old Jimmie's footsteps had lately caused to
+be exacted from him the family portraits and the family silver pressed
+upon him by poor Mama herself; but was that a reason for excluding him
+from his mother's death-bed? She would not say whom she blamed, but she
+had her own ideas, and though Hilda might protest it was her fault, she
+knew better; Hilda was incapable of such barbarity. No, she would _not_
+walk beside James as wife of the chief mourner; she would follow in the
+rear of the funeral procession and hope that at any rate she was not
+grudged that humble place. If some people resented her having bought the
+largest wreath from a very expensive flower-shop, she was not too proud
+to carry the wreath herself; she had carried it all the way from town
+first-class to avoid its being crushed by heedless third-class
+passengers.
+
+"And when I die," sobbed Beatrice, "I hope that James will remember we
+weren't allowed to see poor Mama before she went to Heaven, and will let
+me die quite alone. I'm sure I don't want my death to interfere with
+other people's amusements."
+
+The funeral party gathered round the open grave; Laurence read the
+service so slowly and the wind was so raw that grief was depicted upon
+every countenance; the sniffing of many noses, above which rose
+Beatrice's sobs of mortification and rage, mingled with the sighing of
+the yews and the sexton's asthma in a suitably lachrymose symphony.
+
+"Now that poor Mama has gone," said Hilda to her brother that afternoon,
+"I dare say you're anxious for me to be gone too."
+
+"I really don't think you are entitled to ascribe to me such unnatural
+sentiments," John expostulated. "Why should I want you to die?"
+
+He could indeed ask this, for such an event would inevitably connote his
+adoption of Harold.
+
+"I didn't mean you wanted me to die," said Hilda, crossly. "I meant you
+would like me to leave Ambles."
+
+"Not at all. I'm delighted for you to stay here so long as it suits your
+convenience. And that applies equally to Edith. Also I may say to
+George," he added with a glance at Eleanor, who had taken the
+opportunity of mourning to equip herself with a new set of black
+bearskin furs. Eleanor shook herself like a large animal emerging from
+the stream.
+
+"And to me?" she asked with a challenge in her eyes.
+
+"You must judge for yourself, Eleanor, how far my hospitality is likely
+to be extended willingly to you after last week," replied John, coldly.
+He had not yet spoken to his sister-in-law about the interference of Sir
+Percy Mortimer with his private affairs, and he now awaited her excuses
+of reproaches with a curiosity that was very faintly tinged with
+apprehension.
+
+"Oh, I'm not at all ashamed of what I did," she declared. "George can't
+speak up for himself, and it was my duty to do all I could to help him
+in a matter of life and death."
+
+John's cheeks flushed with stormy rose like a menacing down, and he was
+about to break over his sister-in-law in thunder and lightning when
+Laurence, entering the room at the moment and only hearing imperfectly
+her last speech, nodded and sighed:
+
+"Yes, yes. Eleanor is indeed right. Yes, yes. In the midst of life...."
+
+Everybody hurried to take advantage of the diversion; a hum of
+platitudes rose and fell upon the funereal air. John in a convulsion of
+irritability ordered the dog-cart to drive him to the station. He was
+determined to travel back to town alone; he feared that if he stayed any
+longer at Ambles his brother-in-law would revive the discussion about
+his play; he was afraid of Hugh's taking advantage of his mother's death
+to dodge British Honduras and of James' trading upon his filial piety to
+recover the silver and the family portraits.
+
+When John got back to Church Row he found a note from Miss Hamilton to
+say she had influenza and was unlikely to be back at work for at least a
+week--if indeed, she added, she was able to come back at all. This
+unpleasant prospect filled him with genuine gloom, and it was with great
+difficulty that he refrained from driving immediately to Camera Square
+in order to remonstrate with her in person. His despondency was not
+lightened by Mrs. Worfolk's graveside manner and her assumption of a
+black satin dress hung with jet bugles that was usually reserved to mark
+the more cheerful festivals of the calendar. Worn thus out of season
+hung it about the rooms like a fog, and its numerous rustlings coupled
+with the housekeeper's sighs of commiseration added to the lugubrious
+atmosphere a sensation of damp which gave the final touch to John's
+depression. Next morning the weather was really abominable; the view
+over London from his library window showed nothing but great cobwebs of
+rain that seemed to be actually attached to a sky as gray and solid as a
+dusty ceiling. Action offered the only hope of alleviating life upon
+such a day, and John made up his mind to drive over to Chelsea and
+inquire about his secretary's health. He found that she was better,
+though still in bed; being anxious to learn more about her threatened
+desertion he accepted the maid's invitation to come in and speak to Mrs.
+Hamilton. The old lady looked more like a clown than ever in the
+forenoon while the rice-powder was still fresh upon her cheeks, and John
+found her humor as irritating as he would have found the humor of a real
+clown in similar circumstances. Her manner towards him was that of a
+person who is aware of, but on certain terms is willing to overlook a
+grave indiscretion, and she managed most successfully to make him feel
+that he was on his defense.
+
+"Yes, poor Doris has been very seedy. And her illness has unluckily
+coincided with mine."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry ..." he began.
+
+"Thank you. I'm used to being ill. I am always ill. At least, as luck
+will have it, I usually feel ill when Doris has anything the matter with
+her."
+
+This John was ready to believe, but he tried to look at once shocked and
+sympathetic.
+
+"Do not let us discuss my health," Mrs. Hamilton went on scorching her
+eyebrows in the aureole of martyrdom she wore. "Of what importance is my
+health? Poor Doris has had a very sharp attack, a very sharp attack
+indeed."
+
+"I'm afraid that the weather...."
+
+"It's not the weather, Mr. Touchwood. It is overwork." And before John
+could say a word she was off. "You must remember that Doris is not used
+to hard work. She has spent all her life with me, and you can easily
+imagine that with a mother always at hand she has been spared the least
+hardship. I would have done anything for her. Ever since my husband
+died, my life has been one long buffer between Doris and the world. You
+know how obstinately she has refused to let me do all I wanted. I refer
+to my brother-in-law, Mr. Hamilton of Glencockie. And this is the
+result. Nervous prostration, influenza, a high temperature--and sharp
+pains, which between ourselves I'm inclined to think are perhaps not so
+bad as she imagines. People who are not accustomed to pains," said the
+old lady, jealously, "are always apt to be unduly alarmed and to
+attribute to them a severity that is a leetle exaggerated. I suffer so
+much myself that I cannot take these pains quite as seriously as Doris
+does. However, the poor child really has a good deal to put up with, and
+of course I've insisted that she must never attempt such hard work
+again. I don't suppose you meant to be inconsiderate, Mr. Touchwood. I
+don't accuse you of deliberate callousness. Please do not suppose that I
+am suggesting that the least cruelty in your behavior; but you _have_
+overworked her. Moreover, she has been worried. One or two of our
+friends have suggested more in joke than in earnest that she might be
+compromised by her association with you. No doubt this was said in joke,
+but Doris lacks her mother's sense of humor, and I'm afraid she has
+fretted over this. Still, a stitch in time saves nine, and her illness
+must serve as an excuse for what with a curiously youthful
+self-importance she calls 'leaving you in the lurch.' As I said to her,
+'Do not, my dear child, worry about Mr. Touchwood. He can find as many
+secretaries as he wants. Probably he thought he was doing you a good
+turn, and you've overstrained yourself in trying to cope with duties to
+which you have not been accustomed. You cannot expect to fly before you
+can walk.'"
+
+The old lady paused to fan back her breath, and John seized the
+conversation.
+
+"Does Miss Hamilton herself wish to leave me like this, or is it only
+you who think that she ought to leave me?"
+
+"I will be frank with you," the old lady panted. "Doris has not yet made
+up her mind."
+
+"As long as she is allowed to make up her own mind," said John, "I have
+nothing to say. But I hope you are not going to overpersuade her. After
+all she is old enough to know what she wants to do."
+
+"She is not as old as her mother."
+
+He shook his head impatiently.
+
+"Could I see her?"
+
+"See her?" the old lady answered in amazement. "See her, Mr. Touchwood?
+Didn't I explain that she was in bed?"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I'd forgotten."
+
+"Men are apt to forget somewhat easily. Come, come, do not let us get
+bitter. I took a great fancy to you when I met you first, and though I
+have been a little disappointed by the way in which you have taken
+advantage of Doris's eagerness for new experiences I don't really bear
+you any deep grudge. I don't believe you meant to be selfish. It is only
+a mother who can pierce a daughter's motives. You with your recent loss
+should be able to appreciate that particularly now. Poor Doris! I wish
+she were more like me."
+
+"If you really think I have overworked her," said John, "I'm extremely
+sorry. I dare say her enthusiasm carried me away. But I cannot
+relinquish her services without a struggle. She has been, and she _is_
+invaluable," he added, warmly.
+
+"Yes, but we must think of her health. I'm sorry to seem so
+_intransigente_, but I am only thinking of her."
+
+John was not at all taken in by the old lady's altruism, but he was
+entirely at a loss how to argue in favor of her daughter's continuing to
+work for him. His perplexity was increased by the fact that she herself
+had written to express her doubtfulness about returning; it might
+conceivably be that she did not want to return and that he was
+misjudging Mrs. Hamilton's sincerity. Yet when he looked at the old lady
+he could not discover anything but a cold egotism in every fold of those
+flabby cheeks where the powder lay like drifted snow in the ruts of a
+sunless lane. It was surely impossible that Doris should willingly have
+surrendered the liberty she enjoyed with him; she must have written
+under the depressing effects of influenza.
+
+While John was pondering his line of action Mrs. Hamilton had fanned
+herself into a renewed volubility; finding that it was impossible to
+cross the torrent of words that she was now pouring forth, he sat down
+by the edge of it, confused and deafened, and sometimes gasping a faint
+protest when he was splashed by some particularly outrageous argument.
+
+"Well, I'll write to her," he said at last.
+
+"I beg you will do nothing of the kind. In the present feeble state of
+her health a letter will only agitate her. I hope to persuade her to
+come with me to Glencockie where her uncle will, I know, once more
+suggest adopting her as his heiress...."
+
+The old lady flowed on with schemes for the future of Doris in which
+there was so much talk of Scotland that in the end his secretary
+appeared to John like an advertisement for whisky. He saw her
+rosy-cheeked and tam-o-shantered, smiling beneath a fir-tree while
+mockingly she quaffed a glass to the health of her late employer. He saw
+her as a kind of cross between Flora Macdonald and Highland Mary by the
+banks of Loch Lomond. He saw her in every guise except that in which he
+desired to see her--bending with that elusive and ironical smile over
+the typewriter they had purchased together. Damn!
+
+John made hurried adieus and fled to his taxi from the little house in
+Camera Square. The interview with Mrs. Hamilton had cost him
+half-a-crown and his peace of mind: it had cost the driver one halfpenny
+for the early edition of the _Star_. How much happier was the life of a
+taxi-driver than the life of a playwright!
+
+"I wouldn't say as how Benedictine mightn't win at Kempton this
+afternoon," the driver observed to John when he alighted. "I reckon I'll
+have half-a-dollar on, any old way. It's Bolmondeley's horse and bound
+to run straight."
+
+Benedictine did win that afternoon at six to one: indubitably the life
+of a taxi-driver was superior to his own, John thought as he turned with
+a shudder from the virgin foolscap upon his writing-desk and with a late
+edition of the _Star_ sank into a deep armchair.
+
+"A bachelor's life is a very lonely one," he sighed. For some reason
+Maud had neglected to draw the curtains after tea, and the black yawning
+window where the rain glistened drearily weighed upon his heart with a
+sense of utter abandonment. Ordinarily he would have rung the bell and
+pointed reproachfully to the omission; but this afternoon, he felt
+incapable of stirring from his chair to ring a bell. He could not even
+muster enough energy to poke the fire, which would soon show as little
+life as himself. He listened vainly for the footsteps of Maud or Mrs.
+Worfolk that he might call out and be rescued from this lethargy of
+despair; but not a sound was audible except the dripping rain outside
+and the consumptive coughs of the moribund fire.
+
+"Perhaps I'm feeling my mother's death," said John, hopefully.
+
+He made an effort to concentrate his mind upon an affectionate
+retrospect of family life. He tried to convince himself that the death
+of his mother would involve a change in the attitude of his relations.
+Technically he might not be the eldest son, and while his mother had
+been alive he had never assumed too definitely the rights of an eldest
+son. Practically, however, that was his status, and his acquisition of
+the family portraits and family silver could well be taken as the
+visible sign of that status; with his mother's death he might surely
+consider himself in the eyes of the world the head of the family. Did he
+want such an honor? It would be an expensive, troublesome, and
+ungrateful post like the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. Why didn't Maud
+come and draw those curtains? A thankless job, and it would be more
+congenial to have a family of his own. That meant marriage. And why
+shouldn't he get married? Several palmists had assured him he would be
+married one day: most of them indeed had assured him he was married
+already.
+
+"If I get married I can no longer be expected to bother about my
+relations. Of course in that case I should give back the portraits and
+the silver. My son would be junior to Bertram. My son would occupy an
+altogether inconspicuous position in the family, though he would always
+take precedence of Harold. But if my son had a child, Harold would
+become an uncle. No, he wouldn't. Harold would be a first cousin once
+removed. Harold cannot become an uncle unless Hilda marries again and
+has another child who has another child. Luckily, it's all very
+improbable. I'm glad Harold is never likely to be an uncle: he would
+bring the relationship into an even greater disrepute. Still, even now
+an uncle is disreputable enough. The wicked uncle! It's proverbial, of
+course. We never hear of the wicked cousin or the nefarious aunt. No,
+uncles share with stepmothers the opprobrium and with mothers-in-law the
+ridicule of the mob. Unquestionably, if I do marry, I shall still be an
+uncle, but the status may perhaps be merged in paternity. Suppose I
+marry and never have any children? My wife will be pitied by Hilda,
+Edith, and Eleanor and condoled with by Beatrice. She would find her
+position intolerable. My wife? I wish to goodness Maud would come in and
+draw those curtains. My wife? That's the question. At this stage the
+problem of her personality is more important than theoretical
+speculation about future children. Should I enjoy a woman's bobbing in
+and out of my room all the time? Suppose I were married at this moment,
+it would be my wife's duty to correct Maud for not having drawn those
+curtains. If I were married at this moment I should say, 'My dear, Maud
+does not seem to have drawn the curtains. I wonder why.' And my wife
+would of course ring the bell and remonstrate with Maud. But suppose my
+wife were upstairs? She might be trying on a new hat. Apparently wives
+spend a great deal of time with hats. In that case I should be no better
+off than I am at present. I should still have to get out of this chair
+and ring for Maud. And I should have to complain twice over. Once to
+Maud herself and afterwards all over again to my wife about Maud. Then
+my wife would have to rebuke Maud. Oh, it would be a terribly
+complicated business. Perhaps I'm better off as a bachelor. It's an odd
+thing that with my pictorial temperament I should never yet have
+visualized myself as a husband. My imagination is quite untrammeled in
+most directions. Were I to decide to-morrow that I would write a play
+about Adam and Eve, I should see myself as Adam and Eve and the Serpent
+and almost as the Forbidden Fruit itself without any difficulty. Why
+can't I see myself as a husband? When I think of the number of people
+and things I've been in imagination it really does seem extraordinary I
+should never have thought of being a husband. Apparently Maud has
+completely forgotten about the curtains. It looks as if I should have to
+give up all hope now of her coming in to draw them of her own accord.
+Poor Miss Hamilton! I do trust that horrible old clown of a mother isn't
+turning somersaults round her room at this moment and sending up her
+temperature to three figures. Of course, she must come back to me. She
+is indispensable. I miss her very much. I've accustomed myself to a
+secretary's assistance, and naturally I'm lost without her. These morbid
+thoughts about matrimony are due to my not having done a stroke of work
+all day. I will count seventeen and rise from this chair."
+
+John counted seventeen, but when he came to the fatal number he found
+that his will to move was still paralyzed, and he went on to
+forty-nine--the next fatal number in his private cabbala. When he
+reached it he tightened every nerve in his body and leapt to his feet.
+Inertia was succeeded by the bustle of activity: he rang for Maud; he
+poked the fire; he brushed the tobacco-ash from his waistcoat; he blew
+his nose; he sat down at his desk.
+
+My dear Miss Hamilton, [he wrote,] I cannot say how distressed I was to
+hear the news of your illness and still more to learn from your mother
+that you were seriously thinking of resigning your post. I'm also
+extremely distressed to hear from her that there are symptoms of
+overwork. If I've been inconsiderate I must beg your forgiveness and ask
+you to attribute it to your own good-will. The fact is your example has
+inspired me. With your encouragement I undoubtedly do work much harder
+than formerly. Today, without you, I have not written a single word, and
+I feel dreadfully depressed at the prospect of your desertion. Do let me
+plead for your services when you are well again, at any rate until I've
+finished Joan of Arc, for I really don't think I shall ever finish that
+play without them. I have felt the death of my poor mother very much,
+but I do not ascribe my present disinclination for work to that. No, on
+the contrary, I came back from the funeral with a determination to bury
+myself--that might be expressed better--to plunge myself into hard work.
+Your note telling me of your illness was a great shock, and your
+mother's uncompromising attitude this morning has added to my dejection.
+I feel that I am growing old and view with horror the approach of age.
+I've been sitting by the fire indulging myself in very morbid thoughts.
+You will laugh when I tell you that amongst them was the idea--I might
+call it the chimera of marriage. Do please get well soon and rescue me
+from myself.
+
+Yours very sincerely,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+I do not, of course, wish to disturb the relationship between yourself
+and your mother, but my own recent loss has reminded me that mothers do
+not live forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+John waited in considerable anxiety for Miss Hamilton's reply to his
+letter, and when a few days later she answered his appeal in person by
+presenting herself for work as usual he could not express in words the
+intensity of his satisfaction, but could only prance round her as if he
+had been a dumb domestic animal instead of a celebrated romantic
+playwright.
+
+"And what have you done since I've been away?" she asked, without
+alluding to her illness or to her mother or to her threat of being
+obliged to leave him.
+
+John looked abashed.
+
+"Not very much, I'm afraid."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Well, to be quite honest, nothing at all"
+
+She referred sympathetically to the death of Mrs. Touchwood, and,
+without the ghost of a blush, he availed himself of that excuse for
+idleness.
+
+"But now you're back," he added, "I'm going to work harder than ever.
+Oh, but I forgot. I mustn't overwork you."
+
+"Nonsense," said Miss Hamilton, sharply. "I don't think the amount you
+write every day will ever do me much harm."
+
+John busied himself with paper, pens, ink, and notebooks, and was soon
+as deep in the fourth act as if there had never been an intermission.
+For a month he worked in perfect tranquillity, and went so far as to
+calculate that if Miss Hamilton was willing to remain forever in his
+employ there was no reason why he should not produce three plays a year
+until he was seventy. Then one morning in mid-February Mr. Ricketts
+arrived in a state of perturbation to say that he had been unable to
+obtain any reply to several letters and telegrams informing Hugh when
+their steamer would leave. Now here they were with only a day before
+departure, and he was still without news of the young man. John looked
+guilty. The fact was that he had decided not to open any letters from
+his relations throughout this month, alleging to himself the
+interruption they caused to his work and trusting to the old
+superstition that if left unanswered long enough all letters, even the
+most disagreeable, answered themselves.
+
+"I was wondering why your correspondence had dwindled so," said Miss
+Hamilton, severely.
+
+"But that is no excuse for my brother," John declared. "Because I don't
+write to him, that is no reason why he shouldn't write to Mr. Ricketts."
+
+"Well, we're off to-morrow," said the mahogany-planter.
+
+An indignant telegram was sent to Hugh; but the prepaid answer came back
+from Hilda to say that he had gone off with a friend a fortnight ago
+without leaving any address. Mr. Ricketts, who had been telephoned for
+in the morning, arrived about noon in a taxi loaded with exotic luggage.
+
+"I can't wait," he assured John. "The lad must come on by the next boat.
+I shan't go up country for a week or so. Good-by, Mr. Touchwood; I'm
+sorry not to have your brother's company. I was going to put him wise to
+the job on the trip across."
+
+"But look here, can't you...." John began, despairingly.
+
+"Can't wait. I shall miss the boat. West India Docks," he shouted to the
+driver, "and stop at the last decent pub in the city on the way
+through."
+
+The taxi buzzed off.
+
+Two days later Hugh appeared at Church Row, mentioned casually that he
+was sorry he had missed the boat, but that he had been doing a little
+architectural job for a friend of his.
+
+"Very good bridge," he commented, approvingly.
+
+"Over what?" John demanded.
+
+"Over very good whisky," said Hugh. "It was up in the North. Capital
+fun. I was designing a smoking-room for a man I know who's just come
+into money. I've had a ripping time. Good hands every evening and a very
+decent fee. In fact, I don't see why I shouldn't start an office of my
+own."
+
+"And what about mahogany?"
+
+"Look here, I never liked that idea of yours, Johnnie. Everybody agrees
+that British Honduras is a rotten climate, and if you want to help me,
+you can help me much more effectively by setting me up on my own as an
+architect."
+
+"I do not want to help you. I've invested £2,000 in mahogany and
+logwood, and I insist on getting as much interest on my money as your
+absence from England will bring me in."
+
+"Yes, that's all very well, old chap. But why do you want me to leave
+England?"
+
+John embarked upon a justification of his attitude, in the course of
+which he pointed out the dangers of idleness, reminded Hugh of the
+forgery, tried to inspire him with hopes of independence, hinted at
+moral obligations, and rhapsodized about colonial enterprise. As a
+mountain of forensic art the speech was wonderful: clothed on the lower
+slopes with a rich and varied vegetation of example and precept, it
+gradually ascended to the hard rocks of necessity, honor, and duty until
+it culminated in a peak of snow where John's singleness of motive
+glittered immaculately and inviolably to heaven. It was therefore
+discouraging for the orator when he paused and walked slowly up stage to
+give the culprit an opportunity to make a suitably penitent reply, after
+which the curtain was to come down upon a final outburst of magnanimous
+eloquence from himself, that Hugh should merely growl the contemptuous
+monosyllable "rot."
+
+"Rot?" repeated John in amazement.
+
+"Yes. Rot. I'm not going to reason with you...."
+
+"Ah, indeed?" John interrupted, sarcastically.
+
+"Because reason would be lost on you. I simply repeat 'Rot!' If I don't
+want to go to British Honduras, I won't go. Why, to hear you talk
+anybody would suppose that I hadn't had the same opportunities as
+yourself. If you chose to blur your intelligence by writing romantic
+tushery, you must remember that by doing so you yielded to temptation
+just as much as I did when I forged Stevie's name. Do you think I would
+write plays like yours? Never!" he proclaimed, proudly.
+
+"It seems to me that the conversation is indeed going outside the limits
+of reason," said John, trying hard to restrain himself.
+
+"My dear old chap, it has never been inside the limits. No, no, you
+collared me when I was down over that check. Well, here's what you paid
+to get me out of the mess." He threw a bundle of notes on the table. "So
+long, Johnnie, and don't be too resentful of my having demonstrated that
+when I _am_ left for a while on my own I can earn money as well as you.
+I'm going to stay in town for a bit before I go North again, so I shall
+see you from time to time. By the way, you might send me the receipt to
+Carlington Road. I'm staying with Aubrey as usual."
+
+When his brother had gone, John counted the notes in a stupor. It would
+be too much to say that he was annoyed at being paid back; but he was
+not sufficiently pleased to mention the fact to Miss Hamilton for two
+days.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad," she exclaimed when at last he did bring himself to
+tell her.
+
+"Yes, it's very encouraging," John agreed, doubtfully. "I'm still
+suffering slightly from the shock, which has been a very novel
+sensation. To be perfectly honest, I never realized before how much less
+satisfactory it is to be paid back than one thinks beforehand it is
+going to be."
+
+In spite of the disturbing effect of Hugh's honesty, John soon settled
+down again to the play, and became so much wrapped up in its daily
+progress that one afternoon he was able without a tremor to deny
+admittance to Laurence, who having written to warn him that he was
+taking advantage of a further reduction in the price on day-tickets, had
+paid another visit to London. Laurence took with ill grace his
+brother-in-law's message that he was too busy on his own work to talk
+about anybody's else at present.
+
+"I confess I was pained," he wrote from Ambles on John's own note-paper,
+"by the harsh reception of my friendly little visit. I confess that
+Edith and I had hoped you would welcome the accession of a relative to
+the ranks of contemporary playwrights. We feel that in the circumstances
+we cannot stay any longer in your house. Indeed, Edith is even as I pen
+these lines packing Frida's little trunk. She is being very brave, but
+her tear-stained face tells its own tale, and I confess that I myself am
+writing with a heavy heart. Eleanor has been most kind, and in addition
+to giving me several more introductions to her thespian friends has
+arranged with the proprietress of Halma House for a large double room
+with dressing-room attached on terms which I can only describe as
+absurdly moderate. Do not think we are angry. We are only pained,
+bitterly pained that our happy family life should suddenly collapse like
+this. However, excelsior, as the poet said, or as another poet even
+greater said, 'sic itur ad astra.' You will perhaps be able to spare a
+moment from the absorption of your own affairs to read with a fleeting
+interest that Sir Percy Mortimer has offered me the part of the butler
+in a comedy of modern manners which he hopes to stage--you see I am
+already up to the hilt in the jargon of the profession--next autumn.
+Eleanor considers this to be an excellent opening, as indeed so do I.
+Edith and little Frida laugh heartily when they are not too sad for such
+simple fun when I enter the room and assume the characteristic
+mannerisms of a butler. All agree I have a natural propensity for droll
+impersonation. Who knows? I may make a great hit, although Sir Percy
+warns me that the part is but a slight one. Eleanor, however, reminds me
+that deportment is always an asset for an actor. Have I not read
+somewhere that the great Edmund Kean did not disdain to play the tail
+end of a dragon erstwhile? I wish you all good luck in your own work, my
+dear John. People are interested when they hear you are my
+brother-in-law, and I have told them many tales of the way you are wont
+to consult me over the little technical details of religion in which I
+as a former clergyman have been able to afford you my humble
+assistance."
+
+"What a pompous ass the man is," said John to his secretary. He had read
+her the letter, which made her laugh.
+
+"I believe you're really quite annoyed that _he's_ showing an
+independent spirit now."
+
+"Not at all. I'm delighted to be rid of him," John contradicted. "I
+suppose he'll share George's aquarium at Halma House."
+
+"You don't mind my laughing? Because it is very funny, you know."
+
+"Yes, it's funny in a way," John admitted. "But even if it weren't, I
+shouldn't mind your laughing. You have, if I may say so, a peculiarly
+musical laugh."
+
+"Are you going to have Joan's scaffold right center or left center?" she
+asked, quickly.
+
+"Eh? What? Oh, put it where you like. By the way, has your mother been
+girding at you lately?"
+
+Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"She isn't yet reconciled to my being a secretary, if that's what you
+mean."
+
+"I'm sorry," John murmured. "Confound all relations!" he burst out. "I
+suppose she'd object to your going to France with me to finish off the
+play?"
+
+"She would object violently. But you mustn't forget that I've a will of
+my own."
+
+"Of course you have," said John, admiringly. "And you will go, eh?"
+
+"I'll see--I won't promise. Look here, Mr. Touchwood, I don't want to
+seem--what shall I call it--timid, but if I did go to France with you, I
+suppose you realize my mother would make such a fuss about it that
+people would end by really talking? Forgive my putting such an
+unpleasant idea into your innocent head; being your confidential
+secretary, I feel I oughtn't to let you run any risks. I don't suppose
+you care a bit how much people talk, and I'm sure I don't; at the same
+time I shouldn't like you to turn round on me and say I ought to have
+warned you."
+
+"Talk!" John exclaimed. "The idea is preposterous. Talk! Good gracious
+me, can't I take my secretary abroad without bring accused of ulterior
+motives?"
+
+"Now, don't work yourself into a state of wrath, or you won't be able to
+think of this terribly important last scene. Anyway, we sha'n't be going
+to France yet, and we can discuss the project more fully when the time
+comes."
+
+John thought vaguely how well Miss Hamilton knew how to keep him
+unruffled, and with a grateful look--or what was meant to be a grateful
+look, though she blushed unaccountably when he gave it--he concentrated
+upon the site of his heroine's scaffold.
+
+During March the weather was so bright and exhilarating that John and
+his secretary took many walks together on Hampstead Heath; they also
+often went to town, and John derived much pleasure from discussing
+various business affairs with her clerical support; he found that it
+helped considerably when dealing with the manager of a film company to
+be able to say "Will you make a note of that, please, Miss Hamilton?"
+The only place, in fact, to which John did not take her was his club,
+and that was only because he was not allowed to introduce ladies there.
+
+"A rather mediæval restriction," he observed one day to a group
+assembled in the smoking-room.
+
+"There was a time, Touchwood, when you used to take refuge here from
+your leading ladies," a bachelor member chuckled.
+
+"But nowadays Touchwood has followed Adam with the rest of us," put in
+another.
+
+"What's that?" said John, sharply.
+
+There was a general burst of merriment and headshaking and wagging of
+fingers, from which and a succession of almost ribald comment John began
+to wonder if his private life was beginning to be a subject for club
+gossip. He managed to prevent himself from saying that he thought such
+chaff in bad taste, because he did not wish to give point to it by
+taking it too much in earnest. Nevertheless, he was seriously annoyed
+and avoided the smoking-room for a week.
+
+One night, after the first performance of a friend's play, he turned in
+to the club for supper, and, being disinclined for sleep, because
+although it was a friend's play it had been a tremendous success, which
+always made him feel anxious about his own future he lingered on until
+the smoking-room was nearly deserted. Towards three o'clock he was
+sitting pensively in a quiet corner when he heard his name mentioned by
+two members, who had taken seats close by without perceiving his
+presence. They were both strangers to him, and he was about to rise from
+his chair and walk severely out of the room, when he heard one say to
+the other:
+
+"Yes, they tell me his brother-in-law writes his plays for him."
+
+John found this so delightfully diverting an idea that he could not
+resist keeping quiet to hear more.
+
+"Oh, I don't believe that," said the second unknown member.
+
+"Fact, I assure you. I was told so by a man who knows Eleanor
+Cartright."
+
+"The actress?"
+
+"Yes, she's a sister-in-law of his."
+
+"Really, I never knew that."
+
+"Oh yes. Well, this man met her with a fellow called Armitage, an
+ex-monk who broke his vows in order to marry Touchwood's sister."
+
+John pressed himself deeper into his armchair.
+
+"Really? But I never knew monks could marry," objected number two.
+
+"I tell you, he broke his vows."
+
+"Oh, I see," murmured number two, who was evidently no wiser, but was
+anxious to appear so.
+
+"Well, it seems that this fellow Armitage is a thundering fine poet, but
+without much experience of the stage. Of course, he wouldn't have had
+much as a monk."
+
+"Of course not," agreed number two, decidedly.
+
+"So, what does Johnnie Touchwood do--"
+
+"Damned impudence calling me Johnnie," thought the subject of the
+duologue.
+
+"But make a contract with his brother-in-law to stay out of the way down
+in Devonshire or Dorsetshire--I forget which--but, anyway, down in the
+depths of the country somewhere, and write all the best speeches in old
+Johnnie's plays. Now, it seems there's been a family row, and they tell
+me that Armitage is going to sue Johnnie."
+
+"What was the row about?"
+
+"Well, apparently Johnnie is a bit close. Most of these successful
+writers are, of course," said number one with the nod of an expert.
+
+"Of course," agreed his companion, with an air of equally profound
+comprehension.
+
+"And took advantage of his position as the fellow with money to lord it
+over the rest of his family. There's another brother--an awful clever
+beggar--James, I think his name is--a real first-class scientist,
+original research man and all that, who's spent the whole of his fortune
+on some great discovery or other. Well, will you believe it, but the
+other day when he was absolutely starving, Johnnie Touchwood offered to
+lend him some trifling sum if he would break the entail."
+
+"I didn't know the Touchwoods were landed proprietors. I always
+understood the father was a dentist," said number two.
+
+"Oh, no, no. Very old family. Wonderful old house down in Devonshire or
+Dorset--I wish I could remember just where it is. Anyway, it seems that
+the eldest brother clung on to this like anything. Of course, he would."
+
+"Of course," number two agreed.
+
+"But Johnnie, who's hard as flint, insisted on breaking the entail in
+his own favor, and now I hear he's practically turned the whole family
+into the street, including James' boy, who in the ordinary course of
+events would have inherited."
+
+"Did Eleanor Cartright tell your friend this?" asked number two.
+
+"Oh no, I've heard that from lots of people. It seems that old Mrs.
+Touchwood died of grief over the way Johnnie carried on. It's really a
+very grim story when you hear the details; unfortunately, I can't
+remember all of them. My memory's getting awfully bad nowadays."
+
+Number two muttered an expression of sympathy, and the other continued:
+
+"But one detail I do remember is that another brother--"
+
+"It's a large family, then?"
+
+"Oh, very large. As I was saying, the old lady was terribly upset not
+only about breaking the entail, but also over her youngest son, who had
+some incurable disease. It seems that he was forced by Johnnie to go out
+to the Gold Coast--I think it was--in order to see about some money that
+Johnnie had invested in rubber or something. As I say, I can't remember
+the exact details. However, cherchez la femme, I needn't add the reasons
+for all this."
+
+"A woman?"
+
+"Exactly," said number one. "Some people say it's a married woman, and
+others say it's a young girl of sixteen. Anyway, Johnnie's completely
+lost his head over her, and they tell me...."
+
+The two members put their heads together so that John could not hear
+what was said: but it must have been pretty bad, because when they put
+them apart again number two was clicking his tongue in shocked
+amazement.
+
+"By Jove, that will cause a terrific scandal, eh?"
+
+John decided he had heard enough. Assuming an expression of intense
+superiority, the sort of expression a man might assume who was standing
+on the top of Mount Everest, he rose from his chair, eyed the two
+gossips with disdain, and strode out of the smoking-room. Just as he
+reached the door, he heard number one exclaim:
+
+"Hulloa, see who that was? That was old Percy Mortimer."
+
+"Oh, of course," said number two, as sapiently as ever, "I didn't
+recognize him for a moment. He's beginning to show his age, eh?"
+
+On the way back to Hampstead John tried to assure himself that the
+conversation he had just overheard did not represent anything more
+important than the vaporings of an exceptionally idiotic pair of men
+about town; but the more he meditated upon the tales about himself
+evidently now in general circulation, the more he was appalled at the
+recklessness of calumny.
+
+"One has joked about it. One has laughed at Sheridan's _School for
+Scandal_. One has admitted that human beings are capable of almost
+incredible exaggeration. But--no, really this is too much. I've gossiped
+sometimes myself about my friends, but never like that about a
+stranger--a man in the public eye."
+
+John nearly stopped the taxi to ask the driver if _he_ had heard any
+stories about John Touchwood; but he decided it would not be wise to run
+risk of discovery that he enjoyed less publicity than he was beginning
+to imagine, and he kept his indignation to himself.
+
+"After all, it is a sign of--well, yes, I think it might fairly be
+called fame--a sign of fame to be talked about like that by a couple of
+ignorant chatterboxes. It is, I suppose, a tribute to my position. But
+Laurence! That's what annoyed me most. Laurence to be the author of my
+plays! I begin to understand this ridiculous Bacon and Shakespeare
+legend now. The rest of the gossip was malicious, but that was--really,
+I think it was actionable. I shall take it up with the committee. The
+idea of that pompous nincompoop writing Lucretia's soliloquy before she
+poisons her lips! Laurence! Good heavens! And fancy Laurence writing
+Nebuchadnezzar's meditation upon grass! By Jove, an audience would have
+some cause to titter then! And Laurence writing Joan's defense to the
+Bishop of Beauvais! Why, the bombastic pedant couldn't even write a
+satisfactory letter to the Bishop of Silchester to keep himself from
+being ignominiously chucked out of his living."
+
+The infuriated author bounced up and down on the cushions of the taxi in
+his rage.
+
+"Shall I give you an arm up the steps, sir?" the driver offered,
+genially, when John, having alighted at his front door, had excessively
+overpaid him under the impression from which he was still smarting of
+being called a skinflint.
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. I thought you was a little bit tiddly. You seemed a
+bit lively inside on the way up."
+
+"I suppose the next thing is that I shall get the reputation of being a
+dipsomaniac," said John to himself, as he flung open his door and
+marched immediately, with a slightly accentuated rigidity of bearing,
+upstairs to bed.
+
+But he could not sleep. The legend of his behavior that was obviously
+common gossip in London oppressed him with its injustice. Every
+accusation took on a new and fantastic form, while he turned over and
+over in an attempt to reach oblivion. He began to worry now more about
+what had been implied in his association with Miss Hamilton than about
+the other stories. He felt that it would only be a very short time
+before she would hear of the tale in some monstrous shape and leave him
+forever in righteous disgust. Ought he, indeed, to make her aware
+to-morrow morning of what was being suggested? And even if he did not
+say anything about the past, ought he to compromise her more deeply in
+the future?
+
+It was six o'clock before John fell asleep, and it was with a violent
+headache that he faced his secretary after breakfast. Luckily there was
+a letter from Janet Bond asking him to come and see her that morning
+upon a matter of importance. He seized the excuse to postpone any
+discussion of last night's revelation, and, telling Miss Hamilton he
+should be back for lunch, he decided to walk down to the Parthenon
+Theater in the hope of arriving there with a clearer and saner view of
+life. He nearly told her to go home; but, reflecting that he might come
+back in quite a different mood, he asked her instead to occupy herself
+with the collation of some scattered notes upon Joan of Arc that were
+not yet incorporated into the scheme of the play. He remembered, too,
+that it would be his birthday in three days' time, and he asked her to
+send out notes of invitation to his family for the annual celebration,
+at which the various members liked to delude themselves with the idea
+that by presenting him with a number of useless accessories to the
+smoking-table they were repaying him in full for all his kindness. He
+determined that his birthday speech on this occasion should be made the
+vehicle for administering a stern rebuke to malicious gossip. He would
+dam once for all this muddy stream of scandal, and he would make
+Laurence write a letter to the press disclaiming the authorship of his
+plays. Burning with reformative zeal and fast losing his headache, John
+swung down Fitzjohn's Avenue in the spangled March sunlight to the
+wicked city below.
+
+The Parthenon Theater had for its acropolis the heights of the Adelphi,
+where, viewed from the embankment gardens below, it seemed to be looking
+condescendingly down upon the efforts of the London County Council to
+intellectualize the musical taste of the generation. In the lobby--it
+had been called the propylæum until it was found that such a long name
+had discouraged the public from booking seats beforehand through fear of
+mispronunciation--a bust of Janet Bond represented the famous statue
+Pallas Athene on the original acropolis, and the programme-girls,
+dressed as caryatides, supplied another charming touch of antiquity. The
+proprietress herself was the outstanding instance in modern times of the
+exploitation of virginity--it must have been a very profitable
+exploitation, because the Parthenon Theater itself had been built and
+paid for by her unsuccessful admirers. Each year made Janet Bond's
+position as virgin and actress more secure, and at the rate her
+reputation was growing it was probable that she would soon be at liberty
+to produce the most immodest plays. At present, however, she still
+applied the same standard of her conduct to her plays as to herself. Nor
+did she confine herself to that. She was also very strict about the
+private lives of her performers, and many a young actress had been seen
+to leave the stage door in tears because Miss Bond had observed her in
+unsuitable company at supper. Mothers wrote from all over England to beg
+Miss Bond to charge herself with the care of their stage-struck
+daughters; the result was a conventional tone among the supernumeraries
+slightly flavored with militant suffragism and the higher mathematics.
+Nor was art neglected; indeed some critics hinted that in the Parthenon
+Theater art was cultivated at the expense of life, though none of them
+attempted to gainsay that Miss Bond had learned how to make virtue pay
+without selling it.
+
+In appearance the great tragedienne was somewhat rounder in outline than
+might have been expected, and more matronly than virginal, perhaps
+because she was in her own words a mother to all her girls. Her voice
+was rich and deep with as much variety as a cunningly sounded gong. She
+never made up for the stage, and she wore hygienic corsets: this
+intimate fact was allowed to escape through the indiscretion of a
+widespread advertisement, but its publication helped her reputation for
+decorum, and clergymen who read their wives' _Queen_ or _Lady_ commented
+favorably on the contrast between Miss Bond and the numerous
+open-mouthed actresses who preferred to advertise toothpaste. England
+was proud of Miss Bond, feeling that America had no longer any right to
+vaunt a monopoly of virtuous actresses; and John, when he rang the bell
+of Miss Bond's flat that existed cleverly in the roof of the theater,
+was proud of his association with her. He did not have to wait long in
+her austere study; indeed he had barely time to admire the fluted calyx
+of a white trumpet daffodil that in chaste symbolism was the only
+occupant of a blue china bowl before Miss Bond herself came in.
+
+"I'm so hating what I'm going to have to say to you," she boomed.
+
+This was a jolly way to begin an interview, John thought, especially in
+his present mood. He tried to look attentive, faintly surprised,
+dignified, and withal deferential; but, not being a great actor, he
+failed to express all these states of mind at a go, and only succeeded
+in dropping his gloves.
+
+"Hating it," the actress cried. "Oh, hating it!"
+
+"Well, if you'd rather postpone it," John began.
+
+"No, no. It must be said now. It's just this!" She paused and fixed the
+author more intensely than a snake fixes a rabbit or a woman in a bus
+tries to see if the woman opposite has blacked her eyelashes. "Can I
+produce _Joan of Arc_?"
+
+"I think that question is answered by our contract," replied John, who
+was used to leading ladies, and when they started like this always fell
+back at once in good order on business.
+
+"Yes, but what about my unwritten contract with the public?" she
+demanded.
+
+"I don't know anything about that," said the author. Moreover, I don't
+see how an unwritten contract can interfere with our written contract."
+
+"John Touchwood, I'm going to be frank with you, fiercely frank. I can't
+afford to produce a play by you about a heroine like Joan of Arc unless
+you take steps to put things right."
+
+"If you want me to cut that scene...."
+
+"Oh, I'm not talking about scenes, John Touchwood. I'm talking about
+these terrible stories that everybody is whispering about you. I don't
+mind myself what you do. Good gracious me, I'm a broad-minded modern
+woman; but my public looks for something special at the Parthenon. The
+knowledge that I am going to play the Maid of Orleans has moved them
+indescribably; I was fully prepared to give you the success of your
+career, but ... these stories! This girl! You know what people are
+saying? You must have heard. How can I put your name on my programme as
+the author of _Joan of Arc_? How can I, John Touchwood?"
+
+If John had not overheard that conversation at his club the night
+before, he would have supposed that Miss Bond had gone mad.
+
+"May I inquire exactly what you have heard about me and my private
+life?" he inquired, as judicially as he could.
+
+"Please spare me from repeating the stories. I can honestly assure you
+that I don't believe them. But you as a man of the world know very well
+how unimportant it is whether a story is true or not. If you were a
+writer of realistic drama, these stories, however bad they were,
+wouldn't matter. If your next play was going to be produced at the Court
+Theater, these stories would, if anything, be in favor of success ...
+but at the Parthenon...."
+
+"You are talking nonsense, Miss Bond," interrupted John, angrily. "You
+are more in a condition to play Ophelia than Joan of Arc. Moreover, you
+shan't play Joan of Arc now. I've really been regretting for some weeks
+now that you were going to play her, and I'm delighted to have this
+opportunity of preventing you from playing her. I don't know to what
+tittle-tattle you've been listening. I don't care. Your opinion of your
+own virtue may be completely justified, but your judgment of other
+people's is vulgar and--however, let me recommend you to produce a play
+by my brother-in-law, the Reverend Laurence Armitage. Even your
+insatiable ambition may be gratified by the part of the Virgin Mary, who
+is one of the chief characters. Good morning, Miss Bond. I shall
+communicate with you more precisely through my agent."
+
+John marched out of the theater, and on the pavement outside ran into
+Miss Ida Merritt.
+
+"Ah, you're a sensible woman," he spluttered, much to her astonishment.
+"For goodness' sake, come and have lunch with me, and let's talk over
+everything."
+
+John, in his relief at meeting Miss Merritt, had taken her arm in a
+cordial fashion, and steered her across the Strand to Romano's without
+waiting to choose a less conspicuously theatrical restaurant. Indeed in
+his anxiety to clear his reputation he forgot everything, and it was
+only when he saw various people at the little tables nudging one another
+and bobbing their heads together that he realized he was holding Miss
+Merritt's arm. He dropped it like a hot coal, and plunged down at a
+table marked "reserved." The head waiter hurried across to apprise him
+of the mistake, and John, who was by now horribly self-conscious,
+fancied that the slight incident had created a stir throughout the
+restaurant. No doubt it would be all over town by evening that he and
+his companion in guilt had been refused service at every restaurant in
+London.
+
+"Look here," said John, when at last they were accommodated at a table
+painfully near the grill, the spitting and hissing from which seemed to
+symbolize the attitude of a hostile society. "Look here, what stories
+have you heard about me? You're a journalist. You write chatty
+paragraphs. For heaven's sake, tell me the worst."
+
+"Oh, I haven't heard anything that's printable," Miss Merritt assured
+him, with a laugh.
+
+John put his head between his hands and groaned; the waiter thought he
+was going to dip his hair into the hors d'oeuvres and hurriedly
+removed the dishes.
+
+"No, seriously, I beg you to tell me if you've heard my name connected
+in any unpleasant way with Miss Hamilton."
+
+"No, the only thing I've heard about Doris is that your brother, Hugh,
+is always pestering her with his attentions."
+
+"What?" John shouted.
+
+"Coming, sir," cried the waiter, skipping round the table like a
+monkey.
+
+John waved him away, and begged Miss Merritt to be more explicit.
+
+"Why didn't she complain to me?" he asked when he had heard her story.
+
+"She probably thought she could look after herself. Besides, wasn't he
+going to British Guiana?"
+
+"He was," replied John. "At least he was going to some tropical colony.
+I've heard so many mentioned that I'm beginning myself to forget which
+it was now. So that's why he didn't go. But he shall go. If I have to
+have him kidnaped and spend all my savings on chartering a private yacht
+for the purpose, by Heaven, he shall go. If he shrivels up like a burnt
+sausage the moment he puts his foot on the beach he shall be left there
+to shrivel. The rascal! When does he pester her? Where?"
+
+"Don't get so excited. Doris is perfectly capable of looking after
+herself. Besides, I think she rather likes him in a way."
+
+"Never," John cried.
+
+"Liver is finished, sair," said the officious waiter, dancing in again
+between John and Miss Merritt.
+
+John shook his fist at him and leant earnestly over the table with one
+elbow in the butter.
+
+"You don't seriously suggest that she is in love with him?" he asked.
+
+"No, I don't think so. But I met him myself once and took rather a fancy
+to him. No, she just likes him as a friend. It's he who's in love with
+her."
+
+"Under my very eyes," John ejaculated. "Why, it's overwhelming."
+
+A sudden thought struck him that even at this moment while he was calmly
+eating lunch with Miss Merritt, as he somewhat loosely qualified the
+verb, Hugh might be making love to Miss Hamilton in his own house.
+
+"Look here," he cried, "have you nearly finished? Because I've suddenly
+remembered an important appointment at Hampstead."
+
+"I don't want any more," said Miss Merritt, obligingly.
+
+"Waiter, the bill! Quick! You don't mind if I rush off and leave you to
+finish your cheese alone?"
+
+His guest shook her head and John hurried out of the restaurant.
+
+No taxi he had traveled in had ever seemed so slow, and he kept putting
+his head out of the window to urge the driver to greater speed, until
+the man goaded to rudeness by John's exhortations and the trams in
+Tottenham Court Road asked if his fare thought he was a blinking bullet.
+
+"I'm not bullying you. I'm only asking you to drive a little faster,"
+John shouted back.
+
+The driver threw his eyes heavenward in a gesture of despair for John's
+sanity but he was pacified at Church Row by half-a-sovereign and even
+went so far as to explain that he had not accused John of bullying him,
+but merely of confusing his capacity for speed with that of a bullet's.
+John thought he was asking for more money, gave him half-a-crown and
+waving his arm, half in benediction, half in protest, he hurried into
+the hall.
+
+"They've nearly finished lunch, sir," murmured Maud who was just coming
+from the dining-room. "Would you like Elsa to hot you up something?"
+
+John without a word pounced into the dining-room, where he caught Hugh
+with a stick of celery half-way to his mouth and Miss Hamilton with a
+glass of water half-way down from hers in the other direction.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry we began without you," said the culprits
+simultaneously.
+
+John murmured something about a trying interview with Janet Bond, lit a
+cigar, realized it was rude to light cigars when people were still
+eating, threw the cigar away, and sat down with an appearance of
+exhaustion in one of those dining-room armchairs that stand and wait all
+their lives to serve a moment like this.
+
+"I'm sorry, but I must ask you to go off as soon as you've finished
+your lunch, Hugh. I've a lot of important business to transact with Miss
+Hamilton."
+
+"Oh, but I've finished already," she exclaimed, jumping up from the
+table.
+
+It was the first pleasant moment in John's day, and he smiled,
+gratefully. He felt he could even afford to be generous to this
+intrusive brother, and before he left the room with Miss Hamilton he
+invited him to have some more celery.
+
+"And you'll find a cigar in the sideboard," he added. "But Maud will
+look after you. Maud, look after Mr. Hugh, please, and if anybody calls
+this afternoon, I'm not at home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+John's first impulse had been to pour out in Miss Hamilton's ears the
+tale of his wrongs, and afterward, when he had sufficiently impressed
+her with the danger of the position in which the world was trying to
+place them, to ask her to marry him as the only way to escape from it.
+On second thoughts, he decided that she might be offended by the
+suggestion of having been compromised by him and that she might resent
+the notion of their marriage's being no more than a sop to public
+opinion. He therefore abandoned the idea of enlarging upon the scandal
+their association had apparently created and proposed to substitute the
+trite but always popular scene of the prosperous middle-aged man's
+renunciation of love and happiness in favor of a young and penurious
+rival. He recalled how many last acts in how many sentimental comedies
+had owed their success to this situation, which never failed with an
+audience. But then the average audience was middle-aged. Thinking of the
+many audiences on which from private boxes he had looked down, John was
+sure that bald heads always predominated in the auditorium; and
+naturally those bald heads had been only too ready to nod approval of a
+heroine who rejected the dashing jeune premier to fling herself into the
+arms of the elderly actor-manager. It was impossible to think of any
+infirmity severe enough to thwart an actor-manager. Yet a play was
+make-believe: in real life events would probably turn out quite
+differently. It would be very depressing, if he offered to make Doris
+and Hugh happy together by settling upon them a handsome income, to find
+Doris jumping at the prospect. Perhaps it would be more prudent not to
+suggest any possibility of a marriage between them. It might even be
+more prudent not to mention the subject of marriage at all. John looked
+at his secretary with what surely must have been a very eloquent glance
+indeed, because she dropped her pencil, blushed, and took his hand.
+
+"How much simpler life is than art," John murmured. He would never have
+dared to allow one of his heroes in a moment of supreme emotion like
+this to crane his neck across a wide table in order to kiss the heroine.
+Any audience would have laughed at such an awkward gesture; yet, though
+he only managed to reach her lips with half an inch to spare, the kiss
+was not at all funny somehow. No, it ranked with Paolo's or Anthony's or
+any other famous lover's kiss.
+
+"And now of course I can't be your secretary any longer," she sighed.
+
+"Why? Do you disapprove of wives' helping their husbands?"
+
+"I don't think you really want to get married, do you?"
+
+"My dear, I'm absolutely dying to get married."
+
+"Truly?"
+
+"Doris, look at me."
+
+And surely she looked at him with more admiration than he had ever
+looked at himself in a glass.
+
+"What a time I shall have with mother," she gasped with the gurgling
+triumphant laugh of a child who has unexpectedly found the way to open
+the store-cupboard.
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," John prophesied, confidently. "I'm not going to
+have such an excellent last scene spoilt by unnecessary talk. We'll get
+married first and tell everybody afterwards. I've lately discovered what
+an amazing capacity ordinary human nature has for invention. It really
+frightens me for the future of novelists, who I cannot believe will be
+wanted much longer. Oh no, Doris, I'm not going to run the risk of
+hearing any preliminary gossip about our marriage. Neither your mother
+nor my relations nor the general public are going to have any share in
+it before or after. In fact to be brief I propose to elope.
+Notwithstanding my romantic plays I have spent a private life of utter
+dullness. This is my last opportunity to do anything unusual. Please, my
+dearest girl, let me experience the joys of an actual elopement before
+I relapse into eternal humdrummery."
+
+"A horrid description of marriage!" she protested.
+
+"Comparative humdrummery, I should have said, comparative, that is to
+say, with the excesses attributed to me by rumor. I've often wanted to
+write a play about Tiberius, and I feel well equipped to do so now. But
+I'm serious about the elopement. I really do want to avoid my relations'
+tongues."
+
+"I believe you're afraid of them."
+
+"I am. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm in terror of them," he said.
+
+"But where are we going to elope to?"
+
+John picked up the _Times_.
+
+"If only the _Murmania_," he began. "And by Jove, she will too," he
+cried. "Yes, she's due to sail from Liverpool on April 1st."
+
+"But that's your birthday," she objected.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And I've already sent out those invitations."
+
+"Exactly. For some years my relations have made an April fool of me by
+dining at my expense on that day. I have two corner-cupboards
+overflowing with their gifts--the most remarkable exhibition of
+cheapness and ingenuity ever known. This year I am going to make April
+fools of them."
+
+"By marrying me?" she laughed.
+
+"Well, of course it's no use pretending that they'll be delighted by
+that joke, though I intend to play another still more elaborately
+unpleasant. At the back of all their minds exists one anxiety--the
+dispositions of my last will and testament. Very well. I am going to
+cure that worry forever by leaving them Ambles. I can't imagine anything
+more irritating than to be left a house in common with a number of
+people whom you hate. Oh, it's an exquisite revenge. Darling secretary,
+take down for dictation as your last task the following:
+
+"'I, John Touchwood, playwright, of 36 Church Row, Hampstead, N.W., and
+Ambles, Wrottesford, Hants, do hereby will and bequeathe.'"
+
+"I don't understand," she said. "Are you really making a will? or are
+you only playing a joke?"
+
+"Both."
+
+"But is this really to take effect when you're dead? Oh dear, I wish you
+wouldn't talk about death when I've just said I'll marry you."
+
+John paused thoughtfully:
+
+"It does seem rather a challenge to fate," he agreed. "I know what I'll
+do. I'll make over Ambles to them at once. After all, I am dead to them,
+for I'll never have anything more to do with any of them. Cross out what
+you took down. I'll alter the form. Begin as for a letter:
+
+     "'My dear relations,
+
+     "'When you read this I shall be far away.' ... I think that's the
+     correct formula?" he asked.
+
+     "It sounds familiar from many books," she assured him.
+
+     "'Far away on my honeymoon with Miss Doris Hamilton.' Perhaps that
+     sounds a little ambiguous. Cross out the maiden name and substitute
+     'with Mrs. John Touchwood, my former secretary. Since you have
+     attributed to us every link except that of matrimony you will no
+     doubt be glad of this opportunity to contradict the outrageous
+     tales you have most of you' ... I say most of you," John explained,
+     "because I don't really think the children started any scandal ...
+     'you have most of you been at such pains to invent and circulate.
+     Realizing that this announcement will come as a sad blow, I am
+     going to soften it as far as I can by making you a present of my
+     country house in Hampshire, and I am instructing my solicitors to
+     effect the conveyance in due form. From now onwards therefore one
+     fifth of Ambles will belong to James and Beatrice, one fifth to
+     George, Eleanor, Bertram, and Viola, and one fifth to Hilda and
+     Harold, one fifth to Edith, Laurence, and Frida, and one fifth to
+     Hugh.' ... I feel that Hugh is entitled to a proportionately larger
+     share," he said with his eyes on the ceiling, "because I understand
+     that I've robbed him of you."
+
+     "Who on earth told you that?" she demanded, putting down her
+     pencil.
+
+     "Never mind," said John, humming gayly his exultation. "Continue
+     please, Miss Hamilton! 'I shall make no attempt to say which fifth
+     of the house shall belong to whom. Possibly Laurence and Hilda will
+     argue that out between them, and if any structural alterations are
+     required no doubt Hugh will charge himself with them. The
+     twenty-acre field is included in the gift, so that there will be
+     plenty of ground for any alterations or extensions deemed necessary
+     by the future owners.'"
+
+     "How ridiculous you are ... John," she laughed. "It all sounds so
+     absurdly practical--as if you really meant it."
+
+     "My dear girl, I do mean it. Continue please, Miss Hamilton! 'I
+     have long felt that the collection of humming-birds made by Daniel
+     Curtis in the Brazils should be suitably housed, and I propose that
+     a portion of the stables should be put in order for their reception
+     together with what is left of the collection of British
+     dragon-flies made by James. My solicitors will supply a sum of £50
+     for this purpose and Harold can act as curator of what will be
+     known as the Touchwood Museum. With regard to Harold's future, the
+     family knows that I have invested £2000 in the mahogany plantations
+     of Mr. Sydney Ricketts in British Honduras, and if Hugh does not
+     take up his post within three months I shall ask Mr. Ricketts to
+     accept Harold as a pupil in five years' time. He had better begin
+     to study Hondurasian or whatever the language is called at once.
+     Until Harold is called upon to make his decision I shall instruct
+     Mr. Ricketts to put the interest with the capital. While on the
+     subject of nephews and nieces, I may as well say that the family
+     pictures and family silver will be sent back to Ambles to be held
+     in trust for Bertram upon his coming of age. Furthermore, I am
+     prepared to pay for the education of Bertram, Harold, Frida, and
+     Viola at good boarding-schools. Viola can practice her dancing in
+     the holidays. Bertram's future I will provide for when the time
+     comes. I do not wish George to have any excuse for remaining at
+     Halma House--and I have no doubt that a private sitting-room will
+     be awarded to him at Ambles. In the event of undue congestion his
+     knitting would not disturb Laurence's poetic composition, and his
+     system of backing second favorites in imagination can be carried on
+     as easily at Ambles as in London. If he still hankers for a sea
+     voyage, the river with Harold and himself in a Canadian canoe will
+     give him all the nautical adventure he requires. My solicitors have
+     been instructed to place a canoe at his disposal. To James who has
+     so often reproved me for my optimism I would say-once more "Beware
+     of new critical weeklies" and remind him that a bird in the hand is
+     worth two in the bush. In other words, he has got a thousand pounds
+     out of me, and he won't get another penny. Eleanor has shown
+     herself so well able to look after herself that I am not going to
+     insult her by offering to look after her. Hilda with her fifth of
+     the house and her small private income will have nothing to do but
+     fuss about the proportionate expenses of the various members of the
+     family who choose to inhabit Ambles. I am affording her an unique
+     opportunity for being disagreeable, of which I'm sure she will take
+     the fullest advantage. I may say that no financial allowance will
+     be made to those who prefer to live elsewhere. As for Laurence, his
+     theatrical future under the patronage of Sir Percy Mortimer is no
+     doubt secure. However, if he grows tired of playing butlers, I hope
+     that his muse will welcome him back to Ambles as affectionately as
+     his wife.
+
+     "'I don't think I have anything more to say, my dear relations,
+     except that I hope the presents you are bringing me for my birthday
+     will come in useful as knick-knacks for your delightful house. You
+     can now circulate as many stories about me as you like. You can
+     even say that I have founded a lunatic asylum at Ambles. I am so
+     happy in the prospect of my marriage that I cannot feel very hardly
+     towards you all, and so I wish you good luck.
+
+     "'Your affectionate brother, brother-in-law, and uncle,
+
+     "'JOHN TOUCHWOOD.'
+
+"Type that out, please, Miss Hamilton, while I drive down to Doctors
+Commons to see about the license and book our passage in the
+_Murmania_."
+
+John had never tasted any success so sweet as the success of these two
+days before his forty-third birthday; and he was glad to find that Doris
+having once made up her mind about getting married showed no signs of
+imperilling the adventure by confiding her intention to her mother.
+
+"Dear John," she said, "I bolted to America with Ida Merritt last year
+without a word to Mother until I sent her a wireless from on board.
+Surely I may elope with you ... and explain afterwards."
+
+"You don't think it will kill her," suggested John a little anxiously.
+"People are apparently quite ready to accuse one of breaking a maternal
+heart as lightly as they would accuse one of breaking an appointment."
+
+"Dear John, when we're married she'll be delighted."
+
+"Not too delighted, eh, darling? I mean not so delighted that she'll
+want to come and gloat over us all day. You see, when the honeymoon's
+over, I shall have to get to work again on that last act, and your
+mother does talk a good deal. I know it's very intelligent talk, but it
+would be rather an interruption."
+
+The only person they took into their confidence about the wedding,
+except the clergyman, the verger, and a crossing-sweeper brought in to
+witness the signing of the register was Mrs. Worfolk.
+
+"Well, that's highly satisfactory! You couldn't have chosen a nicer
+young lady. Well, I mean to say, I've known her so long and all. And you
+expect to be back in June? Oh well, I shall have everything nice and
+tidy you may be sure. And this letter you want handed to Mr. James to
+be read to the family on your birthday? And I'm to give them their
+dinners the same as if you were here yourself? I see. And how many
+bottles of champagne shall I open? Oh, not to stint them? No, I quite
+understand. Of course, they would want to drink your healths. Certainly.
+And so they ought! Well, I'm bound to say I wish Mr. Worfolk could have
+been alive. It makes me quite aggravated to think he shouldn't be here.
+Well, I mean to say, he being a family carpenter had helped at so many
+weddings."
+
+The scene on the _Murmania_ did not differ much from the scene on board
+the same ship six months ago. John had insisted that Doris should wear
+her misty green suit of Harris tweed; but he himself had bought at the
+Burlington Arcade a traveling cap that showed plainly the sobering
+effects of matrimony. In the barber's saloon he invested in a pair of
+rope-soled shoes; he wanted to be sure of being able to support his wife
+even upon a heeling deck. Before dinner they went forward to watch the
+stars come out in the twilight--stars that were scarcely as yet more
+luminous in the green April sky than daisies in a meadow. They stood
+silent listening to the splash of the dusky sea against the bows, until
+the shore lamps began to wink astern.
+
+"How savage the night looks coming after us," said John. "It's jolly to
+think that in the middle of all that blackness James is reading my
+birthday welcome to the family."
+
+"Poor dears!"
+
+"Oh, they deserve all they've got," he said, fiercely. "And to think
+that only six months ago I was fool enough to read their letters of
+congratulation quite seriously in this very ship. It was you with your
+remark about poor relations that put your foot through my picture."
+
+"You're very much married already, aren't you, John?"
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Yes, for you're already blaming me for everything."
+
+"I suppose this is what James would call one of my confounded
+sentimental endings," John murmured.
+
+"Whatever he called it, he couldn't invent a better ending himself," she
+murmured back. "You know, critics are very like disappointed old maids."
+
+The great ship trembled faintly in the deeper motion, and John holding
+Doris to him felt that she too trembled faintly in unison. They stood
+like this in renewed silence until the stars shone clearly, and the
+shore lamps were turning to a gold blur. John may be excused for
+thinking that the bugle for dinner sounded like a flourish from
+_Lohengrin_. He had reason to feel romantic now.
+
+THE END
+
+[Illustration: image of the book's back cover]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following typogrphical errors have been corrected by the etext
+transcriber:
+
+light of a setting moor.=> light of a setting moon.
+
+the attenuated spinsters of Halam=> the attenuated spinsters of Halma
+
+Do you thing Stevie wants=> Do you think Stevie wants
+
+walk to Chealsea=> walk to Chelsea
+
+"It is bcoming every day=> "It is becoming every day
+
+that it it worth while making another attempt=> that it is worth while
+making another attempt
+
+taken up a stauesque=> taken up a statuesque
+
+caught a faint mumur about=> caught a faint murmur about
+
+The tax buzzed off.=> The taxi buzzed off.
+
+But I'm serious about the elopment.=> But I'm serious about the
+elopement.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Relations, by Compton Mackenzie
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Relations, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poor Relations
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: February 9, 2012 [EBook #38816]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR RELATIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images available at the Interent
+Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="338" height="550" alt="image of the book&#39;s cover" title="image of the book&#39;s cover" /></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>POOR<br />
+RELATIONS</h1>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="hang"><b><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i><br />
+POOR RELATIONS<br />
+SYLVIA &amp; MICHAEL<br />
+PLASHERS MEAD<br />
+SYLVIA SCARLETT</b></p>
+
+<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+<b>Harper &amp; Brothers <i>Publishers</i></b></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><b><big><big><big>POOR RELATIONS</big></big></big></b></p>
+
+<p class="nindd">By COMPTON MACKENZIE<br />
+<small>Author of "SYLVIA SCARLETT" "SYLVIA AND MICHAEL"
+ETC.</small></p>
+
+<hr />
+<hr class="mac" />
+
+<p class="figcenter2">
+<img src="images/colophon.png" width="150"
+height="133" alt="colophon" title="colophon" />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="mac" />
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cb">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br />
+NEW YORK AND LONDON</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cb"><small>POOR RELATIONS<br />
+Copyright, 1919, by Harper &amp; Brothers<br />
+Printed in the United States of America<br />
+Published February, 1920<br />
+B-U</small></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="TABLE"
+style="font-size:85%;text-align:center;border:3px double gray;padding:2%;">
+<tr><td><a name="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER: I</a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">II, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">V, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">X, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV, </a>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="thm">
+<p class="nind"><b>THIS THEME IN C MAJOR WITH VARIATIONS IS INSCRIBED TO THE ROMANTIC AND
+MYSTERIOUS MAJOR C BY ONE WHO WAS PRIVILEGED TO SERVE UNDER HIM DURING
+MORE THAN TWO YEARS OF WAR</b></p>
+
+<p class="nind"><b><small>CAPRI, APRIL 30, 1919.</small></b></p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>Poor<br />
+Relations</h1>
+
+<p class="cb"><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a><i><big><big>Poor Relations</big></big></i></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><b>HERE</b> was nothing to distinguish the departure of the <i>Murmania</i> from
+that of any other big liner leaving New York in October for Liverpool or
+Southampton. At the crowded gangways there was the usual rain of
+ultimate kisses, from the quayside the usual gale of speeding
+handkerchiefs. Ladies in blanket-coats handed over to the arrangement of
+their table-stewards the expensive bouquets presented by friends who, as
+the case might be, had been glad or sorry to see them go. Middle-aged
+gentlemen, who were probably not at all conspicuous on shore, at once
+made their appearance in caps that they might have felt shy about
+wearing even during their university prime. Children in the first
+confusion of settling down ate more chocolates from the gift boxes lying
+about the cabins than they were likely to be given (or perhaps to want)
+for some time. Two young women with fresh complexions, short skirts, tam
+o' shanters, brightly colored jumpers, and big bows to their shoes were
+already on familiar terms with one of the junior ship's officers, and
+their laughter (which would soon become one of those unending oceanic
+accompaniments that make land so pleasant again) was already competing
+with the noise of the crew. Everybody boasted aloud that they fed you
+really well on the <i>Murmania</i>, and hoped silently that perhaps the sense
+of being imprisoned in a decaying hot-water bottle (or whatever more or
+less apt comparison was invented to suggest atmosphere below decks)
+would pass away in the fresh Atlantic breezes. Indeed it might be said,
+except<a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> in the case of a few ivory-faced ladies already lying back with
+the professional aloofness of those who are a prey to chronic headaches,
+that outwardly optimism was rampant.</p>
+
+<p>It was not surprising, therefore, that John Touchwood, the successful
+romantic playwright and unsuccessful realistic novelist, should on
+finding himself hemmed in by such invincible cheerfulness surrender to
+his own pleasant fancies of home. This was one of those moments when he
+was able to feel that the accusation of sentimentality so persistently
+laid against his work by superior critics was rebutted out of the very
+mouth of real life. He looked round at his fellow passengers as though
+he would congratulate them on conforming to his later and more
+profitable theory of art; and if occasionally he could not help seeing a
+stewardess with a glance of discreet sympathy reveal to an inquirer the
+ship's provision for human weakness, he did not on this account feel
+better disposed toward morbid intrusions either upon art or life, partly
+because he was himself an excellent sailor and partly because after all
+as a realist he had unquestionably not been a success.</p>
+
+<p>"Time for a shave before lunch, steward?" he inquired heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"The first bugle will go in about twenty minutes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>John paused for an instant at his own cabin to extract from his suitcase
+the particular outrage upon conventional headgear (it was a deerstalker
+of Lovat tweed) that he had evolved for this voyage; and presently he
+was sitting in the barber shop, wondering at first why anybody should be
+expected to buy any of the miscellaneous articles exposed for sale at
+such enhanced prices on every hook and in every nook of the little
+saloon, and soon afterward seriously considering the advantage of a pair
+of rope-soled shoes upon a heeling deck.</p>
+
+<p>"Very natty things those, sir," said the barber. "I laid in a stock once
+at Gib., when we did the southern rowt. Shave you close, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once over, please."<a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Skin tender?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather tender."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. And the beard's a bit strong, sir. Shave yourself, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Usually, but I was up rather early this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Safety razor, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you think such a description justifiable&mdash;yes&mdash;a safety."</p>
+
+<p>"They're all the go now, and no mistake ... safety bicycles, safety
+matches, safety razors ... they've all come in our time ... yes, sir,
+just a little bit to the right&mdash;thank you, sir! Not your first crossing,
+I take it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my third."</p>
+
+<p>"Interesting place, America. But I am from Wandsworth myself. Hair's
+getting rather thin round the temples. Would you like something to
+brisken up the growth a bit? Another time? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
+Parting on the left's it, I think?"</p>
+
+<p>"No grease," said John as fiercely as he ever spoke. The barber seemed
+to replace the pot of brilliantine with regret.</p>
+
+<p>"What would you like then?" He might have been addressing a spoilt
+child. "Flowers-and-honey? Eau-de-quinine? Or perhaps a friction? I've
+got lavingder, carnation, wallflower, vilit, lilerk...."</p>
+
+<p>"Bay rum," John declared, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>The barber sighed for such an unadventurous soul; and John, who could
+not bear to hurt even the most superficial emotions of a barber, changed
+his mind and threw him into a smiling bustle of gratification.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather strong," John said, half apologetically; for while the friction
+was being administered the barber had explained in jerks how every time
+he went ashore in New York or Liverpool he was in the habit of searching
+about for some novel wash or tonic or pomade, and John did not want to
+make him feel that his enterprise was unappreciated.</p>
+
+<p>"Strong is it? Well, that's a good fault, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose it is."<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What took my fancy was the natural way it smelled."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, painfully natural," John agreed.</p>
+
+<p>He stood up and confronted himself in the barber's mirror; regarding the
+fair, almost florid man, rather under six feet in height, with sanguine
+blue eyes and full, but clearly cut, lips therein reflected, he came to
+the comforting conclusion that he did not look his forty-two years and
+nine months; indeed, while his muffled whistle was shaping rather than
+uttering the tune of <i>Nancy Lee</i>, he nearly asked the barber to guess
+his age. However, he decided not to risk it, pulled down the lapels of
+his smoke-colored tweed coat, put on his deerstalker, tipped the barber
+sufficiently well to secure a parting caress from the brush, promised to
+meditate the purchase of the rope-soled shoes, and stepped jauntily in
+the direction of the luncheon bugle. If John Touchwood had not been a
+successful romantic playwright and an unsuccessful realistic novelist,
+he might have found in the spectacle of the first lunch of an Atlantic
+voyage an illustration of human madness and the destructive will of the
+gods. As it was, his capacity for rapidly covering the domestic offices
+of the brain with the crimson-ramblers of a lush idealism made him
+forget the base fabric so prettily if obviously concealed. As it was, he
+found an exhilaration in all this berserker greed, in the cries of
+inquisitive children, in the rumpled appearance of women whom the bugle
+had torn from their unpacking with the urgency of the last trump, in the
+acrid smell of pickles, and in the persuasive gesture with which the
+glistening stewards handed the potatoes while they glared angrily at one
+another over their shoulders. If a cynical realist had in respect of
+this lunch observed to John that a sow's ear was poor material for a
+silk purse, he would have contested the universal truth of the proverb,
+for at this moment he was engaged in chinking the small change of
+sentimentality in just such a purse.</p>
+
+<p>"How jolly everybody is," he thought, swinging round to his neighbor, a
+gaunt woman in a kind of draggled mantilla, with an effusion of
+good-will that expressed itself in a request<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> to pass her the pickled
+walnuts. John fancied an impulse to move away her chair when she
+declined his offer; but of course the chair was fixed, and the only sign
+of her distaste for pickles or conversation was a faint quiver, which to
+any one less rosy than John might have suggested abhorrence, but which
+struck him as merely shyness. It was now that for the first time he
+became aware of a sickly fragrance that was permeating the atmosphere, a
+fragrance that other people, too, seemed to be noticing by the way in
+which they were looking suspiciously at the stewards.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather oppressive, some of these flowers," said John to the gaunt lady.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see any flowers at our end of the table," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>And then with an emotion that was very nearly horror John realized that,
+though the barber was responsible, he must pay the penalty in a
+vicarious mortification. His first impulse was to snatch a napkin and
+wipe his hair; then he decided to leave the table immediately, because
+after all nobody <i>could</i> suspect him, in these as yet unvexed waters, of
+anything but repletion; finally, hoping that the much powdered lady
+opposite swathed in mauve chiffons was getting the discredit for the
+fragrance, he stayed where he was. Nevertheless, the exhilaration had
+departed; his neighbors all seemed dull folk; and congratulating himself
+that after this first confused lunch he might reasonably expect to be
+put at the captain's table in recognition of the celebrity that he could
+fairly claim, John took from his pocket a bundle of letters which had
+arrived just before he had left his hotel and busied himself with them
+for the rest of the meal.</p>
+
+<p>His success as a romantic playwright and his failure&mdash;or, as he would
+have preferred to think of it in the satisfaction of fixing the guilty
+fragrance upon the lady in mauve chiffons, his comparative failure&mdash;as a
+realistic novelist had not destroyed John's passion for what he called
+"being practical in small matters," and it was in pursuit of this that
+having arranged his letters in two heaps which he mentally labeled<a
+name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> as "business" and "pleasure" he began
+with the former, as a child begins (or ought to begin) his tea with the
+bread and butter and ends it with the plumcake. In John's case, fresh
+from what really might be described as a triumphant production in New
+York, the butter was spread so thickly that "business" was too
+forbidding a name for such pleasantly nutritious communications. His
+agent had sent him the returns of the second week; and playing to
+capacity in one of the largest New York theaters is nearer to a material
+paradise than anything outside the Mohammedan religion. Then there was
+an offer from one of the chief film companies to produce his romantic
+drama of two years ago, that wonderful riot of color and Biblical
+phraseology, <i>The Fall of Babylon</i>. They ventured to think that the
+cinematographer would do his imagination more justice than the theater,
+particularly as upon their dramatic ranch in California they now had
+more than a hundred real camels and eight real elephants. John chuckled
+at the idea of a few animals compensating for the absence of his words,
+but nevertheless ... the entrance of Nebuchadnezzar, yes, it should be
+wonderfully effective ... and the great grass-eating scene, yes, that
+might positively be more impressive on the films ... with one or two
+audiences it had trembled for a moment between the sublime and the
+ridiculous. It was a pity that the offer had not arrived before he was
+leaving New York, but no doubt he should be able to talk it over with
+the London representatives of the firm. Hullo here was Janet Bond
+writing to him ... charming woman, charming actress.... He wandered for
+a few minutes rather vaguely in the maze of her immense handwriting, but
+disentangled his comprehension at last and deciphered:</p>
+
+<p class="r">THE PARTHENON THEATRE.<br />
+Sole Proprietress: Miss Janet Bond.<br />
+<i>October 10, 1910.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Touchwood,</span>&mdash;I wonder if you have forgotten our talk at Sir
+Herbert's that night? I'm so hoping<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> not. And your scheme for a real
+Joan of Arc? Do think of me this winter. Your picture of the scene with
+Gilles de Rais&mdash;you see I followed your advice and read him up&mdash;has
+<i>haunted</i> me ever since. I can hear the horses' hoofs coming nearer and
+nearer and the cries of the murdered children. I'm so glad you've had a
+success with <i>Lucrezia</i> in New York. I don't <i>think</i> it would suit me
+from what I read about it. You know how <i>particular</i> my public is.
+That's why I'm so anxious to play the Maid. When will <i>Lucrezia</i> be
+produced in London, and where? There are many rumours. Do come and see
+me when you get back to England, and I'll tell you who I've thought of
+to play Gilles. I <i>think</i> you'll find him very intelligent. But of
+course everything depends on your inclination, or should I say
+inspiration? And then that wonderful speech to the Bishop! How does it
+begin? "Bishop, thou hast betrayed thy holy trust." Do be a little
+flattered that I've remembered that line. It needn't <i>all</i> be in blank
+verse, and I think little Truscott would be so good as the Bishop. You
+see how <i>enthusiastic</i> I am and how I <i>believe</i> in the idea. All good
+wishes.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Yours sincerely and hopefully,<br />
+<span class="smcap">Janet Bond.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>John certainly was a little flattered that Miss Bond should have
+remembered the Maid's great speech to the Bishop of Beauvais, and the
+actress's enthusiasm roused in him an answering flame, so that the cruet
+before him began to look like the castelated walls of Orleans, and while
+his gaze was fixed upon the bowl of salad he began to compose <i>Act II.</i>
+<i>Scene I</i>&mdash;<i>Open country. Enter Joan on horseback. From the summit of a
+grassy knoll she searches the horizon.</i> So fixedly was John regarding
+his heroine on top of the salad that the head steward came over and
+asked anxiously if there was anything the matter with it. And even when
+John assured him that there was nothing he took it away and told one of
+the under-stewards to remove the caterpillar and bring a fresh bowl.
+Meanwhile, John had picked up the<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> other bundle of letters and begun to
+read his news from home.</p>
+
+<p class="r">65 H<small>ILL</small> R<small>OAD</small>,<br />
+St. John's Wood, N.W.,<br />
+<i>October 10</i>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>D<small>EAR</small> J<small>OHN</small>,&mdash;We have just read in the <i>Telegraph</i> of your great success
+and we are both very glad. Edith writes me that she did have a letter
+from you. I dare say you thought she would send it on to us but she
+didn't, and of course I understand you're busy only I should have liked
+to have had a letter ourselves. James asks me to tell you that he is
+probably going to do a book on the Cymbalist movement in literature. He
+says that the time has come to take a final survey of it. He is also
+writing some articles for the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>. We shall all be so
+glad to welcome you home again.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your affectionate sister-in-law,<br />
+B<small>EATRICE</small> T<small>OUCHWOOD</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Beatrice," thought John, penitently. "I ought to have sent her a
+line. She's a good soul. And James ... what a plucky fellow he is!
+Always full of schemes for books and articles. Wonderful really, to go
+on writing for an audience of about twenty people. And I used to grumble
+because my novels hadn't world-wide circulations. Poor old James ... a
+good fellow."</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the next letter; which he found was from his other
+sister-in-law.</p>
+
+<p class="r">H<small>ALMA</small> H<small>OUSE</small>,<br />
+198 Earl's Court Square, S.W.,<br />
+<i>October 9</i>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>D<small>EAR</small> J<small>OHN</small>,&mdash;Well, you've had a hit with <i>Lucrezia</i>, lucky man! If you
+sent out an Australian company, don't you think I might play lead? I
+quite understand that you couldn't manage it for me either in London or
+America, but after all you <i>are</i> the author and you surely have <i>some</i>
+say in<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> the cast. I've got an understudy at the Parthenon, but I can't
+stand Janet. Such a selfish actress. She literally doesn't think of any
+one but herself. There's a chance I may get a decent part on tour with
+Lambton this autumn. George isn't very well, and it's been rather
+miserable this wet summer in the boarding house as Bertram and Viola
+were ill and kept away from school. I would have suggested their going
+down to Ambles, but Hilda was so very unpleasant when I just hinted at
+the idea that I preferred to keep them with me in town. Both children
+ask every day when you're coming home. You're quite the favourite uncle.
+George was delighted with your success. Poor old boy, he's had another
+financial disappointment, and your success was quite a consolation.</p>
+
+<p class="r">E<small>LEANOR</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"I wish Eleanor was anywhere but on the stage," John sighed. "But she's
+a plucky woman. I <i>must</i> write her a part in my next play. Now for
+Hilda."</p>
+
+<p>He opened his sister's letter with the most genial anticipation, because
+it was written from his new country house in Hampshire, that county
+house which he had coveted for so long and to which the now faintly
+increasing motion of the <i>Murmania</i> reminded him that he was fast
+returning.</p>
+
+<p class="r">A<small>MBLES</small>,<br />
+Wrottesford, Hants,<br />
+<i>October 11</i>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear John</span>,&mdash;Just a line to congratulate you on your new success. Lots
+of money in it, I suppose. Dear Harold is quite well and happy at
+Ambles. Quite the young squire! I had a little coolness with
+Eleanor&mdash;entirely on her side of course, but Bertram is really such a
+<i>bad</i> influence for Harold and so I told her that I did not think you
+would like her to take possession of your new house before you'd had
+time to live in it yourself. Besides, so many children all at once would
+have disturbed poor Mama. Edith drove over with Frida the other day and
+tells me you wrote to her. I<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> should have liked a letter, too, but you
+always spoil poor Edith. Poor little Frida looks very peaky. Much love
+from Harold who is always asking when you're coming home. Mama is very
+well, I'm glad to say.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your affectionate sister,<br />
+H<small>ILDA</small> C<small>URTIS</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"She might have told me a little more about the house," John murmured to
+himself. And then he began to dream about Ambles and to plant
+old-fashioned flowers along its mellow red-brick garden walls. "I shall
+be in time to see the colouring of the woods," he thought. The
+<i>Murmania</i> answered his aspiration with a plunge, and several of the
+rumpled ladies rose hurriedly from table to prostrate themselves for the
+rest of the voyage. John opened a fourth letter from England.</p>
+
+<p class="r">T<small>HE</small> V<small>ICARAGE</small>,<br />
+Newton Candover, Hants,<br />
+<i>October 7</i>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dearest John</span>,&mdash;I was so glad to get your letter, and so glad to hear
+of your success. Laurence says that if he were not a vicar he should
+like to be a dramatic author. In fact, he's writing a play now on a
+Biblical subject, but he fears he will have trouble with the Bishop, as
+it takes a very broad view of Christianity. You know that Laurence has
+recently become very broad? He thinks the village people like it, but
+unfortunately old Mrs. Paxton&mdash;you know who I mean&mdash;the patroness of the
+living&mdash;is so bigoted that Laurence has had a great deal of trouble with
+her. I'm sorry to say that dear little Frida is looking thin. We think
+it's the wet summer. Nothing but rain. Ambles was looking beautiful when
+we drove over last week, but Harold is a little bumptious and Hilda does
+not seem to see his faults. Dear Mama was looking <i>very</i> well&mdash;better
+than I've seen her for ages. Frida sends such a lot of love to dearest
+Uncle John. She never stops talking about you. I sometimes get<a
+name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> quite jealous for Laurence. Not really,
+of course, because family affection is the foundation of civil life.
+Laurence is out in the garden speaking to a man whose pig got into our
+conservatory this morning. Much love.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your loving sister,<br />
+E<small>DITH</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>John put the letter down with a faint sigh: Edith was his favorite
+sister, but he often wished that she had not married a parson. Then he
+took up the last letter of the family packet, which was from his
+housekeeper in Church Row.</p>
+
+<p class="r">39 C<small>HURCH</small> R<small>OW</small>,<br />
+<i>Hampstead, N.W.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>D<small>EAR</small> S<small>IR</small>,&mdash;This is to inform you with the present that everythink is
+very well at your house and that Maud and Elsa is very well as it leaves
+me at present. We as heard nothink from Emily since she as gone down to
+Hambles your other house, and we hope which is Maud, Elsa and myself you
+wont spend all your time out of London which is looking lovely at
+present with the leaves beginning to turn and all. With dutiful respects
+from Maud, Elsa and self, I am,</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your obedient servant,<br />
+M<small>ARY</small> W<small>ORFOLK</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Mrs. Worfolk. She's already quite jealous of Ambles ...
+charming trait really, for after all it means she appreciates Church
+Row. Upon my soul, I feel a bit jealous of Ambles myself."</p>
+
+<p>John began to ponder the pleasant heights of Hampstead and to think of
+the pale blue October sky and of the yellow leaves shuffling and
+slipping along the quiet alleys in the autumn wind; to think, too, of
+his library window and of London spread out below in a refulgence of
+smoke and gold; to think of the chrysanthemums in his little garden and
+of the sparrows' chirping in the Virginia-creeper that would soon be all
+aglow like a well banked-up fire against his coming.<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> Five delightful
+letters really, every one of them full of good wishes and cordial
+affection! The <i>Murmania</i> swooped forward, and there was a faint tingle
+of glass and cutlery. John gathered up his correspondence to go on deck
+and bless the Atlantic for being the pathway to home. As he rose from
+the table he heard a voice say:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear thing, but I've never been a poor relation yet, and I
+don't intend to start now."</p>
+
+<p>The saloon was empty except for himself and two women opposite, the
+climax of whose conversation had come with such a harsh fitness of
+comment upon the letters he had just been reading. John was angry with
+himself for the dint so easily made upon the romantic shield he upheld
+against life's onset; he felt that he had somehow been led into an
+ambush where all his noblest sentiments had been massacred; five bells
+sounded upon the empty saloon with an almost funereal gravity; and, when
+the two women passed out, John, notwithstanding the injured regard of
+his steward, sat down again and read right through the family letters
+from a fresh standpoint. The fact of it was that there had turned out to
+be very few currants in the cake, for the eating of which he had
+prepared himself with such well-buttered bread. Few currants? There was
+not a single one, unless Mrs. Worfolk's antagonism to the idea of Ambles
+might be considered a gritty shred of a currant. John rose at once when
+he had finished his letters, put them in his pocket, and followed the
+unconscious disturbers of his hearth on deck. He soon caught sight of
+them again where, arm in arm, they were pacing the sunlit starboard side
+and apparently enjoying the gusty southwest wind. John wondered how long
+it would be before he was given a suitable opportunity to make their
+acquaintance, and tried to regulate his promenade so that he should
+always meet them face to face either aft or forward, but never amidships
+where heavily muffled passengers reclined in critical contemplation of
+their fellow-travellers over the top of the last popular novel. "Some
+men, you know," he told himself, "would join<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> their walk with a mere
+remark about the weather. They wouldn't stop to consider if their
+company was welcome. They'd be so serenely satisfied with themselves
+that they'd actually succeed ... yes, confound them ... they'd bring it
+off! Yet, after all, I suppose in a way that without vanity I might
+presume they <i>would</i> be rather interested to meet me. Because, of
+course, there's no doubt that people <i>are</i> interested in authors. But,
+it's no good ... I can't do that ... this is really one of those moments
+when I feel as if I was still seventeen years old ... shyness, I suppose
+... yet the rest of my family aren't shy."</p>
+
+<p>This took John's thoughts back to his relations, but to a much less
+complacent point of view of them than before that maliciously apposite
+remark overheard in the saloon had lighted up the group as abruptly and
+unbecomingly as a magnesium flash. However inconsistent he might appear,
+he was afraid that he should be more critical of them in future. He
+began to long to talk over his affairs with that girl and, looking up at
+this moment, he caught her eyes, which either because the weather was so
+gusty or because he was so ready to hang decorations round a simple fact
+seemed to him like calm moorland pools, deep violet-brown pools in
+heathery solitudes. Her complexion had the texture of a rose in
+November, the texture that gains a rare lucency from the grayness and
+moisture by which one might suppose it would be ruined. She was wearing
+a coat and skirt of Harris tweed of a shade of misty green, and with her
+slim figure and fine features she seemed at first glance not more than
+twenty. But John had not passed her another half-dozen times before he
+had decided that she was almost a woman of thirty. He looked to see if
+she was wearing a wedding ring and was already enough interested in her
+to be glad that she was not. This relief was, of course, not at all due
+to any vision of himself in a more intimate relationship; but merely
+because he was glad to find that her personality, of which he was by now
+more definitely aware than of her beauty (well, not beauty, but charm,
+and yet perhaps after all he was being too grudging<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> in not awarding her
+positive beauty) would be her own. There was something distinctly
+romantic in this beautiful young woman of nearly thirty leading her own
+life unimpeded by a loud-voiced husband. Of course, the husband might
+have had a gentle voice, but usually this type of woman seemed a prey to
+bluffness and bigness, as if to display her atmosphere charms she had
+need of a rugged landscape for a background. He found himself glibly
+thinking of her as a type; but with what type could she be classified?
+Surely she was attracting him by being exceptional rather than typical;
+and John soothed his alarmed celibacy by insisting that she appealed to
+him with a hint of virginal wisdom which promised a perfect intercourse,
+if only their acquaintanceship could be achieved naturally, that is to
+say, without the least suggestion of an ulterior object. <i>She had never
+been a poor relation yet, and she did not intend to start being one
+now.</i> Of course, such a woman was still unmarried. But how had she
+avoided being a poor relation? What was her work? Why was she coming
+home to England? And who was her companion? He looked at the other woman
+who walked beside her with a boyish slouch, wore gold pince-nez, and had
+a tight mouth, not naturally tight, but one that had been tightened by
+driving and riding. It was absurd to walk up and down forever like this;
+the acquaintance must be made immediately or not at all; it would never
+do to hang round them waiting for an opportunity of conversation. John
+decided to venture a simple remark the next time he met them face to
+face; but when he arrived at the after end of the promenade deck they
+had vanished, and the embarrassing thought occurred to him that perhaps
+having divined his intention they had thus deliberately snubbed him. He
+went to the rail and leaned over to watch the water undulating past; a
+sudden gust caught his cap and took it out to sea. He clapped his hand
+too late to his head; a fragrance of carnations breathed upon the salt
+windy sunlight; a voice behind him, softly tremulous with laughter,
+murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, bad luck."<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a></p>
+
+<p>John commended his deerstalker to the care of all the kindly Oceanides
+and turned round: it was quite easy after all, and he was glad that he
+had not thought of deliberately letting his cap blow into the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Look, it's actually floating like a boat," she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was shaped like a boat," John said; he was thinking how absurd
+it was now to fancy that swiftly vanishing, utterly inappropriate piece
+of concave tweed should only a few seconds ago have been worn the other
+way round on a human head.</p>
+
+<p>"But you mustn't catch cold," she added. "Haven't you another cap?"</p>
+
+<p>John did possess another cap, one that just before he left England he
+had bought about dusk in the Burlington Arcade, one which in the velvety
+bloom of a July evening had seemed worthy of summer skies and seas, but
+which in the glare of the following day had seemed more like the shreds
+of barbaric attire that are brought back by travelers from exotic lands
+to be taken out of a glass case and shown to visitors when the
+conversation is flagging on Sunday afternoons in the home counties. Now
+if John's plays were full of fierce hues, if his novels had been sepia
+studies of realism which the public considered painful and the critics
+described as painstaking, his private life had been of a mild uniform
+pink, a pinkishness that recalled the chaste hospitality of the best
+spare bedroom. Never yet in that pink life had he let himself go to the
+extent of wearing a cap, which, even if worn afloat by a colored
+prizefighter crossing the Atlantic to defend or challenge supremacy,
+would have created an amused consternation, but which on the head of a
+well-known romantic playwright must arouse at least dismay and possibly
+panic. Yet this John (he had reached the point of regarding himself with
+objective surprise), the pinkishness of whose life, though it might be a
+protest against cynicism and gloom, was eternally half-way to a blush,
+went off to his cabin with the intention of putting on that cap. With
+himself for a while he argued that something must be done to imprison
+the smell<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> of carnations, that a bowler hat would look absurd, that he
+really must not catch cold; but all the time this John knew perfectly
+well that what he really wanted was to give a practical demonstration of
+his youth. This John did not care a damn about his success as a romantic
+playwright, but he did care a great deal that these two young women
+should vote him a suitable companion for the rest of the voyage.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's really not so bad," he assured himself, when before the
+mirror he tried to judge the effect. "I rather think it's better than
+the other one. Of course, if I had seen when I bought it that the checks
+were purple and not black I dare say I shouldn't have bought it&mdash;but, by
+Jove, I'm rather glad I didn't notice them. After all, I have a right to
+be a little eccentric in my costume. What the deuce does it matter to me
+if people do stare? Let them stare! I shall be the last of the lot to
+feel seasick, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>John walked defiantly back to the promenade deck, and several people who
+had not bothered to remark the well-groomed florid man before now asked
+who he was, and followed his progress along the deck with the easily
+interested gaze of the transatlantic passenger.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the voyage John never knew whether the attention his
+entrance into the saloon always evoked was due to his being the man who
+wore the unusual cap or to his being the man who had written <i>The Fall
+of Babylon</i>; nor, indeed, did he bother to make sure, for he was
+fortified during the rest of the voyage by the company of Miss Doris
+Hamilton and Miss Ida Merritt and thoroughly enjoyed himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Now am I attributing to Miss Hamilton more discretion than she's really
+got?" he asked himself on the last night of the passage, a stormy night
+off the Irish coast, while he swayed before the mirror in the creaking
+cabin. John was accustomed, like most men with clear-cut profiles, to
+take advice from his reflection, and perhaps it was his dramatic
+instinct that led him usually to talk aloud to this lifelong friend.
+"Have I in fact been too impulsive in this friendship?<a
+name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> Have I? That's the question. I certainly
+told her a lot about myself, and I think she appreciated my confidence.
+Yet suppose that she's just an ordinary young woman and goes gossiping
+all over England about meeting me? I really must remember that I'm no
+longer a nonentity and that, though Miss Hamilton is not a journalist,
+her friend is, and, what is more, confessed that the sole object of her
+visit to America had been to interview distinguished men with the help
+of Miss Hamilton. The way she spoke about her victims reminded me of the
+way that fellow in the smoking-saloon talked about the tarpon fishing
+off Florida ... famous American statesmen, financiers, and architects
+existed quite impersonally for her to be caught just like tarpon. Really
+when I come to think of it I've been at the end of Miss Merritt's rod
+for five days, and as with all the others the bait was Miss Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>John's mistrust in the prudence of his behavior during the voyage had
+been suddenly roused by the prospect of reaching Liverpool next day. The
+word positively exuded disillusionment; it was as anti-romantic as a
+notebook of Herbert Spencer. He undressed and got into his bunk; the
+motion of the ship and the continual opening and shutting of cabin doors
+all the way along the corridor kept him from sleep, and for a long time
+he lay awake while the delicious freedom of the seas was gradually
+enslaved by the sullen, prosaic, puritanical, bilious word&mdash;Liverpool.
+He had come down to his cabin, full of the exhilaration of a last quick
+stroll up and down the spray-whipped deck; he had come down from a long
+and pleasant talk all about himself where he and Miss Hamilton had sat
+in the lee of some part of a ship's furniture the name of which he did
+not know and did not like to ask, a long and pleasant talk, cozily
+wrapped in two rugs glistening faintly in the starlight with salty rime;
+he had come down from a successful elimination of Miss Merritt, his
+whole personality marinated in freedom, he might say; and now the mere
+thought of Liverpool was enough to disenchant him and to make him feel
+rather like a man who was<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> recovering from a brilliant, a too brilliant
+revelation of himself provoked by champagne. He began to piece together
+the conversation and search for indiscretions. To begin with, he had
+certainly talked a great deal too much about himself; it was not
+dignified for a man in his position to be so prodigally frank with a
+young woman he had only known for five days. Suppose she had been
+laughing at him all the time? Suppose that even now she was laughing at
+him with Miss Merritt? "Good heavens, what an amount I told her," John
+gasped aloud. "I even told her what my real circulation was when I used
+to write novels, and I very nearly told her how much I made out of <i>The
+Fall of Babylon</i>, though since that really was a good deal, it wouldn't
+have mattered so much. And what did I say about my family? Well, perhaps
+that isn't so important. But how much did I tell her of my scheme for
+<i>Joan of Arc</i>? Why, she might have been my confidential secretary by the
+way I talked. My confidential secretary? And why not? I am entitled to a
+secretary&mdash;in fact my position demands a secretary. But would she accept
+such a post? Now don't let me be impulsive."</p>
+
+<p>John began to laugh at himself for a quality in which as a matter of
+fact he was, if anything, deficient. He often used to chaff himself,
+but, of course, always without the least hint of ill-nature, which is
+perhaps why he usually selected imaginary characteristics for genial
+reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"Impulsive dog," he said to himself. "Go to sleep, and don't forget that
+confidential secretaries afloat and confidential secretaries ashore are
+very different propositions. Yes, you thought you were being very clever
+when you bought those rope-soled shoes to keep your balance on a
+slippery deck, but you ought to have bought a rope-soled cap to keep
+your head from slipping."</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to John in the easy optimism that prevails upon the borders
+of sleep an excellent joke, and he passed with a chuckle through the
+ivory gate.</p>
+
+<p>The next day John behaved helpfully and politely at the Customs, and
+indeed continued to be helpful and polite until<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a> his companions of the
+voyage were established in a taxi at Euston. He had carefully written
+down the Hamiltons' address with a view to calling on them one day, but
+even while he was writing the number of the square in Chelsea he was
+thinking about Ambles and trying to decide whether he should make a dash
+across London to Waterloo on the chance of catching the 9:05 <small>P.M.</small> or
+spend the night at his house in Church Row.</p>
+
+<p>"I think perhaps I'd better stay in town to-night," he said. "Good-by.
+Most delightful trip across&mdash;see you both again soon, I hope. You don't
+advise me to try for the 9:05?" he asked once more, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton laughed from the depths of the taxi; when she laughed, for
+the briefest moment John felt an Atlantic breeze sweep through the
+railway station.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> recommend a good night's rest," she said.</p>
+
+<p>So John's last thought of her was of a nice practical young woman; but,
+as he once again told himself, the idea of a secretary was absurd.
+Besides, did she even know shorthand?</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know shorthand?" he turned round to shout as the taxi buzzed
+away; he did not hear her answer, if answer there was.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I can always write," he decided, and without one sigh he
+busied himself with securing his own taxi for Hampstead.<a
+name="page_020" id="page_020"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra2">"</span><span class="letra">I</span><b>'VE</b> got too many caps, Mrs. Worfolk," John proclaimed next morning to
+his housekeeper. "You can give this one away."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Who would you like it given to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, anybody, anybody. Tramps very often ask for old boots, don't they?
+Some tramp might like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have any erbjections if I give it to my nephew, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems almost too perky for a tramp, sir; and my sister's boy&mdash;well,
+he's just at the age when they like to dress theirselves up a bit. He's
+doing very well, too. His employers is extremely satisfied with the way
+he's doing. Extremely satisfied, his employers are."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm delighted to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Well, it's been some consolation to my poor sister, I mean to
+say, after the way her husband behaved hisself, and it's to be hoped
+Herbert'll take fair warning. Let me see, you <i>will</i> be having lunch at
+home I think you said?"</p>
+
+<p>John winced: this was precisely what he would have avoided by catching
+the 9:05 at Waterloo last night.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't be in to lunch for a few days, Mrs. Worfolk, no&mdash;er&mdash;nor to
+dinner either as a matter of fact. No&mdash;in fact I'll be down in the
+country. I must see after things there, you know," he added with an
+attempt to suggest as jovially as possible a real anxiety about his new
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"The country, oh yes," repeated Mrs. Worfolk grimly; John saw the
+beech-woods round Ambles blasted by his housekeeper's disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't care to&mdash;er&mdash;come down and give a look<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> round yourself,
+Mrs. Worfolk? My sister, Mrs. Curtis&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I should prefer not to intrude in any way, sir. But if you insist,
+why, of course&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, I don't insist," John hurriedly interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. Well, we shall all have to get used to being left alone
+nowadays, and that's all there is to it."</p>
+
+<p>"But I shall be back in a few days, Mrs. Worfolk. I'm a Cockney at
+heart, you know. Just at first&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Worfolk shook her head and waddled tragically to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing else you'll be wanting this morning, sir?" she turned
+to ask in accents that seemed to convey forgiveness of her master in
+spite of everything.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you, Mrs. Worfolk. Please send Maud up to help me pack. Good
+heavens," he added to himself when his housekeeper had left the room,
+"why shouldn't I be allowed a country house? And I suppose the next
+thing is that James and Beatrice and George and Eleanor will all be
+offended because I didn't go tearing round to see them the moment I
+arrived. One's relations never understand that after the production of a
+play one requires a little rest. Besides, I must get on with my new
+play. I absolutely <i>must</i>."</p>
+
+<p>John's tendency to abhor the vacuum of success was corrected by the
+arrival of Maud, the parlor-maid, whose statuesque anemia and impersonal
+neatness put something in it. Before leaving for America he had
+supplemented the rather hasty preliminary furnishing of his new house by
+ordering from his tailor a variety of country costumes. These Maud, with
+feminine intuition superimposed on what she would have called her
+"understanding of valeting," at once produced for his visit to Ambles;
+John in the prospect of half a dozen unworn peat-perfumed suits of tweed
+flung behind him any lingering doubt about there being something in
+success, and with the recapture of his enthusiasm for what he called
+"jolly things" was anxious that Maud should share in it.<a
+name="page_022" id="page_022"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Do you think these new things are a success, Maud?" he asked, perhaps a
+little too boisterously. At any rate, the parlor-maid's comprehension of
+valeting had apparently never been so widely stretched, for a faint
+coralline blush tinted her waxen cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"They seem very nice, sir," she murmured, with a slight stress upon the
+verb.</p>
+
+<p>John felt that he had trespassed too far upon the confines of Maud's
+humanity and retreated hurriedly. He would have liked to explain that
+his inquiry had merely been a venture into abstract esthetics and that
+he had not had the least intention of extracting her opinion about these
+suits <i>on him</i>; but he felt that an attempt at explanation would
+embarrass her, and he hummed instead over a selection of ties, as a bee
+hums from flower to flower in a garden, careless of the gardener who
+close at hand is potting up plants.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take these ties," he announced on the last stave of <i>A Fine Old
+English Gentleman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Maud noted them gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"And I shall have a few books. Perhaps there won't be room for them?"</p>
+
+<p>"There won't be room for them, not in your dressing-case, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know there won't be room in that," said John, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>His dressing-case might be considered the medal he had struck in honor
+of <i>The Fall of Babylon</i>: he had passed it every morning on his way to
+rehearsals and, dreaming of the triumph that might soon be his, had
+vowed he would buy it were such a triumph granted. It had cost £75, was
+heavy enough when empty to strain his wrist and when full to break his
+back, and it contained more parasites of the toilet table and the
+writing desk than one could have supposed imaginable. These parasites
+each possessed an abode of such individual shape that leaving them
+behind made no difference to the number of really useful articles, like
+pajamas, that could be carried in the cubic space lined with blue
+corded<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> silk on which they looked down like the inconvenient houses of a
+fashionable square. Therefore wherever John went, the fittings went too,
+a glittering worthless mob of cut-glass, pigskin, tortoiseshell and
+ivory.</p>
+
+<p>"But in my portmanteau," John persisted. "Won't there be room there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might squeeze them in," Maud admitted. "It depends what boots you're
+wanting to take with you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," he sighed. "I can make a separate parcel of them."</p>
+
+<p>"There's the basket what we were going to use for the cat, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I should prefer a brown paper parcel," he decided. It would be
+improper for the books out of which the historical trappings of his
+<i>Joan of Arc</i> were to be manufactured to travel in a lying-in hospital
+for cats.</p>
+
+<p>John left Maud to finish the packing and went downstairs to his library.
+This double room of fine proportions was, as one might expect from the
+library of a popular writer, the core&mdash;the veritable omphalos of the
+house; with its fluted pilasters, cream-colored panels and
+cherub-haunted ceiling, the expanse of city and sky visible from three
+sedate windows at the south end and the glimpse of a busy Hampstead
+street caught from those facing north, not to speak of the prismatic
+rows of books, it was a room worthy of art's most remunerative triumphs,
+the nursery of inspiration, and, save for a slight suggestion that the
+Muses sometimes drank afternoon tea there, the room of an indomitable
+bachelor. When John stepped upon the wreaths, ribbons, and full-blown
+roses of the threadbare Aubusson rug that floated like gossamer upon a
+green carpet of Axminster pile as soft as some historic lawn, he was
+sure that success was not a vacuum. In his now optimistic mood he hoped
+ultimately to receive from Ambles the kind of congratulatory benediction
+that the library at Church Row always bestowed upon his footsteps.
+Indeed, if he had not had such an ambition for his country house, he
+could scarcely have endured to quit<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> even for a week this library, where
+fires were burning in two grates and where the smoke of his Partaga was
+haunting, like a complacent ghost, the imperturbable air. John possessed
+another library at Ambles, but he had not yet had time to do more than
+hurriedly stock it with the standard works that he felt no country house
+should be without. His library in London was the outcome of historical
+research preparatory to writing his romantic plays; and since all works
+of popular historical interest are bound with a much more lavish
+profusion of color and ornament even than the works of fiction to which
+they most nearly approximate, John's shelves outwardly resembled rather
+a collection of armor than a collection of books. There were, of course,
+many books the insides of which were sufficiently valuable to excuse
+their dingy exterior; but none of these occupied the line, where romance
+after romance of exiled queens, confession after confession of
+morganatic wives, memoir after memoir from above and below stairs,
+together with catch-penny alliterative gatherings as of rude regents and
+libidinous landgraves flashed in a gorgeous superficiality of gilt and
+text. In order to amass the necessary material for a play about Joan of
+Arc John did not concern himself with original documents. He assumed,
+perhaps rightly, that a Camembert cheese is more palatable and certainly
+more portable than a herd of unmilked cows. To dramatize the life of
+Joan of Arc he took from his shelves <i>Saints and Sinners of the
+Fifteenth Century</i> ... but a catalogue is unnecessary: enough that when
+the heap of volumes chosen stood upon his desk it glittered like the
+Maid herself before the walls of Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," as John had once pointed out in a moment of exasperation to
+his brother, James, the critic, "Shakespeare didn't sit all day in the
+reading-room of the British Museum."</p>
+
+<p>An hour later the playwright, equipped alike for country rambles and
+poetic excursions, was sitting in a first-class compartment of a London
+and South-Western railway train;<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> two hours after that he was sitting in
+the Wrottesford fly swishing along between high hazel hedges of
+golden-brown.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to see about getting a dog-cart," he exclaimed, when after
+a five minutes' struggle to let down the window with the aid of a strap
+that looked like an Anglican stole he had succeeded in opening the door
+and nearly falling head-long into the lane.</p>
+
+<p>"You have to let down the window <i>before</i> you get out," said the driver
+reproachfully, trying to hammer the frameless window back into place and
+making such a noise about it that John could not bear to accentuate by
+argument the outrage that he was offering to this morning of exquisite
+decline, on which earth seemed to be floating away into a windless
+infinity like one of her own dead leaves. No, on such a morning
+controversy was impossible, but he should certainly take immediate steps
+to acquire a dog-cart.</p>
+
+<p>"For it's like being jolted in a badly made coffin," he thought, when he
+was once more encased in the fly and, having left the high road behind,
+was driving under an avenue of sycamores bordered by a small stream, the
+water of which was stained to the color of sherry by the sunlight
+glowing down through the arches of tawny leaves overhead. To John this
+avenue always seemed the entrance to a vast park surrounding his country
+house; it was indeed an almost unfrequented road, grass-grown in the
+center and lively with rabbits during most of the day, so that his
+imagination of ancestral approaches was easily stimulated and he felt
+like a figure in a painting by Marcus Stone. It was lucky that John's
+sanguine imagination could so often satisfy his ambition; prosperous
+playwright though he was, he had not yet made nearly enough money to buy
+a real park. However, in his present character of an eighteenth-century
+squire he determined, should the film version of <i>The Fall of Babylon</i>
+turn out successful, to buy a lawny meadow of twenty acres that would
+add much to the dignity and seclusion of Ambles, the boundaries of which
+at the back were now overlooked by a herd of fierce Kerry cows who
+occupied the meadow<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> and during the summer had made John's practice
+shots with a brassy too much like big-game shooting to be pleasant or
+safe. After about a mile the avenue came to an end where a narrow curved
+bridge spanned the stream, which now flowed away to the left along the
+bottom of a densely wooded hillside. The fly crossed over with an
+impunity that was surprising in face of a printed warning that
+extraordinary vehicles should avoid this bridge, and began to climb the
+slope by a wide diagonal track between bushes of holly, the green of
+which seemed vivid and glossy against the prevailing brown. The noise of
+the wheels was deadened by the heavy drift of beech leaves, and the
+stillness of this russet world, except for the occasional scream of a
+jay or the flapping of disturbed pigeons, demanded from John's
+illustrative fancy something more remote and Gothic than the eighteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>"Malory," he said to himself. "Absolute Malory. It's almost impossible
+not to believe that Sir Gawaine might not come galloping down through
+this wood."</p>
+
+<p>Eager to put himself still more deeply in accord with the romantic
+atmosphere, John tried this time to open the door of the fly with the
+intention of walking meditatively up the hill in its wake; the door
+remained fast; but he managed to open the window, or rather he broke it.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a jolly good mind to get a motor," he exclaimed, savagely.</p>
+
+<p>Every knight errant's horse in the neighborhood bolted at the thought,
+and by the time John had reached the top of the hill and emerged upon a
+wide stretch of common land dotted with ancient hawthorns in full
+crimson berry he was very much in the present. For there on the other
+side of the common, flanked by shelving woods of oak and beech and
+backed by rising downs on which a milky sky ruffled its breast like a
+huge swan lazily floating, stood Ambles, a solitary, deep-hued,
+Elizabethan house with dreaming chimney-stacks and tumbled mossy roofs
+and garden walls rising from the heaped amethysts of innumerable
+Michaelmas daisies.<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a></p>
+
+<p>"My house," John murmured in a paroxysm of ownership.</p>
+
+<p>The noise of the approaching fly had drawn expectant figures to the
+gate; John, who had gratified affection, curiosity and ostentation by
+sending a wireless message from the <i>Murmania</i>, a telegram from
+Liverpool yesterday, and another from Euston last night to announce his
+swift arrival, had therefore only himself to thank for perceiving in the
+group the black figure of his brother-in-law, the Reverend Laurence
+Armitage. He drove away the scarcely formed feeling of depression by
+supposing that Edith could not by herself have trundled the
+barrel-shaped vicarage pony all the way from Newton Candover to Ambles,
+and, finding that the left-hand door of the fly was unexpectedly
+susceptible to the prompting of its handle, he alighted with such
+rapidity that not one of his smiling relations could have had any
+impression but that he was bounding to greet them. The two sisters were
+so conscious of their rich unmarried brother's impulsive advance that
+each incited her own child to responsive bounds so that they might meet
+him half-way along the path to the front door, in the harborage of which
+Grandma (whose morning nap had been interrupted by a sudden immersion in
+two shawls, and a rapid swim with Emily, the maid from London, acting as
+lifebuoy down the billowy passages and stairs of the old house) rocked
+in breathless anticipation of the filial salute.</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome back, my dear Johnnie," the old lady panted.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, mother? What, another new cap?"</p>
+
+<p>Old Mrs. Touchwood patted her head complacently. "We bought it at
+Threadgale's in Galton. The ribbons are the new hollyhock red."</p>
+
+<p>"Delightful!" John exclaimed. "And who helped you to choose it? Little
+Frida here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody <i>helped</i> me, Johnnie. Hilda accompanied me into Galton; but she
+wanted to buy a sardine-opener for the house."</p>
+
+<p>John had not for a moment imagined that his mother had<a
+name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> wanted any advice about a cap; but
+inasmuch as Frida, in what was intended to be a demonstrative welcome,
+prompted by her mother, was rubbing her head against his ribs like a
+calf against a fence, he had felt he ought to hook her to the
+conversation somehow. John's concern about Frida was solved by the
+others' gathering round him for greetings.</p>
+
+<p>First Hilda offered her sallow cheek, patting while he kissed it her
+brother on the back with one hand, and with the other manipulating
+Harold in such a way as to give John the impression that his nephew was
+being forced into his waistcoat pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"He feels you're his father now," whispered Hilda with a look that was
+meant to express the tender resignation of widowhood, but which only
+succeeded in suggesting a covetous maternity. John doubted if Harold
+felt anything but a desire to escape from being sandwiched between his
+mother's crape and his uncle's watch chain, and he turned to embrace
+Edith, whose cheeks, soft and pink as a toy balloon, were floating
+tremulously expectant upon the glinting autumn air.</p>
+
+<p>"We've been so anxious about you," Edith murmured. "And Laurence has
+such a lot to talk over with you."</p>
+
+<p>John, with a slight sinking that was not altogether due to its being
+past his usual luncheon hour, turned to be welcomed by his
+brother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>The vicar of Newton Candover's serenity if he had not been a tall and
+handsome man might have been mistaken for smugness; as it was, his
+personality enveloped the scene with a ceremonious dignity that was not
+less than archidiaconal, and except for his comparative youthfulness (he
+was the same age as John) might well have been considered
+archiepiscopal.</p>
+
+<p>"Edith has been anxious about you. Indeed, we have all been anxious
+about you," he intoned, offering his hand to John, for whom the sweet
+damp odors of autumn became a whiff of pious women's veils, while the
+leaves fluttering<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> gently down from the tulip tree in the middle of the
+lawn lisped like the India-paper of prayer-books.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got an air-gun, Uncle John," ejaculated Harold, who having for
+some time been inhaling the necessary breath now expelled the sentence
+in a burst as if he had been an air-gun himself. John hailed the
+announcement almost effusively; it reached him with the kind of relief
+with which in childhood he had heard the number of the final hymn
+announced; and a robin piping his delicate tune from the garden wall was
+welcome as birdsong in a churchyard had been after service on Sundays
+handicapped by the litany.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to see me shoot at something?" Harold went on, hastily
+cramming his mouth with slugs.</p>
+
+<p>"Not now, dear," said Hilda, hastily. "Uncle John is tired. And don't
+eat sweets just before lunch."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it wouldn't tire him to see me shoot at something. And I'm not
+eating sweets. I'm getting ready to load."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the poor child shoot if he wants to," Grandma put in.</p>
+
+<p>Harold beamed ferociously through his spectacles, took a slug from his
+mouth, fitted it into the air-gun, and fired, bringing down two leaves
+from an espalier pear. Everybody applauded him, because everybody felt
+glad that it had not been a window or perhaps even himself; the robin
+cocked his tail contemptuously and flew away.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I must go and get ready for lunch," said John, who thought a
+second shot might be less innocuous, and was moreover really hungry. His
+bedroom, dimity draped, had a pleasant rustic simplicity, but he decided
+that it wanted living in: the atmosphere at present was too much that of
+a well-recommended country inn.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it wants living in," said John to himself. "I shall put in a good
+month here and break the back of Joan of Arc."</p>
+
+<p>"What skin is this, Uncle John?" a serious voice at his elbow inquired.
+John started; he had not observed Harold's scout-like entrance.<a
+name="page_030" id="page_030"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What skin is that, my boy?" he repeated in what he thought was the
+right tone of avuncular jocularity and looking down at Harold, who was
+examining with myopic intensity the dressing-case. "That is the skin of
+a white elephant."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's brown," Harold objected.</p>
+
+<p>John rashly decided to extend his facetiousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, well, white elephants turn brown when they're shot, just as
+lobsters turn red when they're boiled."</p>
+
+<p>"Who shot it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know&mdash;probably some friend of the gentleman who keeps the
+shop where I bought it."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't exactly say when&mdash;but probably about three years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Father used to shoot elephants, didn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my boy, your father used to shoot elephants."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he shot this one."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he did."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he a friend of the gentleman who keeps the shop where you bought
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't be surprised," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you?" said Harold, skeptically. "My father was an asplorer.
+When I'm big I'm going to be an asplorer, too; but I sha'n't be friends
+with shopkeepers."</p>
+
+<p>"Confounded little snob," John thought, and began to look for his
+nailbrush, the address of whose palatial residence of pigskin only Maud
+knew.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you looking for, Uncle John?" Harold asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm looking for my nailbrush, Harold."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"To clean my nails."</p>
+
+<p>"Are they dirty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they're just a little grubby after the railway journey."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine aren't," Harold affirmed in a lofty tone. Then<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> after a minute he
+added: "I thought perhaps you were looking for the present you brought
+me from America."</p>
+
+<p>John turned pale and made up his mind to creep unobserved after lunch
+into the market town of Galton and visit the local toyshop. It would be
+an infernal nuisance, but it served him right for omitting to bring
+presents either for his nephew or his niece.</p>
+
+<p>"You're too smart," he said nervously to Harold. "Present time will be
+after tea." The sentence sounded contradictory somehow, and he changed
+it to "the time for presents will be five o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" Harold asked.</p>
+
+<p>John was saved from answering by a tap at the door, followed by the
+entrance of Mrs. Curtis.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Harold's with you?" she exclaimed, as if it were the most
+surprising juxtaposition in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Harold's with me," John agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't let him bother you, but he's been so looking forward to
+your arrival. <i>When</i> is Uncle coming, he kept asking."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he ask <i>why</i> I was coming?"</p>
+
+<p>Hilda looked at her brother blankly, and John made up his mind to try
+that look on Harold some time.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got everything you want?" she asked, solicitously.</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't got his nailbrush," said Harold.</p>
+
+<p>Hilda assumed an expression of exaggerated alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, I hope it hasn't been lost."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no, it'll turn up in one of the glass bottles. I was just
+telling Harold that I haven't really begun my unpacking yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle John's brought me a present from America," Harold proclaimed in
+accents of greedy pride.</p>
+
+<p>Hilda seized her brother's hand affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you oughtn't to have done that. It's spoiling him. It really is.
+Harold never expects presents."<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What a liar," thought John. "But not a bigger one than I am myself," he
+supplemented, and then he announced aloud that he must go into Galton
+after lunch and send off an important telegram to his agent.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder ..." Hilda began, but with an arch look she paused and seemed
+to thrust aside temptation.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" John weakly asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why ... but no, he might bore you by walking too slowly. Harold," she
+added, seriously, "if Uncle John is kind enough to take you into Galton
+with him, will you be a good boy and leave your butterfly net at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I may take my air-gun," Harold agreed.</p>
+
+<p>John rapidly went over in his mind the various places where Harold might
+be successfully detained while he was in the toyshop, decided that the
+risk would be too great, pulled himself together, and declined the
+pleasure of his nephew's company on the ground that he must think over
+very carefully the phrasing of the telegram he had to send, a mental
+process, he explained, that Harold might distract.</p>
+
+<p>"Another day, darling," said Hilda, consolingly.</p>
+
+<p>"And then I'll be able to take my fishing-rod," said Harold.</p>
+
+<p>"He is so like his poor father," Hilda murmured.</p>
+
+<p>John was thinking sympathetically of the distant Amazonian tribe that
+had murdered Daniel Curtis, when there was another tap at the door, and
+Frida crackling loudly in a clean pinafore came in to say that the bell
+for lunch was just going to ring.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear," said her aunt. "Uncle John knows already. Don't bother him
+now. He's tired after his journey. Come along, Harold."</p>
+
+<p>"He can have my nailbrush if he likes," Harold offered.</p>
+
+<p>"Run, darling, and get it quickly then."</p>
+
+<p>Harold rushed out of the room and could be heard hustling his cousin all
+down the corridor, evoking complaints of "Don't, Harold, you rough boy,
+you're crumpling my frock."</p>
+
+<p>The bell for lunch sounded gratefully at this moment,<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> and John, without
+even washing his hands, hurried downstairs trying to look like a hungry
+ogre, so anxious was he to avoid using Harold's nailbrush.</p>
+
+<p>The dining-room at Ambles was a long low room with a large open
+fireplace and paneled walls; from the window-seats bundles of drying
+lavender competed pleasantly with the smell of hot kidney-beans upon the
+table, at the head of which John took his rightful place; opposite to
+him, placid as an untouched pudding, sat Grandmama. Laurence said grace
+without being invited after standing up for a moment with an expression
+of pained interrogation; Edith accompanied his words by making with her
+forefinger and thumb a minute cruciform incision between two of the
+bones of her stays, and inclined her head solemnly toward Frida in a
+mute exhortation to follow her mother's example. Harold flashed his
+spectacles upon every dish in turn; Emily's waiting was during this meal
+of reunion colored with human affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm glad to be back in England," said John, heartily.</p>
+
+<p>An encouraging murmur rippled round the table from his relations.</p>
+
+<p>"Are these French beans from our own garden?" John asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>"Scarlet-runners," Hilda corrected. "Yes, of course. We never trouble
+the greengrocer. The frosts have been so light ..."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't got a bean left," said Laurence.</p>
+
+<p>John nearly gave a visible jump; there was something terribly suggestive
+in that simple horticultural disclaimer.</p>
+
+<p>"Our beans are quite over," added Edith in the astonished voice of one
+who has tumbled upon a secret of nature. She had a habit of echoing many
+of her husband's remarks like this; perhaps "echoing" is a bad
+description of her method, for she seldom repeated literally and often
+not immediately. Sometimes indeed she would wait as long as half an hour
+before she reissued in the garb of a personal philosophical<a
+name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> discovery or of an exegitical gloss the
+most casual remark of Laurence, a habit which irritated him and
+embarrassed other people, who would look away from Edith and mutter a
+hurried agreement or ask for the salt to be passed.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that beans were a favorite dish
+of poor Papa, though I myself always liked peas better."</p>
+
+<p>"I like peas," Harold proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"I like peas, too," cried Frida excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Frida," said her father, pulling out with a click one of the graver
+tenor stops in his voice, "we do not talk at table about our likes and
+dislikes."</p>
+
+<p>Edith indorsed this opinion with a grave nod at Frida, or rather with a
+solemn inclination of the head as if she were bowing to an altar.</p>
+
+<p>"But I like new potatoes best of all," continued Harold. "My gosh, all
+buttery!"</p>
+
+<p>Laurence screwed up his eye in a disgusted wince, looked down his nose
+at his plate, and drew a shocked cork from his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," said Hilda. "Didn't you hear what Uncle Laurence said, darling?"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke as one speaks to children in church when the organ begins; one
+felt that she was inspired by social tact rather than by any real
+reverence for the clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do like new potatoes, and I like asparagus."</p>
+
+<p>Frida was just going to declare for asparagus, too, when she caught her
+father's eye and choked.</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently the vegetable that Frida likes best," said John, riding
+buoyantly upon the gale of Frida's convulsions, "is an artichoke."</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps lucky for professional comedians that rich uncles and
+judges rarely go on the stage; their occupation might be even more
+arduous if they had to face such competitors. Anyway, John had enough
+success with his joke to feel much more hopeful of being able to find
+suitable presents in Galton for Harold and Frida; and in the silence<a
+name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> of exhaustion that succeeded the laughter
+he broke the news of his having to go into town and dispatch an urgent
+telegram that very afternoon, mentioning incidentally that he might see
+about a dog-cart, and, of course, at the same time a horse. Everybody
+applauded his resolve except his brother-in-law who looked distinctly
+put out.</p>
+
+<p>"But you won't be gone before I get back?" John asked.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence and Edith exchanged glances fraught with the unuttered
+solemnities of conjugal comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I <i>had</i> wanted to have a talk over things with you after lunch,"
+Laurence explained. "In fact, I have a good deal to talk over. I should
+suggest driving you in to Galton, but I find it impossible to talk
+freely while driving. Even our poor old pony has been known to shy. Yes,
+indeed, poor old Primrose often shies."</p>
+
+<p>John mentally blessed the aged animal's youthful heart, and said, to
+cover his relief, that old maids were often more skittish than young
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked Harold.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody felt that Harold's question was one that should not be
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't understand, darling," said his mother; and the dining-room
+became tense with mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, if we could have dinner put forward half an hour," said
+Laurence, dragging the conversation out of the slough of sex, "we could
+avail ourselves of the moon."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you see," Edith put in eagerly, "it wouldn't be so dark with the
+moon."</p>
+
+<p>Laurence knitted his brow at this and his wife hastened to add that an
+earlier dinner would bring Frida's bed-time much nearer to its normal
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>"The point is that I have a great deal to talk over with John," Laurence
+irritably explained, "and that," he looked as if he would have liked to
+add "Frida's bed-time can go to the devil," but he swallowed the impious
+dedication and crumbled his bread.<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a></p>
+
+<p>Finally, notwithstanding that everybody felt very full of roast beef and
+scarlet-runners, it was decided to dine at half-past six instead of
+half-past seven.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Papa, I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "always liked to dine
+at half-past three. That gave him a nice long morning for his patients
+and time to smoke his cigar after dinner before he opened the dispensary
+in the evening. Supper was generally cold unless he anticipated a night
+call, in which case we had soup."</p>
+
+<p>All were glad that the twentieth century had arrived, and they smiled
+sympathetically at the old lady, who, feeling that her anecdote had
+scored a hit, embarked upon another about being taken to the Great
+Exhibition when she was eleven years old, which lasted right through the
+pudding, perhaps because it was trifle, and Harold did not feel inclined
+to lose a mouthful by rash interruptions.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch John was taken all over the house and all round the garden
+and congratulated time after time upon the wisdom he had shown in buying
+Ambles: he was made to feel that property set him apart from other men
+even more definitely than dramatic success.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Daniel was famous in his way," Hilda said. "But what did he
+leave me?"</p>
+
+<p>John, remembering the £120 a year in the bank and the collection of
+stuffed humming birds at the pantechnicon, the importation of which to
+Ambles he was always dreading, felt that Hilda was not being
+ungratefully rhetorical.</p>
+
+<p>"And of course," Laurence contributed, "a vicar feels that his
+glebe&mdash;the value of which by the way has just gone down another £2 an
+acre&mdash;is not his own."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you see," Edith put in, "if anything horrid happened to Laurence
+it would belong to the next vicar."</p>
+
+<p>Again the glances of husband and wife played together in mid-air like
+butterflies.</p>
+
+<p>"And so," Laurence went on, "when you tell us that you hope to buy this
+twenty-acre field we all realize that in doing<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> so you would most
+emphatically be consolidating your property."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm sure you're wise to buy," said Hilda, weightily.</p>
+
+<p>"It would make Ambles so much larger, wouldn't it?" suggested Edith.
+"Twenty acres, you see ... well, really, I suppose twenty acres would be
+as big as from...."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Edith," said her husband. "Don't worry poor John with comparative
+acres&mdash;we are all looking at the twenty-acre field now."</p>
+
+<p>The fierce little Kerry cows eyed the prospective owner peacefully,
+until Harold hit one of them with a slug from his air-gun, when they all
+began to career about the field, kicking up their heels and waving their
+tails.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't do that, my boy," John said, crossly&mdash;for him very crossly.</p>
+
+<p>A short cut to Galton lay across this field, which John, though even
+when they were quiet he never felt on really intimate terms with cows,
+had just decided to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling, that's such a cruel thing to do," Hilda expostulated. "The
+poor cow wasn't hurting you."</p>
+
+<p>"It was looking at me," Harold protested.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a legend about Francis of Assisi, Harold," his Uncle Laurence
+began, "which will interest you and at the same time...."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry to interrupt," John broke in, "but I must be getting along. This
+telegram.... I'll be back for tea."</p>
+
+<p>He hurried off and when everybody called out to remind him of the short
+cut across the twenty-acre field he waved back cheerfully, as if he
+thought he was being wished a jolly walk; but he took the long way
+round.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good five miles to Galton in the opposite direction from the
+road by which he had driven up that morning; but on this fine autumn
+afternoon, going down hill nearly all the way through a foreground of
+golden woods with prospects of blue distances beyond, John enjoyed
+the<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> walk, and not less because even at the beginning of it he stopped
+once or twice to think how jolly it would be to see Miss Hamilton and
+Miss Merritt coming round the next bend in the road. Later on, he did
+not bother to include Miss Merritt, and finally he discovered his fancy
+so steadily fixed upon Miss Hamilton that he was forced to remind
+himself that Miss Hamilton in such a setting would demand a much higher
+standard of criticism than Miss Hamilton on the promenade deck of the
+<i>Murmania</i>. Nevertheless, John continued to think of her; and so
+pleasantly did her semblance walk beside him and so exceptionally mild
+was the afternoon for the season of the year that he must have strolled
+along the greater part of the way. At any rate, when he saw the tower of
+Galton church he was shocked to find that it was already four
+o'clock.<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><b>HE</b> selection of presents for children is never easy, because in order
+to extract real pleasure from the purchase it is necessary to find
+something that excites the donor as much as it is likely to excite the
+recipient. In John's case this difficulty was quadrupled by having to
+find toys with an American air about them, and on top of that by the
+narrowly restricted choice in the Galton shops. He felt that it would be
+ridiculous, even insulting, to produce for Frida as typical of New
+York's luxurious catering for the young that doll, the roses of whose
+cheeks had withered in the sunlight of five Hampshire summers, and whose
+smile had failed to allure as little girls those who were now
+marriageable young women. Nor did he think that Harold would accept as
+worthy of American enterprise those more conspicuous portions of a
+diminutive Uhlan's uniform fastened to a dog's-eared sheet of cardboard,
+the sword belonging to which was rusting in the scabbard and the gilt
+lancehead of which no longer gave the least illusion of being metal.
+Finally, however, just as the clock was striking five he unearthed from
+a remote corner of the large ironmonger's shop, to which he had turned
+in despair from the toys offered him by the two stationers, a toboggan,
+and not merely a toboggan but a Canadian toboggan stamped with the image
+of a Red Indian.</p>
+
+<p>"It was ordered for a customer in 1895," the ironmonger explained.
+"There was heavy snow that year, you may remember."</p>
+
+<p>If it had been ordered by Methuselah when he was still in his 'teens
+John would not have hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, would you&mdash;er&mdash;wrap it up," he said, putting down the money.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't the carrier better bring it, sir?" suggested the<a
+name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> ironmonger. "He'll be going Wrottesford
+way to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>Obviously John could not carry the toboggan five miles, but just as
+obviously he must get the toboggan back to Ambles that night: so he
+declined the carrier, and asked the ironmonger to order him a fly while
+he made a last desperate search for Frida's present. In the end, with
+twilight falling fast, he bought for his niece twenty-nine small china
+animals, which the stationer assured him would enchant any child between
+nine and eleven, though perhaps less likely to appeal to ages outside
+that period. A younger child, for instance, might be tempted to put them
+in its mouth, even to swallow them if not carefully watched, while an
+older child might tread on them. Another advantage was that when the
+young lady for whom they were intended grew out of them, they could be
+put away and revived to adorn her mantelpiece when she had reached an
+age to appreciate the possibilities of a mantelpiece. John did not feel
+as happy about these animals as he did about the toboggan: there was not
+a single buffalo among them, and not one looked in the least
+distinctively American, but the stationer was so reassuring and time was
+going by so rapidly that he decided to risk the purchase. And really
+when they were deposited in a cardboard box among cotton-wool they did
+not look so dull, and perhaps Frida would enjoy guessing how many there
+were before she unpacked them.</p>
+
+<p>"Better than a Noah's Ark," said John, hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, much better, sir. A much more suitable present for a young
+lady. In fact Noah's Arks are considered all right for village treats,
+but they're in very little demand among the gentry nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>When John was within a quarter of a mile from Ambles he told the driver
+of the fly to stop. Somehow he must creep into the house and up to his
+room with the toboggan and the china animals; it was after six, and the
+children would have been looking out for his return since five. Perhaps
+the cows would have gone home by now and he should not excite<a
+name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> their nocturnal apprehensions by dragging
+the toboggan across the twenty-acre field. Meanwhile, he should tell the
+fly to wait five minutes before driving slowly up to the house, which
+would draw the scent and enable him with Emily's help to reach his room
+unperceived by the backstairs. A heavy mist hung upon the meadow, and
+the paper wrapped round the toboggan, which was just too wide to be
+carried under his arm like a portfolio, began to peel off in the dew
+with a swishing sound that would inevitably attract the curiosity of the
+cows were they still at large; moreover, several of the china animals
+were now chinking together and, John could not help feeling with some
+anxiety, probably chipping off their noses.</p>
+
+<p>"I must look like a broken-down Santa Claus with this vehicle," he said
+to himself. "Where's the path got to now? I wonder why people wiggle so
+when they make a path? Hullo! What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>The munching of cattle was audible close at hand, a munching that was
+sometimes interrupted by awful snorts.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it's only the mist that makes them do that," John tried to
+assure himself. "It seems very imprudent to leave valuable cows out of
+doors on a damp night like this."</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound of heavy bodies moving suddenly in unison.</p>
+
+<p>"They've heard me," thought John, hopelessly. "I wish to goodness I knew
+something about cows. I really must get the subject up. Of course, they
+<i>may</i> be frightened of <i>me</i>. Good heavens, they're all snorting now.
+Probably the best thing to do is to keep on calmly walking; most animals
+are susceptible to human indifference. What a little fool that nephew of
+mine was to shoot at them this afternoon. I'm hanged if he deserves his
+toboggan."</p>
+
+<p>The lights of Ambles stained the mist in front; John ran the last fifty
+yards, threw himself over the iron railings, and stood panting upon his
+own lawn. In the distance could be heard the confused thudding of hoofs
+dying away toward the far end of the twenty-acre meadow.<a
+name="page_042" id="page_042"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I evidently frightened them," John thought.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later he was calling down from the landing outside his
+bedroom that it was time for presents. In the first brief moment of
+intoxication that had succeeded his defeat of the cattle John had
+seriously contemplated tobogganing downstairs himself in order to
+"surprise the kids" as he put it. But from his landing the staircase
+looked all wrong for such an experiment and he walked the toboggan down,
+which lamplight appeared to him a typical product of the bear-haunted
+mountains of Canada.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody was waiting for him in the drawing-room; everybody was
+flatteringly enthusiastic about the toboggan and seemed anxious to make
+it at home in such strange surroundings; nobody failed to point out to
+the lucky boy the extreme kindness of his uncle in bringing back such a
+wonderful present all the way from America&mdash;indeed one almost had the
+impression that John must often have had to wake up and feed it in the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble you must have taken," Hilda exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I did take a good deal of trouble," John admitted. After all, so
+he had&mdash;a damned sight more trouble than any one there suspected.</p>
+
+<p>"When will it snow?" Harold asked. "To-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not&mdash;I mean, it might," said John. He must keep up Harold's
+spirits, if only to balance Frida's depression, about whose present he
+was beginning to feel very doubtful when he saw her eyes glittering with
+feverish anticipation while he was undoing the string. He hoped she
+would not faint or scream with disappointment when it was opened, and he
+took off the lid of the box with the kind of flourish to which waiters
+often treat dish-covers when they wish to promote an appetite among the
+guests.</p>
+
+<p>"How sweet," Edith murmured.</p>
+
+<p>John looked gratefully at his sister; if he had made his will that night
+she would have inherited Ambles.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, a collection of small china animals," said Laurence, choosing a cat
+to set delicately upon the table for general<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> admiration. John wished he
+had not chosen the cat that seemed to suffer with a tumor in the region
+of the tail and disinclined in consequence to sit still.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I was anxious to get her a Noah's Ark," John volunteered, seeming
+to suggest by his tone how appropriate such a gift would have been to
+the atmosphere of a vicarage. "But they've practically given up making
+Noah's Arks in America, and you see, these china animals will serve as
+toys now, and later on, when Frida is grown-up, they'll look jolly on
+the mantelpiece. Those that are not broken, of course."</p>
+
+<p>The animals had all been taken out of their box by now, but a few paws
+and ears were still adhering to the cotton-wool.</p>
+
+<p>"Frida is always very light on her toys," said Edith, proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not likely to put them in her mouth," said John, heartily. "That was
+the only thing that made me hesitate when I first saw them in Fifth
+Avenue. But they don't look quite so edible here."</p>
+
+<p>"Frida never puts anything in her mouth," Edith generalized, primly.
+"And she's given up biting her nails since Uncle John came home, haven't
+you, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's a good girl," John applauded; he did not believe in Frida's
+sudden conquest of autophagy, but he was anxious to encourage her in
+every way at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the gift-horses had shown off their paces better than he had
+expected, he decided. To be sure, Frida did not appear beside herself
+with joy, but at any rate she had not burst into tears&mdash;she had not
+thrust the present from her sight with loathing and begged to be taken
+home. And then Harold, who had been staring at the animals through his
+glasses, like the horrid little naturalist that he was, said:</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen some animals like them in Mr. Goodman's shop."</p>
+
+<p>John hoped a blizzard would blow to-morrow, that Harold would toboggan
+recklessly down the steepest slope<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> of the downs behind Ambles, and that
+he would hit an oak tree at the bottom and break his glasses. However,
+none of these dark thoughts obscured the remote brightness with which he
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Harold. Very likely. There is a considerable exportation of
+china animals from America nowadays. In fact I was very lucky to find
+any left in America."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go into Gallon to-morrow and look at Mr. Goodman's animals,"
+Harold suggested.</p>
+
+<p>John had never suspected that one day he should feel grateful to his
+brother-in-law; but when the dinner-bell went at half-past six instead
+of half-past seven solely on his account, John felt inclined to shake
+him by the hand. Nor would he have ever supposed that he should one day
+welcome the prospect of one of Laurence's long confidential talks. Yet
+when the ladies departed after dessert and Laurence took the chair next
+to himself as solemnly as if it were a fald-stool, he encouraged him
+with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"We might have our little talk now," and when Laurence cleared his
+throat John felt that the conversation had been opened as successfully
+as a local bazaar. Not merely did John smile encouragingly, but he
+actually went so far as to invite him to go ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence sighed, and poured himself out a second glass of port.</p>
+
+<p>"I find myself in a position of considerable difficulty," he announced,
+"and should like your advice."</p>
+
+<p>John's mind went rapidly to the balance in his passbook instead of to
+the treasure of worldly experience from which he might have drawn.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps before we begin our little talk," said Laurence, "it would be
+as well if I were to remind you of some of the outstanding events and
+influences in my life. You will then be in a better position to give me
+the advice and help&mdash;ah&mdash;the moral help, of which I stand in
+need&mdash;ah&mdash;in sore need."</p>
+
+<p>"He keeps calling it a little talk," John thought, "but by<a
+name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> Jove, it's lucky we did have dinner
+early. At this rate he won't get back to his vicarage before cock-crow."</p>
+
+<p>John was not deceived by his brother-in-law's minification of their
+talk, and he exchanged the trim Henry Clay he had already clipped for a
+very large Upman that would smoke for a good hour.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you light up before you begin?" he asked, pushing a box of
+commonplace Murillos toward his brother-in-law, whose habit of biting
+off the end of a cigar, of letting it go out, of continually knocking
+off the ash, of forgetting to remove the band till it was smoldering,
+and of playing miserable little tunes with it on the rim of a
+coffee-cup, in fact of doing everything with it except smoke it
+appreciatively, made it impossible for John, so far as Laurence was
+concerned, to be generous with his cigars.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'll find these not bad."</p>
+
+<p>This was true; the Murillos were not actually bad.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, I will avail myself of your offer. But to come back to what I
+was saying," Laurence went on, lighting his cigar with as little
+expression of anticipated pleasure as might be discovered in the
+countenance of a lodging-house servant lighting a fire. "I do not
+propose to occupy your time by an account of my spiritual struggles at
+the University."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to write a novel," said John, cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"I am now occupied with the writing of a play, but I shall come to that
+presently. Novels, however...."</p>
+
+<p>"I was only joking," said John. "It would take too long to explain the
+joke. Sorry I interrupted you. Cigar gone out? Don't take another. It
+doesn't really matter how often those Murillos go out."</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I?" Laurence asked in a bewildered voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd just left Oxford," John answered, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, I was at Oxford. Well, as I was saying, I shall not detain you
+with an account of my spiritual struggles <a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a>there.... I think I may
+almost without presumption refer to them as my spiritual progress ...
+let it suffice that I found myself on the vigil of my ordination after a
+year at Cuddesdon Theological College a convinced High Churchman. This
+must not be taken to mean that I belonged to the more advanced or what I
+should prefer to call the Italian party in the Church of England. I did
+not."</p>
+
+<p>Laurence here paused and looked at John earnestly; since John had not
+the remotest idea what the Italian party meant and was anxious to avoid
+being told, he said in accents that sought to convey relief at hearing
+his brother-in-law's personal contradiction of a charge that had for
+long been whispered against him:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you didn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I did not. I was not prepared to go one jot or one tittle beyond
+the Five Points."</p>
+
+<p>"Of the compass, you mean," said John, wisely. "Quite so."</p>
+
+<p>Then seeing that Laurence seemed rather indignant, he added quickly,
+"Did I say the compass? How idiotic! Of course, I meant the law."</p>
+
+<p>"The Five Points are the Eastward Position...."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the compass after all," John thought. "What a fool I was to
+hedge."</p>
+
+<p>"The Mixed Chalice, Lights, Wafer Bread, and Vestments, but <i>not</i> the
+ceremonial use of Incense."</p>
+
+<p>"And those are the Five Points?"</p>
+
+<p>Laurence inclined his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Which you were not prepared to go beyond, I think you said?" John
+gravely continued, flattering himself that he was re-established as an
+intelligent listener.</p>
+
+<p>"In adhering to these Five Points," Laurence proceeded, "I found that I
+was able to claim the support of a number of authoritative English
+divines. I need only mention Bishop Ken and Bishop Andrews for you to
+appreciate my position."</p>
+
+<p>"Eastward, I think you said," John put in; for his brother-in-law had
+paused again, and he was evidently intended to say something.<a
+name="page_047" id="page_047"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I perceive that you are not acquainted with the divergences of opinion
+that unhappily exist in our national Church."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to tell you the truth&mdash;and I know you'll excuse my frankness&mdash;I
+haven't been to church since I was a boy," John admitted. "But I know I
+used to dislike the litany very much, and of course I had my favorite
+hymns&mdash;we most of us have&mdash;and really I think that's as far as I got.
+However, I have to get up the subject of religion very shortly. My next
+play will deal with Joan of Arc, and, as you may imagine, religion plays
+an important part in such a theme&mdash;a very important part. In addition to
+the vision that Joan will have of St. Michael in the first act, one of
+my chief unsympathetic characters is a bishop. I hope I'm not hurting
+your feelings in telling you this, my dear fellow. Have another cigar,
+won't you? I think you've dipped the end of that one in the
+coffee-lees."</p>
+
+<p>Laurence assured John bitterly that he had no reason to be particularly
+fond of bishops. "In fact," he went on, "I'm having a very painful
+discussion with the Bishop of Silchester at this moment, but I shall
+come to that presently. What I am anxious, however, to impress upon you
+at this stage in our little talk is the fact that on the vigil of my
+ordination I had arrived at a definite theory of what I could and could
+not accept. Well, I was ordained deacon by the Bishop of St. Albans and
+licensed to a curacy in Plaistow&mdash;one of the poorest districts in the
+East End of London. Here I worked for three years, and it was here that
+fourteen years ago I first met Edith."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I seem to remember. Wasn't she working at a girls' club or
+something? I know I always thought that there must be a secondary
+attraction."</p>
+
+<p>"At that time my financial position was not such as to warrant my
+embarking upon matrimony. Moreover, I had in a moment of what I should
+now call boyish exaltation registered a vow of perpetual celibacy.
+Edith, however, with that devotion which neither then nor at any crisis
+since has<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> failed me expressed her willingness to consent to an
+indefinite engagement, and I remember with gratitude that it was just
+this consent of hers which was the means of widening the narrow&mdash;ah&mdash;the
+all too narrow path which at that time I was treading in religion. My
+vicar and I had a painful dispute upon some insignificant doctrinal
+point; I felt bound to resign my curacy, and take another under a man
+who could appreciate and allow for my speculative temperament. I became
+curate to St. Thomas's, Kensington, and had hopes of ultimately being
+preferred to a living. I realized in fact that the East End was a
+cul-de-sac for a young and&mdash;if I may so describe myself without being
+misunderstood&mdash;ambitious curate. For three years I remained at St.
+Thomas's and obtained a considerable reputation as a preacher. You may
+or may not remember that some Advent Addresses of mine were reprinted in
+one of the more tolerant religious weeklies and obtained what I do not
+hesitate to call the honor of being singled out for malicious abuse by
+the <i>Church Times</i>. Eleven years ago my dear father died and by leaving
+me an independence of £417 a year enabled me not merely to marry Edith,
+but very soon afterwards to accept the living of Newton Candover. I will
+not detain you with the history of my financial losses, which I hope I
+have always welcomed in the true spirit of resignation. Let it suffice
+that within a few years owing to my own misplaced charity and some bad
+advice from a relative of mine on the Stock Exchange my private income
+dwindled to £152, while at the same time the gross income of Newton
+Candover from £298 sank to the abominably low nett income of £102&mdash;a
+serious reflection, I think you will agree, upon the shocking financial
+system of our national Church. It may surprise you, my dear John, to
+learn that such blows from fate not only did not cast me down into a
+state of spiritual despair and intellectual atrophy, but that they
+actually had the effect of inciting me to still greater efforts."</p>
+
+<p>John had been fumbling with his check book when Laurence began to talk
+about his income; but the unexpected<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> turn of the narrative quietened
+him, and the Upman was going well.</p>
+
+<p>"You may or may not come across a little series of devotional
+meditations for the Man in the Street entitled Lamp-posts. They have a
+certain vogue, and I may tell you in confidence that under the pseudonym
+of The Lamplighter I wrote them. The actual financial return they
+brought me was slight. Barabbas, you know, was a publisher. Ha-ha! No,
+although I made nothing, or rather practically nothing out of them for
+my own purse, by leading me to browse among many modern works of
+theology and philosophy I began to realize that there was a great deal
+of reason for modern indifference and skepticism. In other words, I
+discovered that, in order to keep the man in the street a Christian,
+Christianity must adapt itself to his needs. Filled with a reverent
+enthusiasm and perhaps half-consciously led along such a path by your
+conspicuous example of success, I have sought to embody my theories in a
+play, the protagonist of which is the apostle Thomas, whom when you read
+the play you will easily recognize as the prototype of the man in the
+street. And this brings me to the reason for which I have asked you for
+this little talk. The fact of the matter is that in pursuing my studies
+of the apostle Thomas I have actually gone beyond his simple rugged
+agnosticism, and I now at forty-two years of age after eighteen years as
+a minister of religion find myself unable longer to accept in any
+literal sense of the term whatever the Virgin Birth."</p>
+
+<p>Laurence poured himself out a third glass of port and waited for John to
+recover from his stupefaction.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think I'm a very good person to talk to about these
+abstruse divine obstetrics," John protested. "I really haven't
+considered the question. I know of course to what you refer, but I think
+this is essentially an occasion for professional advice."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not ask for advice upon my beliefs," Laurence explained. "I
+recognize that nobody is able to do anything<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> for them except myself.
+What I want you to do is to let Edith, myself, and little Frida stay
+with you at Ambles&mdash;of course we should be paying guests and you could
+use our pony and trap and any of the vicarage furniture that you thought
+suitable&mdash;until it has been decided whether I am likely or not to have
+any success as a dramatist. I do not ask you to undertake the Quixotic
+task of trying to obtain a public representation of my play about the
+apostle Thomas. I know that Biblical subjects are forbidden by the Lord
+Chamberlain, surely a monstrous piece of flunkeyism. But I have many
+other ideas for plays, and I'm convinced that you will sympathize with
+my anxiety to be able to work undisturbed and, if I may say so, in close
+propinquity to another playwright who is already famous."</p>
+
+<p>"But why do you want to leave your own vicarage?" John gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, owing to what I can only call the poisonous behavior of
+Mrs. Paxton, my patron, to whom while still a curate at St. Thomas's,
+Kensington, I gave an abundance of spiritual consolation when she
+suffered the loss of her husband, owing as I say to her poisonous
+behavior following upon a trifling quarrel about some alterations I made
+in the fabric of <i>my</i> church without consulting her, I have been subject
+to ceaseless inquisition and persecution. There has been an outcry in
+the more bigoted religious press about my doctrine, and in short I have
+thought it best and most dignified to resign my living. I am therefore,
+to use a colloquialism,&mdash;ah&mdash;at a loose end."</p>
+
+<p>"And Edith?" John asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor wife still clings with feminine loyalty to those accretions to
+faith from which I have cut myself free. In most things she is at one
+with me, but I have steadily resisted the temptation to intrude upon the
+sanctity of her intimate beliefs. She sees my point of view. Of her
+sympathy I can only speak with gratitude. But she is still an
+old-fashioned believer. And indeed I am glad, for I should not like to
+think of her tossed upon the stormy seas of doubt<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> and exposed to
+the&mdash;ah&mdash;hurricanes of speculation that surge through my own brains."</p>
+
+<p>"And when do you want to move in to Ambles?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if it would be convenient, we should like to begin gradually
+to-morrow. I have informed the Bishop that I will&mdash;ah&mdash;be out in a
+fortnight."</p>
+
+<p>"But what about Hilda?" John asked, doubtfully. "She is really looking
+after Ambles for me, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"While we have been having our little talk in the dining-room Edith has
+been having her little talk with Hilda in the drawing-room, and I think
+I hear them coming now."</p>
+
+<p>John looked up quickly to see the effect of that other little talk, and
+determined to avoid for that night at least anything in the nature of
+little talks with anybody.</p>
+
+<p>"Laurence dear," said Edith mildly, "isn't it time we were going?"</p>
+
+<p>John knew that not Hilda herself could have phrased more aptly what she
+was feeling; he was sure that in her opinion it was indeed high time
+that Edith and Laurence were going.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence went over to the window and pulled aside the curtains to
+examine the moon.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear, I think we might have Primrose harnessed. Where is
+Frida?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is watching Harold arrange the animals that John gave her. They are
+playing at visiting the Natural History Museum."</p>
+
+<p>John was aware that he had not yet expressed his own willingness for the
+Armitage family to move into Ambles; he was equally aware that Hilda was
+trying to catch his eye with a questioning and indignant glance and that
+he had already referred the decision to her. At the same time he could
+not bring himself to exalt Hilda above Edith who was the younger and he
+was bound to admit the favorite of his two sisters; moreover, Hilda was
+the mother of Harold, and if Harold was to be considered tolerable in
+the same house as himself, he could not deny as much of his forbearance
+to Laurence.<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose you two girls have settled it between you?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hilda, who did not seem either surprised or elated at being called a
+girl, observed coldly that naturally it was for John to decide, but that
+if the vicarage family was going to occupy Ambles extra furniture would
+be required immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," said Laurence. "Didn't you make it clear to Hilda that as
+much of the vicarage furniture as is required can be sent here
+immediately? John and I had supposed that you were settling all these
+little domestic details during your little talk together."</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear," Edith said, "we settled nothing. Hilda felt, and of course I
+can't help agreeing with her, that it is really asking too much of John.
+She reminded me that he has come down here to work."</p>
+
+<p>The last icicle of opposition melted from John's heart; he could not
+bear to think of Edith's being lectured all the way home by her husband
+under the light of a setting moon. "I dare say we can manage," he said,
+"and really, you know Hilda, it will do the rooms good to be lived in. I
+noticed this afternoon a slight smell of damp coming from the
+unfurnished part of the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Apples, not damp," Hilda snapped. "I had the apples stored in one of
+the disused rooms."</p>
+
+<p>"All these problems will solve themselves," said Laurence, grandly. "And
+I'm sure that John cannot wish to attempt them to-night. Let us all
+remember that he may be tired. Come along, Edith. We have a long day
+before us to-morrow. Let us say good-night to Mama."</p>
+
+<p>Edith started: it was the first time in eleven years of married life
+that her husband had adopted the Touchwood style of addressing or
+referring to their mother, and it seemed to set a seal upon his more
+intimate association with her family in the future. If any doubts still
+lingered about the forthcoming immigration of the vicarage party to
+Ambles they were presently disposed of once and for all by Laurence.<a
+name="page_053" id="page_053"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What are you carrying?" he asked Frida, when they were gathered in the
+hall before starting.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle John's present," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not bother. Uncle John has invited us to stay here, and you do not
+want to expose your little animals to the risk of being chipped. No
+doubt Harold will look after them for you in the interim&mdash;the short
+interim. Come, Edith, the moon is not going to wait for us, you know. I
+have the reins. Gee-up, Primrose!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fond as I am of Edith," Hilda said, when the vicarage family was out of
+hearing. "Fond as I am of Edith," she repeated without any trace of
+affection in accent or expression, "I do think this invasion is an
+imposition upon your kindness. But clergymen are all alike; they all
+become dictatorial and obtuse; they're too fond of the sound of their
+own voices."</p>
+
+<p>"Laurence is perhaps a little heavy," John agreed, "a little suave and
+heavy like a cornflour shape, but we ought to do what we can for Edith."</p>
+
+<p>He tactfully offered Hilda a share in his own benevolence, in which she
+ensconced herself without hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose we shall have to make the best of it. Indeed the only
+thing that <i>really</i> worries me is what we are to do with the apples."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Harold will soon eat them up," said John; though he had not the
+slightest intention of being sarcastic, Hilda was so much annoyed by
+this that she abandoned all discussion of the vicarage and talked so
+long about Harold's inside and with such a passionate insistence upon
+what he required of sweet and sour to prevent him from dropping before
+her very eyes, that John was able fairly soon to plead that the hour was
+late and that he must go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>In his bedroom, which was sharp-scented with autumnal airs and made him
+disinclined for sleep, John became sentimental over Edith and began to
+weave out of her troubles a fine robe for his own good-nature in which
+his sentimentality was able to show itself off. He assured himself of
+Edith's<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> luck in having Ambles as a refuge in the difficult time through
+which she was passing and began to visualize her past life as nothing
+but a stormy prelude to a more tranquil present in which he should be
+her pilot. That Laurence would be included in his beneficence was
+certainly a flaw in the emerald of his bounty, a fly in the amber of his
+self-satisfaction; but, after all, so long as Edith was secure and happy
+such blemishes were hardly perceptible. He ought to think himself lucky
+that he was in a position to help his relations; the power of doing kind
+actions was surely the greatest privilege accorded to the successful
+man. And what right had Hilda to object? Good gracious, as if she
+herself were not dependent enough upon him! But there had always been
+visible in Hilda this wretched spirit of competition. It had been in
+just the same spirit that she had married Daniel Curtis; she had not
+been able to endure her younger sister's engagement to the tall handsome
+curate and had snatched at the middle-aged explorer in order to be
+married simultaneously and secure the best wedding presents for herself.
+But what had Daniel Curtis seen in Hilda? What had that myopic and
+taciturn man found in Hilda to gladden a short visit to England between
+his life on the Orinoco and his intended life at the back of the
+uncharted Amazons? And had his short experience of her made him so
+reckless that nothing but his spectacles were found by the rescuers?
+What mad impulse to perpetuate his name beyond the numerous beetles,
+flowers, monkeys, and butterflies to which it was already attached by
+many learned societies had led him to bequeath Harold to humanity? Was
+not his collection of humming birds enough?</p>
+
+<p>"I'm really very glad that Edith is coming to Ambles," John murmured.
+"Very glad indeed. It will serve Hilda right." He began to wonder if he
+actually disliked Hilda and to realize that he had never really forgiven
+her for refusing to be interested in his first published story. How well
+he remembered that occasion&mdash;twenty years ago almost to a day. It had
+been a dreary November in the time when<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> London really did have fogs,
+and when the sense of his father's approaching death had added to the
+general gloom. James had been acting as his father's partner for more
+than a year and had already nearly ruined the practice by his
+inexperience and want of affability. George and himself were both in the
+city offices&mdash;George in wool, himself in dog-biscuits. George did not
+seem to mind the soul-destroying existence and was full of financial
+ambition; but himself had loathed it and cared for nothing but
+literature. How he had pleaded with that dry old father, whose cynical
+tormented face on its pillow smeared with cigar ash even now vividly
+haunted his memory; but the fierce old man had refused him the least
+temporary help and had actually chuckled with delight amidst all his
+pain at the thought of how his family would have to work for a living
+when he should mercifully be dead. Was it surprising, when that morning
+he had found at the office a communication from a syndicate of
+provincial papers to inform him of his story's being accepted, that he
+should have arrived home in the fog, full of hope and enthusiasm? And
+then he had been met with whispering voices and the news of his father's
+death. Of course he had been shocked and grieved, even disappointed that
+it was too late to announce his success to the old man; but he had not
+been able to resist telling Hilda, a gawky, pale-faced girl of eighteen,
+that his story had been taken. He could recall her expression in that
+befogged gaslight even now, her expression of utter lack of interest,
+faintly colored with surprise at his own bad taste. Then he had gone
+upstairs to see his mother, who was bathed in tears, though she had been
+warned at least six months ago that her husband might die at any moment.
+He had ventured after a few formal words of sympathy to lighten the
+burden of her grief by taking the auspicious communication from his
+pocket, where it had been cracking nervously between his fingers, and
+reading it to her. He had been sure that she would be interested because
+she was a great reader of stories and must surely derive a grateful
+wonder from the contemplation of her own son as an author.<a
+name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> But she was evidently too much overcome
+by the insistency of grief and by the prospect of monetary difficulties
+in the near future to grasp what he was telling her; it had struck him
+that she had actually never realized that the stories she enjoyed were
+written by men and women any more than it might have struck another
+person that advertisements were all written by human beings with their
+own histories of love and hate.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't neglect your office work, Johnnie," was what she had said.
+"We shall want every halfpenny now that Papa is gone. James does his
+best, but the patients were more used to Papa."</p>
+
+<p>After these two rebuffs John had not felt inclined to break his good
+news to James, who would be sure to sneer, or to George, who would only
+laugh; so he had wandered upstairs to the old schoolroom, where he had
+found Edith sitting by a dull fire and dissuading little Hugh from
+throwing coals at the cat. As soon as he had told Edith what had
+happened she had made a hero of him, and ever afterwards treated him
+with admiration as well as affection. Had she not prophesied even that
+he would be another Dickens? That was something like sisterly love, and
+he had volunteered to read her the original rough copy, which,
+notwithstanding Hugh's whining interruptions, she had enjoyed as much as
+he had enjoyed it himself. Certainly Edith must come to Ambles; twenty
+years were not enough to obliterate the memory of that warm-hearted girl
+of fifteen and of her welcome praise.</p>
+
+<p>But Hugh? What malign spirit had brought Hugh to his mind at a moment
+when he was already just faintly disturbed by the prospect of his
+relations' increasing demands upon his attention? Hugh was only
+twenty-seven now and much too conspicuously for his own good the
+youngest of the family; like all children that arrive unexpectedly after
+a long interval, he had seemed the pledge of his parents' renewed youth
+on the very threshold of old age, and had been spoiled, even by his
+cross-grained old father, in consequence:<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> as for his mother, though it
+was out of her power to spoil him extravagantly with money, she gave him
+all that she did not spend on caps for herself. John determined to make
+inquiries about Hugh to-morrow. Not another penny should he have from
+him, not another farthing. If he could not live on what he earned in the
+office of Stephen Crutchley, who had accepted the young spendthrift out
+of regard for their lifelong friendship, if he could not become a
+decent, well-behaved architect, why, he could starve. Not another penny
+... and the rest of his relations agreed with John on this point, for if
+to him Hugh was a skeleton in the family cupboard, to them he was a
+skeleton at the family feast.</p>
+
+<p>John expelled from his mind all misgivings about Hugh, hoped it would be
+a fine day to-morrow so that he could really look round the garden and
+see what plants wanted ordering, tried to remember the name of an
+ornamental shrub recommended by Miss Hamilton, turned over on his side,
+and went to sleep.<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">E</span><b>ARLY</b> next morning John dreamed that he was buying calico in an immense
+shop and that in a dreamlike inconsequence the people there, customers
+and shopmen alike, were abruptly seized with a frenzy of destruction so
+violent that they began to tear up all the material upon which they
+could lay their hands; indeed, so loud was the noise of rent cloth that
+John woke up with the sound of it still in his ears. Gradually it was
+borne in upon a brain wrestling with actuality that the noise might have
+emanated from the direction of a small casement in his bedroom looking
+eastward into the garden across a steep penthouse which ran down to
+within two feet of the ground. Although the noise had stopped some time
+before John had precisely located its whereabouts and really before he
+was perfectly convinced that he was awake, he jumped out of bed and
+hurried across the chilly boards to ascertain if after all it had only
+been a relic of his dream. No active cause was visible; but the moss,
+the stonecrop and the tiles upon the penthouse had been clawed from top
+to bottom as if by some mighty tropical cat, and John for a brief
+instant savored that elated perplexity which generally occurs to heroes
+in the opening paragraphs of a sensational novel.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a very old house," he thought, hopefully, and began to grade his
+reason to a condition of sycophantic credulity. "And, of course,
+anything like a ghost at seven o'clock in the morning is rare&mdash;very
+rare. The evidence would be unassailable...."</p>
+
+<p>After toadying to the marvelous for a while, he sought a natural
+explanation of the phenomenon and honestly tried not to want it to prove
+inexplicable. The noise began again overhead; a fleeting object darkened
+the casement like the<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> swift passage of a bird and struck the penthouse
+below; there was a slow grinding shriek, a clatter of broken tiles and
+leaden piping; a small figure stuck all over with feathers emerged from
+the herbaceous border and smiled up at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens, my boy, what in creation are you trying to do?" John
+shouted, sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm learning to toboggan, Uncle John."</p>
+
+<p>"But didn't I explain to you that tobogganing can only be carried out
+after a heavy snowfall?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it hasn't snowed yet," Harold pointed out in an offended voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me. If it snows for a month without stopping, you're never to
+toboggan down a roof. What's the good of having all those jolly hills at
+the back of the house if you don't use them?"</p>
+
+<p>John spoke as if he had brought back the hills from America at the same
+time as he was supposed to have brought back the toboggan.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a river, too," Harold observed.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't toboggan down a river&mdash;unless, of course, it gets frozen
+over."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to toboggan down the river, but if I had a Canadian canoe
+for the river I could wait for the snow quite easily."</p>
+
+<p>John, after a brief vision of a canoe being towed across the Atlantic by
+the <i>Murmania</i>, felt that he was being subjected to the lawless
+exactions of a brigand, but could think of nothing more novel in the way
+of defiance than:</p>
+
+<p>"Go away now and be a good boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I ..." Harold began.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you can't. If those chickens' feathers...."</p>
+
+<p>"They're pigeons' feathers," his nephew corrected him.</p>
+
+<p>"If those feathers stuck in your hair are intended to convey an
+impression that you're a Red Indian chief, go and sit in your wigwam
+till breakfast and smoke the pipe of peace."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother said I wasn't to smoke till I was twenty-one."</p>
+
+<p>"Not literally, you young ass. Why, good heavens, in my<a
+name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> young days such an allusion to Mayne Reid
+would have been eagerly taken up by any boy."</p>
+
+<p>Something was going wrong with this conversation, John felt, and he
+added, lamely:</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, go away now."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Uncle John, I...."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't Uncle John me. I don't feel like an uncle this morning. Suppose
+I'd been shaving when you started that fool's game. I might have cut my
+head off."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Uncle John, I've left my spectacles on one of the chimneys. Mother
+said that whenever I was playing a rough game I was to take off my
+spectacles first."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to do without your spectacles, that's all. The gardener
+will get them for you after breakfast. Anyway, a Red Indian chief in
+spectacles is unnatural."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not a Red Indian any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't chop and change like that. You'll have to be a Red Indian now
+till after breakfast. Don't argue any more, because I'm standing here in
+bare feet. Go and do some weeding in the garden. You've pulled up all
+the plants on the roof."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't read without my spectacles."</p>
+
+<p>"Weed, not read!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't weed, either. I can't do anything without my spectacles."</p>
+
+<p>"Then go away and do nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Harold shuffled off disconsolately, and John rang for his shaving water.</p>
+
+<p>At breakfast Hilda asked anxiously after her son's whereabouts; and
+John, the last vestige of whose irritation had vanished in the smell of
+fried bacon and eggs, related the story of the morning's escapade as a
+good joke.</p>
+
+<p>"But he can't see anything without his spectacles," Hilda exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he'll find his way to the breakfast table all right," John
+prophesied.</p>
+
+<p>"These bachelors," murmured Hilda, turning to her<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> mother with a wry
+little laugh. "Hark! isn't that Harold calling?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no, it's the pigeons," John laughed. "They're probably fretting
+for their feathers."</p>
+
+<p>"It's to be hoped," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that he's not fallen into
+the well by leaving off his spectacles like this. I never could abide
+wells. And I hate to think of people leaving things off suddenly. It's
+always a mistake. I remember little Hughie once left off his woollen
+vests in May and caught a most terrible cold that wouldn't go away&mdash;it
+simply wouldn't go."</p>
+
+<p>"How is Hugh, by the way?" John asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The same as ever," Hilda put in with cold disapproval. She was able to
+forget Harold's myopic wanderings in the pleasure of crabbing her
+youngest brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you're all very hard on poor Hughie," sighed the old lady. "But
+he's always been very fond of his poor mother."</p>
+
+<p>"He's very fond of what he can get out of you," Hilda sneered.</p>
+
+<p>"And it's little enough he can, poor boy. Goodness knows I've little
+enough to spare for him. I wish you could have seen your way to do
+something for Hughie, Johnnie," the old lady went on.</p>
+
+<p>"John has done quite enough for him," Hilda snapped, which was perfectly
+true.</p>
+
+<p>"He's had to leave his rooms in Earl's Court," Mrs. Touchwood lamented.</p>
+
+<p>"What for? Getting drunk, I suppose?" John inquired, sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it was the drains. He's staying with his friend, Aubrey Fenton,
+whom I cannot pretend to like. He seems to me a sad scapegrace. Poor
+little Hughie. I wish everything wasn't against him. It's to be hoped he
+won't go and get married, poor boy, for I'm sure his wife wouldn't
+understand him."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely he's not thinking of getting married," exclaimed John in
+dismay.<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Why no, of course not," said the old lady. "How you do take anybody up,
+Johnnie. I said it's to be hoped he won't get married."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Emily came in to announce that Master Harold was up on
+the roof shouting for dear life. "Such a turn as it give Cook and I,
+mum," she said, "to hear that garshly voice coming down the chimney.
+Cook was nearly took with the convolsions, and if it had of been after
+dark, mum, she says she's shaw she doesn't know what she wouldn't of
+done, she wouldn't, she's that frightened of howls. That's the one thing
+she can't ever be really comfortable for in the country, she says, the
+howls and the hearwigs."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm under the impression," John declared, solemnly, "that I forbade
+Harold to go near the roof. If he has disobeyed my express commands he
+must suffer for it by the loss of his breakfast. He has chosen to go
+back on the roof: on the roof he shall stay."</p>
+
+<p>"But his breakfast?" Hilda almost whispered. She was so much awed by her
+brother's unusually pompous phraseology that he began to be impressed by
+it himself and to feel the first faint intimations of the pleasures of
+tyranny: he began to visualize himself as the unbending ruler of all his
+relations.</p>
+
+<p>"His breakfast can be sent up to him, and I hope it will attract every
+wasp in the neighborhood."</p>
+
+<p>This to John seemed the most savage aspiration he could have uttered:
+autumnal wasps disturbed him as much as dragons used to disturb
+princesses.</p>
+
+<p>"Harold likes wasps," said Hilda. "He observes their habits."</p>
+
+<p>This revelation of his nephew's tastes took away John's last belief in
+his humanity, and the only retort he could think of was a suggestion
+that he should go at once to a boarding-school.</p>
+
+<p>"Likes wasps?" he repeated. "The child must be mad. You'll tell me next
+that he likes black beetles."</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a>"He trained a black beetle once to eat something. I forget what it was
+now. But the poor boy was so happy about his little triumph. You ought
+to remember, John, that he takes after his father."</p>
+
+<p>John made up his mind at this moment that Daniel Curtis must have
+married Hilda in a spirit of the purest empirical science.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's not to go training insects in my house," John said, firmly.
+"And if I see any insects anywhere about Ambles that show the slightest
+sign of having been encouraged to suppose themselves on an equal with
+mankind I shall tread on them."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid the crossing must have upset you, Johnnie," said old Mrs.
+Touchwood, sympathetically. "You seem quite out of sorts this morning.
+And I don't like the idea of poor little Harold's balancing himself all
+alone on a chimney. It was never any pleasure to me to watch tight-rope
+dancers or acrobats. Indeed, except for the clowns, I never could abide
+circuses."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda quickly took up the appeal and begged John to let the gardener
+rescue her son.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well," he assented. "But, once for all, it must be clearly
+understood that I've come down to Ambles to write a new play and that
+some arrangement must be concluded by which I have my mornings
+completely undisturbed."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Hilda, brightening at the prospect of Harold's
+release.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," John echoed, sardonically, within himself. He did not feel
+that the sight of Harold's ravening after his breakfast would induce in
+him the right mood for Joan of Arc. So he left the breakfast table and
+went upstairs to his library. Here he found that some "illiterate oaf,"
+as he characterized the person responsible, had put in upside down upon
+the shelves the standard works he had hastily amassed. Instead of
+setting his ideas in order, he had to set his books in order: and after
+a hot and dusty morning with the rows of unreadable classics he came
+downstairs to find that the<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> vicarage party had arrived just in time for
+lunch, bringing with them as the advance guard of their occupation a
+large clothes basket filled with what Laurence described as "necessary
+odds and ends that might be overlooked later."</p>
+
+<p>"It's my theory of moving," he added. "The small things first."</p>
+
+<p>He enunciated this theory so reverently that his action acquired from
+his tone a momentous gravity like the captain of a ship's when he orders
+the women and children into the boats first.</p>
+
+<p>The moving of the vicarage party lasted over a fortnight, during which
+John found it impossible to settle down to Joan of Arc. No sooner would
+he have worked himself up to a suitable frame of mind in which he might
+express dramatically and poetically the maid's reception of her heavenly
+visitants than a very hot man wearing a green baize apron would appear
+in the doorway of the library and announce that a chest of drawers had
+hopelessly involved some vital knot in the domestic communications. It
+was no good for John to ask Hilda to do anything: his sister had taken
+up the attitude that it was all John's fault, that she had done her best
+to preserve his peace, that her advice had been ignored, and that for
+the rest of her life she intended to efface herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a mere cipher," she kept repeating.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion when a bureau of sham ebony that looked like a blind
+man's dream of Cologne Cathedral had managed to wedge all its pinnacles
+into the lintel of the front door, John observed to Laurence he had
+understood that only such furniture from the vicarage as was required to
+supplement the Ambles furniture would be brought there.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought this bureau would appeal to you," Laurence replied. "It
+seemed to me in keeping with much of your work."</p>
+
+<p>John looked up sharply to see if he was being chaffed; but his
+brother-in-law's expression was earnest, and the intended<a
+name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> compliment struck more hardly at John's
+self-confidence than the most malicious review.</p>
+
+<p>"Does my work really seem like gimcrack gothic?" he asked himself.</p>
+
+<p>In a fit of exasperation he threw himself so vigorously into the
+business of forcing the bureau into the house that when it was inside it
+looked like a ruined abbey on the afternoon of a Bank Holiday.</p>
+
+<p>"It had better be taken up into the garrets for the present," he said,
+grimly. "It can be mended later on."</p>
+
+<p>The comparison of his work to that bureau haunted John at his own
+writing-table for the rest of the morning; thinking of the Bishop of
+Silchester's objection to Laurence, he found it hard to make the various
+bishops in his play as unsympathetic as they ought to be for dramatic
+contrast; then he remembered that after all it had been due to the
+Bishop of Silchester's strong action that Laurence had come to Ambles:
+the stream of insulting epithets for bishops flowed as strongly as ever,
+and he worked in a justifiable pun upon the name of Pierre Cauchon, his
+chief episcopal villain.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder, if I were allowed to, whether I would condemn Laurence to be
+burnt alive. Wasn't there a Saint Laurence who was grilled? I really
+believe I would almost grill him, I really do. There's something
+exceptionally irritating to me about that man's whole personality. And
+I'm not at all sure I approve of a clergyman's giving up his beliefs.
+One might get a line out of that, by the way&mdash;something about a
+weathercock and a church steeple. I don't think a clergyman ought to
+surrender so easily. It's his business not to be influenced by modern
+thought. This passion for realism is everywhere.... Thank goodness, I've
+been through it and got over it and put it behind me forever. It's a
+most unprofitable creed. What was my circulation as a realist? I once
+reached four thousand. What's four thousand? Why, it isn't half the
+population of Galton. And now Laurence Armitage takes up with it after
+being a<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> vicar for ten years. Idiot! Religion isn't realistic: it never
+was realistic. Religion is the entertainment of man's spirituality just
+as the romantic drama is the entertainment of his mentality. I don't
+read Anatole France for my representation of Joan of Arc. What business
+has Laurence to muddle his head with&mdash;what's his name&mdash;Colonel
+Ingoldsby&mdash;Ingersoll&mdash;when he ought to be thinking about his Harvest
+Festival? And then he has the effrontery to compare my work with that
+bureau! If that's all his religion meant to him&mdash;that ridiculous piece
+of gimcrack gothic, no wonder it wouldn't hold together. Why, the green
+fumed oak of a sentimental rationalism would be better than that.
+Confound Laurence! I knew this would happen when he came. He's taken my
+mind completely off my own work. I can't write a word this morning."</p>
+
+<p>John rushed away from his manuscript and weeded furiously down a
+secluded border until the gardener told him he had weeded away the
+autumn-sown sweet-peas that were coming along nicely and standing the
+early frosts a treat.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not even allowed to weed my own garden now," John thought, burking
+the point at issue; and his disillusionment became so profound that he
+actually invited Harold to go for a walk with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I bring my blow-pipe?" asked the young naturalist, gleefully.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want to load yourself up with soap and water," said John.
+"Keep that till you come in."</p>
+
+<p>"My South American blow-pipe, Uncle John. It's a real one which father
+sent home. It belonged to a little Indian boy, but the darts aren't
+poisoned, father told mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you be too sure," John advised him. "Explorers will say
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, can I bring it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, we'll take a non-murderous walk for a change. I'm tired of being
+shunned by the common objects of the countryside."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, shall I bring <i>Ants</i>, <i>Bees</i>, and <i>Wasps</i>?"<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not. We don't want to go trailing about Hampshire like two
+jam sandwiches."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean the book."</p>
+
+<p>"No, if you want to carry something, you can carry my cleek and six golf
+balls."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, and then I'll practice bringing eggs down in my mouth from
+very high trees."</p>
+
+<p>John liked this form of exercise, because at the trifling cost of making
+one ball intolerably sticky it kept Harold from asking questions; for
+about two hundred yards he enjoyed this walk more than any he had ever
+taken with his nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"But birds' nesting time won't come till the spring," Harold sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said John, regretfully: there were many lofty trees round Ambles,
+and with his mouth full of eggs anything might happen to Harold.</p>
+
+<p>The transference of the vicarage family was at last complete, and John
+was penitently astonished to find that Laurence really did intend to pay
+for their board; in fact, the ex-vicar presented him with a check for
+two months on account calculated at a guinea a week each. John was so
+much moved by this event&mdash;the manner in which Laurence offered the check
+gave it the character of a testimonial and thereby added to John's sense
+of obligation&mdash;that he was even embarrassed by the notion of accepting
+it. At the same time a faint echo of his own realistic beginnings
+tinkled in his ear a warning not to refuse it, both for his own sake and
+for the sake of his brother-in-law. He therefore escaped from the
+imputation of avarice by suggesting that the check should be handed to
+Hilda, who, as housekeeper, would know how to employ it best. John
+secretly hoped that Hilda, through being able to extract what he thought
+of as "a little pin money for herself" out of it, might discard the
+martyr's halo that was at present pinching her brains tightly enough, if
+one might judge by her constricted expression.</p>
+
+<p>"There will undoubtedly be a small profit," he told himself,<a
+name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> "for if Laurence has a rather monkish
+appetite, Edith and Frida eat very little."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Hilda did manage to make a small profit; at any rate, she seemed
+reconciled to the presence of the Armitages and gave up declaring that
+she was a cipher. The fatigue of moving in had made Laurence's company,
+while he was suffering from the reaction, almost bearable. Frida, apart
+from a habit she had of whispering at great length in her mother's ear,
+was a nice uninquisitive child, and Edith, when she was not whispering
+back to Frida or echoing Laurence, was still able to rouse in her
+brother's heart feelings of warm affection. Old Mrs. Touchwood had
+acquired from some caller a new game of Patience, which kept her gently
+simmering in the lamplight every evening; Harold had discovered among
+the odds and ends of salvage from the move a sixpenny encyclopedia that,
+though it made him unpleasantly informative, at any rate kept him from
+being interrogative, which John found, on the whole, a slight advantage.
+Janet Bond had written again most seriously about Joan of Arc, and the
+film company had given excellent terms for <i>The Fall of Babylon</i>.
+Really, except for two huffy letters from his sisters-in-law in London,
+John was able to contemplate with much less misgivings a prospect of
+spending all the winter at Ambles. Beside, he had secured his dog-cart
+with a dashing chestnut mare, and was negotiating for the twenty-acre
+field.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, everything was very jolly, and he might even aim at finishing the
+first draft of the second act before Christmas. It would be jolly to do
+that and jolly to invite James and Beatrice and George and Eleanor, but
+not Hugh&mdash;no, in no circumstances should Hugh be included in the
+yuletide armistice&mdash;down to Ambles for an uproarious jolly week. Then
+January should be devoted to the first draft of the third act&mdash;really it
+should be possible to write to Janet Bond presently and assure her of a
+production next autumn. John was feeling particularly optimistic. For
+three days in succession the feet of the first act had been moving as
+rhythmically and regularly toward the curtain as the feet of
+guardsmen<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> move along the Buckingham Palace Road. It was a fine frosty
+morning, and even so early in the day John was tapping his second egg to
+the metrical apostrophes of Uncle Laxart's speech offering to take his
+niece, Joan, to interview Robert de Baudricourt. Suddenly he noticed
+that Laurence had not yet put in his appearance. This was strange
+behavior for one who still preserved from the habit of many early
+services an excited punctuality for his breakfast, and lightly he asked
+Edith what had become of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"He hopes to begin working again at his play this morning. Seeing you
+working so hard makes him feel lazy." Edith laughed faintly and
+fearfully, as if she would deprecate her own profanity in referring to
+so gross a quality as laziness in connection with Laurence, and perhaps
+for the first time in her life she proclaimed that her opinion was only
+an echo of Laurence's own by adding, "<i>he</i> says that it makes him feel
+lazy. So he's going to begin at once."</p>
+
+<p>John, whose mind kept reverting iambically and trochaically to the
+curtain of his first act, merely replied, without any trace of awe, that
+he was glad Laurence felt in the vein.</p>
+
+<p>"But he hasn't decided yet," Edith continued, "which room he's going to
+work in."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time a puff of apprehension twitched the little straw that
+might be going to break the camel's back.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't offer him the library," John said quickly. "<i>And you
+shall see the King of France to-day</i>," he went on composing in his head.
+"No&mdash;<i>And you shall see King Charles</i>&mdash;no&mdash;<i>and you shall see the King
+of France at once&mdash;no&mdash;and you shall see the King of France forthwith.
+Sensation among the villagers standing round. Forthwith is weak at the
+end of a line. I swear that you shall see the King of France.
+Sensation.</i> Yes, that's it."</p>
+
+<p>The top of John's egg was by this time so completely cracked by his
+metronomic spoon that a good deal of the shell was driven down into the
+egg: it did not matter, however, because appetite and inspiration were
+both disposed of by the arrival of Laurence.<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could have managed to help me with some of these things," he
+was muttering reproachfully to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The things consisted of six or seven books, a quantity of foolscap, an
+inkpot dangerously brimming, a paper-knife made of olive wood from
+Gethsemane, several pens and pencils, and a roll of blotting paper as
+white as the snow upon the summit of Mont Blanc, and so fat that John
+thought at first it was a tablecloth and wondered what his
+brother-in-law meant to do with it. He was even chilled by a brief and
+horrible suspicion that he was going to hold a communion service. Edith
+rose hastily from the table to help her husband unload himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry, dear, why didn't you ring?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, how could I ring without letting my materials drop?" Laurence
+asked, patiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Or call?"</p>
+
+<p>"My chin was too much occupied for calling. But it doesn't matter,
+Edith. As you see, I've managed to bring everything down quite safely."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry," Edith went on. "I'd no idea...."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you that I was going to begin work this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, how stupid of me ... I'm so sorry...."</p>
+
+<p>"Going to work, are you?" interrupted John, who was anxious to stop
+Edith's conjugal amenity. "That's capital."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm really only waiting now to choose my room."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry I can't offer you mine ... but I must be alone. I find...."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," Laurence agreed with a nod of sympathetic knowingness. "Of
+course, my dear fellow, I shouldn't dream of trespassing. I, though
+indeed I've no right to compare myself with you, also like to work
+alone. In fact I consider that a secure solitude provides the ideal
+setting for dramatic composition. I have a habit&mdash;perhaps it comes from
+preparing my sermons with my eye always upon the spoken rather than upon
+the written word&mdash;I have a habit of declaiming many of my pages aloud to
+myself. That necessitates my being alone&mdash;absolutely alone."<a
+name="page_071" id="page_071"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you see," Edith said, "if you're alone you're not disturbed."</p>
+
+<p>John who was still sensitive to Edith's truisms tried to cover her last
+by incorporating Hilda in the conversation with a "What room do you
+advise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not the dining-room? I'll tell Emily to clear away the breakfast
+things at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Clear away?" Laurence repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"And they won't be laying for lunch till a quarter-to-one."</p>
+
+<p>"Laying for lunch?" Laurence gasped. "My dear Hilda! I don't wish to
+attribute to my&mdash;ah&mdash;work an importance which perhaps as a hitherto
+unacted playwright I have no right to attribute, but I think John at any
+rate will appreciate my objection to working with&mdash;ah&mdash;the bread-knife
+suspended over my head like the proverbial sword of Damocles. No, I'm
+afraid I must rule out the dining-room as a practicable environment."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mama likes to sit in the drawing-room," said Hilda.</p>
+
+<p>"In any case," Laurence said, indulgently, "I shouldn't feel at ease in
+the drawing-room. So I shall not disturb Mama. I had thought of
+suggesting that the children should be given another room in which to
+play, but to tell the truth I'm tired of moving furniture about. The
+fact is I miss my vicarage study: it was my own."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, nobody at the vicarage ever thought of interrupting him, you see,"
+Edith explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said John, roused by the necessity of getting Joan started upon
+her journey to interview Robert de Baudricourt, "there are several empty
+bedrooms upstairs. One of them could be transformed into a study for
+Laurence."</p>
+
+<p>"That means more arranging of furniture," Laurence objected.</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's the garret," said John. "You'd find your bureau up there."</p>
+
+<p>Laurence smiled in order to show how well he understood that the
+suggestion was only playfulness on John's side and how little he minded
+the good-natured joke.<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a></p>
+
+<p>"There is one room which might be made&mdash;ah&mdash;conducive to good work,
+though at present it is occupied by a quantity of apples; they, however,
+could easily be moved."</p>
+
+<p>"But I moved them in there from what is now your room," Hilda protested.</p>
+
+<p>"It is good for apples to be frequently moved," said Laurence, kindly.
+"In fact, the oftener they are moved, the better. And this holds good
+equally for pippins, codlins, and russets. On the other hand it means I
+shall lose half a day's work, because even if I <i>could</i> make a temporary
+beginning anywhere else, I should have to superintend the arrangement of
+the furniture."</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought you didn't want to have any more furniture arranging to
+do," Hilda contested, acrimoniously. "There are two quite empty rooms at
+the other end of the passage."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I like the room in which the apples are. John will appreciate
+my desire for a sympathetic milieu."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, we will move the apples," John promised, hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>Better that the apples should roll from room to room eternally than that
+he should be driven into offering Laurence a corner of the library, for
+he suspected that notwithstanding the disclaimer this was his
+brother-in-law's real objective.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't say anything about apples in the encyclopedia," muttered
+Harold in an aggrieved voice. <i>"Apoplexy treatment of, Apothecaries
+measure, Appetite loss of. This may be due to general debility,
+irregularity in meals, overwork, want of exercise, constipation, and
+many other...."</i></p>
+
+<p>"Goodness gracious me, whatever has the boy got hold of?" exclaimed his
+grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>"Grandmama, if you mix Lanoline with an equal quantity of Sulphur you
+can cure Itch," Harold went on with his spectacles glued to the page.
+"And, oh, Grandmama, you know you told me not to make a noise the other
+day because your heart was weak. Well, you're suffering from
+flatulence.<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> The encyclopedia says that many people who are suffering
+from flatulence think they have heart disease."</p>
+
+<p>"Will no one stop the child?" Grandmama pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence snatched away the book from his nephew and put it in his
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"That book is mine, I believe, Harold," he said, firmly, and not even
+Hilda dared protest, so majestic was Laurence and so much fluttered was
+poor Grandmama.</p>
+
+<p>John seized the opportunity to make his escape; but when he was at last
+seated before his table the feet of the first act limped pitiably;
+Laurence had trodden with all his might upon their toes; his work that
+morning was chiropody, not composition, and bungling chiropody at that.
+After lunch Laurence was solemnly inducted to his new study, and he may
+have been conscious of an ecclesiastical parallel in the manner of his
+taking possession, for he made a grave joke about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hope that I shall not be driven out of my new living by being
+too&mdash;ah&mdash;broad."</p>
+
+<p>His wife did not realize that he was being droll and had drawn down her
+lips to an expression of pained sympathy, when she saw the others all
+laughing and Laurence smiling his acknowledgments; her desperate effort
+to change the contours of her face before Laurence noticed her failure
+to respond sensibly gave the impression that she had nearly swallowed a
+loose tooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'd like me to bring up your tea, dear, so that you won't be
+disturbed?" she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, tea ..." murmured Laurence. "Let me see. It's now a quarter-past
+two. Tea is at half-past four. I will come down for half an hour. That
+will give me a clear two hours before dinner. If I allow a quarter of an
+hour for arranging my table, that will give me four hours in all.
+Perhaps considering my strenuous morning four hours will be enough for
+the first day. I don't like the notion of working after dinner," he
+added to John.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a>"No?" queried John, doubtfully. He had hoped that his brother-in-law
+would feel inspired by the port: it was easy enough to avoid him in the
+afternoon, especially since on the first occasion that he had been taken
+for a drive in the new dogcart he had evidently been imbued with a
+detestation of driving that would probably last for the remainder of his
+life; in fact he was talking already of wanting to sell Primrose and the
+vicarage chaise.</p>
+
+<p>"Though of course on some evenings I may not be able to help it," added
+Laurence. "I may <i>have</i> to work."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you may," John assented, encouragingly. "I dare say there'll
+be evenings when the mere idea of waiting even for coffee will make you
+fidgety. You mustn't lose the mood, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course, I appreciate that."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing so easily lost as the creative gift, Balzac said."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he?" Laurence murmured, anxiously. "But I promise you I shall let
+nothing interfere with me <i>if</i>&mdash;" the conjunction fizzed from his mouth
+like soda from a syphon, "<i>if</i> I'm in the&mdash;ah&mdash;mood. The
+mood&mdash;yes&mdash;ah&mdash;precisely." His brow began to lower; the mood was upon
+him; and everybody stole quietly from the room. They had scarcely
+reached the head of the stairs when the door opened again and Laurence
+called after Edith: "I should prefer that whoever brings me news of tea
+merely knocks without coming in. I shall assume that a knock upon my
+door means tea. But I don't wish anybody to come in."</p>
+
+<p>Laurence disappeared. He seemed under the influence of a strong mental
+aphrodisiac and was evidently guaranteeing himself against being
+discovered in an embarrassing situation with his Muse.</p>
+
+<p>"This is very good for me," thought John. "It has taught me how easily a
+man may make a confounded ass of himself without anybody's raising a
+finger to warn him. I hope I didn't give that sort of impression to
+those two women on board. I shall have to watch myself very carefully in
+future."<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a></p>
+
+<p>At this moment Emily announced that Lawyer Deacle was waiting to see Mr.
+Touchwood, which meant that the twenty-acre field was at last his. The
+legal formalities were complete; that very afternoon John had the
+pleasure of watching the fierce little Kerry cows munch the last grass
+they would ever munch in his field. But it was nearly dusk when they
+were driven home, and John lost five balls in celebrating his triumph
+with a brassy.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence appeared at tea in a velveteen coat, which probably provided
+the topic for the longest whisper that even Frida had ever been known to
+utter.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Frida," said her father. "You won't disturb us by saying
+aloud what you want to say." He had leaned over majestically to
+emphasize his rebuke and in doing so brushed with his sleeve Grandmama's
+wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness, it's a cat," the old lady cried, with a shudder. "I shall
+have to go away from here, Johnnie, if you have a cat in the house. I'd
+rather have mice all over me than one of those horrid cats. Ugh! the
+nasty thing!"</p>
+
+<p>She was not at all convinced of her mistake even when persuaded to
+stroke her son-in-law's coat.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it's been properly shooed out. Harold, please look well under
+all the chairs, there's a good boy."</p>
+
+<p>During the next few days John felt that he was being in some indefinable
+way ousted by Laurence from the spiritual mastery of his own house. John
+was averse from according to his brother-in-law a greater forcefulness
+of character than he could ascribe to himself; if he had to admit that
+he really was being supplanted somehow, he preferred to search for the
+explanation in the years of theocratic prestige that gave a background
+to the all-pervasiveness of that sacerdotal personality. Yet ultimately
+the impression of his own relegation to a secondary place remained
+elusive and incommunicable. He could not for instance grumble that the
+times of the meals were being altered nor complain that in the smallest
+detail the domestic mechanism was being geared up or down to suit
+Laurence; the whole sensation was essentially<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> of a spiritual eviction,
+and the nearest he could get to formulating his resentment (though
+perhaps resentment was too definite a word for this vague uneasiness)
+was his own gradually growing opinion that of all those at present under
+the Ambles roof Laurence was the most important. This loss of importance
+was bad for John's work, upon which it soon began to exert a
+discouraging influence, because he became doubtful of his own position,
+hypercritical of his talent, and timid about his social ability. He
+began to meditate the long line of failures to dramatize the immortal
+tale of Joan of Arc immortally, to see himself dangling at the end of
+this long line of ineptitudes and to ask himself whether bearing in mind
+the vastness of even our own solar system it was really worth while
+writing at all. It could not be due to anything or anybody but Laurence,
+this sense of his own futility; not even when a few years ago he had
+reached the conclusion that as a realistic novelist he was a failure had
+he been so profoundly conscious of his own insignificance in time and
+space.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to go away if I'm ever to get on with this play," he told
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Yet still so indefinite was his sense of subordinacy at Ambles that he
+accused his liver (an honest one that did not deserve the reproach) and
+bent over his table again with all the determination he could muster.
+The concrete fact was still missing; his capacity for self-deception was
+still robust enough to persuade him that it was all a passing fancy, and
+he might have gone plodding on at Ambles for the rest of the winter if
+one morning about a week after Laurence had begun to write, the door of
+his own library had not opened to the usurper, manuscript in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like to interrupt you, my dear fellow.... I know you have your
+own work to consider ... but I'm anxious for your opinion&mdash;in fact I
+should like to read you my first act."</p>
+
+<p>It was useless to resist: if it were not now, it would be later.<a
+name="page_077" id="page_077"></a></p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure," said John. Then he made one effort. "Though I prefer
+reading to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"That would involve waiting for the typewriter. Yes, my screed
+is&mdash;ah&mdash;difficult to make out. And I've indulged in a good many erasures
+and insertions. No, I think you'd better let me read it to you."</p>
+
+<p>John indicated a chair and looked out of the window longingly at the
+birds, as patients in the hands of a dentist regard longingly the
+sparrows in the dingy evergreens of the dentist's back garden.</p>
+
+<p>"When we had our little talk the other day," Laurence began, "you will
+remember that I spoke of a drama I had already written, of which the
+disciple Thomas was the protagonist. This drama notwithstanding the
+probably obstructive attitude of the Lord Chamberlain I have rewritten,
+or rather I have rewritten the first act. I call the
+play&mdash;ah&mdash;<i>Thomas</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds a little trivial for such a serious subject, don't you
+think?" John suggested. "I mean, Thomas has come to be associated in so
+many people's minds with footmen. Wouldn't <i>Saint Thomas</i> be better, and
+really rather more respectful? Many people still have a great feeling of
+reverence for apostles."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, <i>Thomas</i> it is: <i>Thomas</i> it must remain. You have forgotten
+perhaps that I told you he was the prototype of the man in the street.
+It is the simplicity, the unpretentiousness of the title that for me
+gives it a value. Well, to resume. <i>Thomas. A play in four acts. By
+Laurence Armytage.</i> By the way, I'm going to spell my name with a y in
+future. Poetic license. Ha-ha! I shall not advertise the change in the
+<i>Times</i>. But I think it looks more literary with a y. <i>Act the First.
+Scene the First. The shore of the Sea of Galilee.</i> I say nothing else. I
+don't attempt to describe it. That is what I have learnt from
+Shakespeare. This modern passion for description can only injure the
+greatness of the theme. <i>Enter from the left the Virgin Mary.</i>"<a
+name="page_078" id="page_078"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Enter who?" asked John in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"The Virgin Mary. The mother ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know who she is, but ... well, I'm not a religious man,
+Laurence, in fact I've not been to church since I was a boy ... but ...
+no, no, you can't do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will offend people."</p>
+
+<p>"I want to offend people," Laurence intoned. "If thy eye offend thee,
+pluck it out."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you did," said John. "You put in a <i>y</i> instead."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not jesting, my dear fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor am I," said John. "What I want you to understand is that you can't
+bring the Virgin Mary on the stage. Why, I'm even doubtful about Joan of
+Arc's vision of the Archangel Michael. Some people may object, though
+I'm counting on his being generally taken for St. George."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that you are writing a play about Joan of Arc, but&mdash;and I hope
+you'll not take unkindly what I'm going to say&mdash;but Joan of Arc can
+never be more than a pretty piece of medievalism, whereas Thomas ..."</p>
+
+<p>John gave up, and the next morning he told the household that he was
+called back to London on business.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I shall have some peace here," he sighed, looking round at his
+dignified Church Row library.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. James called earlier this morning, sir, and said not to disturb
+you, but she hoped you'd had a comfortable journey and left these
+flowers, and Mrs. George has telephoned from the theater to say she'll
+be here almost directly."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mrs. Worfolk," John said. "Perhaps Mrs. George will be
+taking lunch."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I expect she will," said his housekeeper.<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">M</span><b>RS. GEORGE TOUCHWOOD</b>&mdash;or as she was known on the stage, Miss Eleanor
+Cartright&mdash;was big-boned, handsome, and hawklike, with the hungry look
+of the ambitious actress who is drawing near to forty&mdash;she was in fact
+thirty-seven&mdash;and realizes that the disappointed adventuresses of what
+are called strong plays are as near as she will ever get to the tragedy
+queens of youthful aspiration. Such an one accustomed to flash her dark
+eyes in defiance of a morally but not esthetically hostile gallery and
+to have the whole of a stage for the display of what well-disposed
+critics hailed as vitality and cavaliers condemned as lack of repose,
+such an one in John's tranquil library was, as Mrs. Worfolk put it,
+"rather too much of a good thing and no mistake"; and when Eleanor was
+there, John experienced as much malaise as he would have experienced
+from being shut up in a housemaid's closet with a large gramophone and
+the housemaid. This claustrophobia, however, was the smallest strain
+that his sister-in-law inflicted upon him; she affected his heart and
+his conscience more acutely, because he could never meet her without a
+sensation of guilt on account of his not yet having found a part for her
+in any of his plays, to which was added the fear he always felt in her
+presence that soon or late he should from sheer inability to hold out
+longer award her the leading part in his play. George had often
+seriously annoyed him by his unwillingness to help himself; but at the
+thought of being married for thirteen years to Eleanor he had always
+excused his brother's flaccid dependence.</p>
+
+<p>"George is a bit of a sponge," James had once said, "but Eleanor!
+Eleanor is the roughest and toughest loofah that was ever known. She is
+irritant and absorbent at the same time, and by gad, she has the
+appearance of a loofah."<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a></p>
+
+<p>The prospect of Eleanor's company at lunch on the morning after his
+return to town gave John a sensation of having escaped the devil to fall
+into the deep sea, of having jumped from the frying-pan into the fire,
+in fact of illustrating every known proverbial attempt to express the
+distinction without the difference.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a great pity that Eleanor didn't marry Laurence," he thought.
+"Each would have kept the other well under, and she could have played
+Mary Magdalene in that insane play of his. And, by Jove, if they <i>had</i>
+married, neither of them would have been a relation! Moreover, if
+Laurence had been caught by Eleanor, Edith might never have married at
+all and could have kept house for me. And if Edith hadn't married, Hilda
+mightn't have married, and then Harold would never have been born."</p>
+
+<p>John's hard pruning of his family-tree was interrupted by a sense of the
+house's having been attacked by an angry mob&mdash;an illusion that he had
+learnt to connect with his sister-in-law's arrival. To make sure,
+however, he went out on the landing and called down to know if anything
+was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. George is having some trouble with the taxi-man, sir," explained
+Maud, who was holding the front-door open and looking apprehensively at
+the pictures that were clattering on the walls in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"Why does she take taxis?" John muttered, irritably. "She can't afford
+them, and there's no excuse for such extravagance when the tube is so
+handy."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Eleanor reached the door, on the threshold of which she
+turned like Medea upon Jason to have the last word with the taxi-driver
+before the curtain fell.</p>
+
+<p>"Did Mr. Touchwood get my message?" she was asking.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," John called down. "I'm expecting you to lunch."</p>
+
+<p>When he watched Eleanor all befurred coming upstairs, he felt not much
+less nervous than a hunter of big game<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> face to face with his first
+tiger; the landing seemed to wobble like a howdah; now he had fired and
+missed, and she was embracing him as usual. How many times at how many
+meetings with Eleanor had he tried unsuccessfully to dodge that
+kiss&mdash;which always seemed improper whether because her lips were too
+red, or too full, he could never decide, though he always felt when he
+was released that he ought to beg her husband's pardon.</p>
+
+<p>"You were an old beast not to come and see us when you got back from
+America; but never mind, I'm awfully glad to see you, all the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much, Eleanor. Why are you glad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you sarcastic old bear!"</p>
+
+<p>This perpetual suggestion of his senility was another trick of Eleanor's
+that he deplored; dash it, he was two years younger than George, whom
+she called Georgieboy.</p>
+
+<p>"No, seriously," Eleanor went on. "I was just going to wire and ask if I
+could send the kiddies down to the country. Lambton wants me for a six
+weeks' tour before Xmas, and I can't leave them with Georgie. You see,
+if this piece catches on, it means a good shop for me in the new year."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I quite understand your point of view," John said. "But what I
+don't understand is why Bertram and Viola can't stay with their father."</p>
+
+<p>"But George is ill. Surely you got my letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't realize that the presence of his children might prove fatal.
+However, send them down to Ambles by all means."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I'd much rather not after the way Hilda wrote to me, and now
+that you've come back there's no need."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't quite understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you won't mind having them here for a short visit? Then they can
+go down to Ambles for the Christmas holidays."</p>
+
+<p>"But the Christmas holidays won't begin for at least six weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"I know."<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But you don't propose that Bertram and Viola should spend six weeks
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"They'll be no bother, you old crosspatch. Bertram will be at school all
+day, and I suppose that Maud or Elsa will always be available to take
+Viola to her dancing-lessons. You remember the dancing-lessons you
+arranged for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember that I accepted the arrangement," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she's getting on divinely, and it would be a shame to interrupt
+them just now, especially as she's in the middle of a Spanish series.
+Her <i>cachucha</i> is ..." Eleanor could only blow a kiss to express what
+Viola's <i>cachucha</i> was. "But then, of course, I had a Spanish
+grandmother."</p>
+
+<p>When John regarded her barbaric personality he could have credited her
+with being the granddaughter of a cannibal queen.</p>
+
+<p>"So I thought that her governess could come here every morning just as
+easily as to Earl's Court. In fact, it will be more convenient, or at
+any rate, equally convenient for her, because she lives at Kilburn."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say it will be equally convenient for the governess," said John,
+sardonically.</p>
+
+<p>"And I thought," Eleanor continued, "that it would be a good opportunity
+for Viola to have French lessons every afternoon. You won't want to have
+her all the time with you, and the French governess can give the
+children their tea. That will be good for Bertram's accent."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt that it will be superb for Bertram's accent, but I
+absolutely decline to have a French governess bobbing in and out of my
+house. It's bound to make trouble with the servants who always think
+that French governesses are designing and licentious, and I don't want
+to create a false impression."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, aren't you an old prude? Who would ever think that you had any
+sort of connection with the stage? By the way, you haven't told me if
+there'll be anything for me in your next."<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, at present the subject of my next play is a secret ... and as for
+the cast...."</p>
+
+<p>John was so nearly on the verge of offering Eleanor the part of Mary of
+Anjou, for which she would be as suitable as a giraffe, that in order to
+effect an immediate diversion he asked her when the children were to
+arrive.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see, to-day's Saturday. To-morrow I go down to Bristol, where we
+open. They'd better come to-night, because to-morrow being Sunday
+they'll have no lessons, which will give them time to settle down.
+Georgie will be glad to know they're with you."</p>
+
+<p>"I've no doubt he'll be enchanted," John agreed.</p>
+
+<p>The bell sounded for lunch, and they went downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to be back at the theater by two," Eleanor announced, looking
+at the horridly distorted watch upon her wrist. "I wonder if we mightn't
+ask Maud to open half-a-bottle of champagne? I'm dreadfully tired."</p>
+
+<p>John ordered a bottle to be opened; he felt rather tired himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us be quite clear about this arrangement," he began, when after
+three glasses of wine he felt less appalled by the prospect, and had
+concluded that after all Bertram and Viola would not together be as bad
+as Laurence with his play, not to mention Harold with his spectacles and
+entomology, his interrogativeness and his greed. "The English governess
+will arrive every morning for Viola. What is her name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Coldwell."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Coldwell then will be responsible for Viola all the morning. The
+French governess is canceled, and I shall come to an arrangement with
+Miss Coldwell by which she will add to her salary by undertaking all
+responsibility for Viola until Viola is in bed. Bertram will go to
+school, and I shall rely upon Miss Coldwell to keep an eye on his
+behavior at home."</p>
+
+<p>"And don't forget the dancing-lessons."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I had Madame What's-her-name's account last week."<a
+name="page_084" id="page_084"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I mean, don't forget to arrange for Viola to go."</p>
+
+<p>"That pilgrimage will, I hope, form a part of what Miss Coldwell would
+probably call 'extras.' And after all perhaps George will soon be fit."</p>
+
+<p>"The poor old boy has been awfully seedy all the summer."</p>
+
+<p>"What's he suffering from? Infantile paralysis?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's all very well for you to joke about it, but you don't live in a
+wretched boarding-house in Earl's Court. You mustn't let success spoil
+you, John. It's so easy when everything comes your way to forget the
+less fortunate people. Look at me. I'm thirty-four, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you really? I should never have thought it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind your laughing at me, you old crab. But I don't like you to
+laugh at Georgie."</p>
+
+<p>"I never do," John said. "I don't suppose that there's anybody alive who
+takes George as seriously as I do."</p>
+
+<p>Eleanor brushed away a tear and said she must get back to the rehearsal.</p>
+
+<p>When she was gone John felt that he had been unkind, and he reproached
+himself for letting Laurence make him cynical.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is," he told himself, "that ever since I heard Doris Hamilton
+make that remark in the saloon of the <i>Murmania</i>, I've become suspicious
+of my family. She began it, and then by ill luck I was thrown too much
+with Laurence, who clinched it. Eleanor is right: I <i>am</i> letting myself
+be spoilt by success. After all, there's no reason why those two
+children shouldn't come here. <i>They</i> won't be writing plays about
+apostles. I'll send George a box of cigars to show that I didn't mean to
+sneer at him. And why didn't I offer to pay for Eleanor's taxi? Yes, I
+am getting spoilt. I must watch myself. And I ought not to have joked
+about Eleanor's age."</p>
+
+<p>Luckily his sister-in-law had finished the champagne, for if John had
+drunk another glass he might have offered her the part of the Maid
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>The actual arrival of Bertram and Viola passed off more<a
+name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> successfully. They were both presentable,
+and John was almost flattered when Mrs. Worfolk commented on their
+likeness to him, remembering what a nightmare it had always seemed when
+Hilda used to excavate points of resemblance between him and Harold.
+Mrs. Worfolk herself was so much pleased to have him back from Ambles
+that she was in the best of good humours, and even the statuesque Maud
+flushed with life like some Galatea.</p>
+
+<p>"I think Maud's a darling, don't you, Uncle John?" exclaimed Viola.</p>
+
+<p>"We all appreciate Maud's&mdash;er&mdash;capabilities," John hemmed.</p>
+
+<p>He felt that it was a silly answer, but inasmuch as Maud was present at
+the time he could not, either for his sake or for hers give an
+unconditional affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>"I swopped four blood-allys for an Indian in the break," Bertram
+announced.</p>
+
+<p>"With an Indian, my boy, I suppose you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't. I mean for an Indian&mdash;an Indian marble. And I swopped four
+Guatemalas for two Nicaraguas."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be at the Foreign Office."</p>
+
+<p>"But the ripping thing is, Uncle John, that two of the Guatemalas are
+fudges."</p>
+
+<p>"Such a doubtful coup would not debar you from a diplomatic career."</p>
+
+<p>"And I say, what is the Foreign Office? We've got a French chap in my
+class."</p>
+
+<p>"You ask for an explanation of the Foreign Office. That, my boy, might
+puzzle the omniscience of the Creator."</p>
+
+<p>"I say, I don't twig very well what you're talking about."</p>
+
+<p>"The attributes of the Foreign Office, my boy, are rigidity where there
+should be suppleness, weakness where there should be firmness, and for
+intelligence the substitution of hair brushed back from the forehead."</p>
+
+<p>"I say, you're ragging me, aren't you? No, really, what is the Foreign
+Office?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the ultimate preserve of a privileged imbecility."<a
+name="page_086" id="page_086"></a></p>
+
+<p>Bertram surrendered, and John congratulated himself upon the possession
+of a nephew whose perseverance and curiosity had been sapped by a
+scholastic education.</p>
+
+<p>"Harold would have tackled me word by word during one of our walks. I
+shall enter into negotiations with Hilda at Christmas to provide for his
+mental training on condition that I choose the school. Perhaps I shall
+hear of a good one in the Shetland Islands."</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Worfolk visited John as usual at ten o'clock to wish him
+good-night, she was enthusiastic about Bertram and Viola.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, really, sir, if yaul pardon the liberty, I must say I wouldn't
+never of believed that Mrs. George's children <i>could</i> be so quiet and
+nice-behaved. They haven't given a bit of trouble, and I've never heard
+Maud speak so highly of anyone as of Miss Viola. 'That child's a regular
+little angel, Mrs. Worfolk,' she said to me. Well, sir, I'm bound to say
+that children does brighten up a house. I'm sure I've done my best what
+with putting flowers in all the vawses and one thing and another, but
+really, well I'm quite taken with your little nephew and niece, and I've
+had some experience of them, I mean to say, what with my poor sister's
+Herbert and all. I <i>have</i> put the tantalus ready. Good-night, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"The fact of the matter is," John assured himself, "that when I'm alone
+with them I can manage children perfectly. I only hope that Miss
+Coldwell will fall in with my ideas. If she does, I see no reason why we
+shouldn't spend an extremely pleasant time all together."</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately for John's hope of a satisfactory coalition with the
+governess he received a hurried note by messenger from his sister-in-law
+next morning to say that Miss Coldwell was laid up: the precise disease
+was illegible in Eleanor's communication, but it was serious enough to
+keep Miss Coldwell at home for three weeks. "<i>Meanwhile</i>," Eleanor
+wrote, "<i>she is trying to get her sister to come down from</i>"&mdash;the abode
+of the sister was equally illegible. "<i>But the most<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> important thing
+is," Eleanor went on, "that little V. shouldn't miss her
+dancing-lessons. So will you arrange for Maud to take her every Tuesday
+and Friday? And, of course, if there's anything you want to know,
+there's always George.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Of George's eternal being John had no doubts; of his knowledge he was
+less sanguine: the only thing that George had ever known really well was
+the moment to lead trumps.</p>
+
+<p>"However," said John, in consultation with his housekeeper, "I dare say
+we shall get along."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, certainly we shall, sir," Mrs. Worfolk confidently proclaimed,
+"well, I mean to say, I've been married myself."</p>
+
+<p>John bowed his appreciation of this fact.</p>
+
+<p>"And though I never had the happiness to have any little toddlers of my
+own, anyone being married gets used to the idea of having children.
+There's always the chance, as you might say. It isn't like as if I was
+an old maid, though, of course, my husband died in Jubilee year."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he, Mrs. Worfolk, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, he planed off his thumb when he was working on one of the
+benches for the stands through him looking round at a black fellow in a
+turban covered in jewelry who was driving to Buckingham Palace. One of
+the new arrivals, it was; and his arm got blood poisoning. That's how I
+remember it was Jubilee year, though usually I'm a terror for knowing
+when anything did occur. He wouldn't of minded so much, he said, only he
+was told it was the Char of Persia and that made him mad."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? What had he got against the Shah?"</p>
+
+<p>"He hadn't got nothing against the Char. But it wasn't the Char; and if
+he'd of known it wasn't the Char he never wouldn't of turned round so
+quick, and there's no saying he wouldn't of been alive to this day. No,
+sir, don't you worry about this governess. I dare say if she'd of come
+she'd only of caused a bit of unpleasantness all round."</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, John thought, when he sent for the<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> children in order
+to make the announcement of Miss Coldwell's desertion, notwithstanding
+Mrs. Worfolk's optimism it was a pity that the first day of their visit
+should be a Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to say, Viola, and, of course, Bertram, this applies equally
+to you, that poor Miss Coldwell has been taken very ill."</p>
+
+<p>That strange expression upon the children's faces might be an awkward
+attempt to express their youthful sympathy, but it more ominously
+resembled a kind of gloating ecstacy, as they stood like two cherubs
+outside the gates of paradise, or two children outside a bunshop.</p>
+
+<p>"Very ill," John went on, "so ill indeed that it is feared she will not
+be able to come for a few days, and so...."</p>
+
+<p>Whatever more John would have said was lost in the riotous acclamations
+with which Bertram and Viola greeted the sad news. After the first cries
+and leaps of joy had subsided to a chanted duet, which ran somehow like
+this:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh, Miss Coldwell,</p>
+
+<p>She can't come to Hampstead,</p>
+
+<p>Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,</p>
+
+<p>Miss Coldwell's not coming:"</p>
+
+<p>John ventured to rebuke the singers for their insensibility to human
+suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"For she may be dangerously ill," he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>fizzing</i>," Bertram shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"She might die."</p>
+
+<p>The prospect that this opened before Bertram was apparently too
+beautiful for any verbal utterance, and he remained open-mouthed in a
+mute and exquisite anticipation of liberty.</p>
+
+<p>"What and never come to us ever again?" Viola breathed, her blue eyes
+aglow with visions of a larger life.</p>
+
+<p>John shook his head, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Uncle John," she cried, "wouldn't that be glorious?"</p>
+
+<p>Bertram's heart was too full for words: he simply turned head over
+heels.<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But you hard-hearted little beasts," their uncle expostulated.</p>
+
+<p>"She's most frightfully strict," Viola explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we shouldn't have been able to do anything decent if she'd come,"
+Bertram added.</p>
+
+<p>A poignant regret for that unknown governess suffering from her
+illegible complaint pierced John's mind. But perhaps she would recover,
+in which case she should spend her convalescence at Ambles with Harold;
+for if when in good health she was strict, after a severe illness she
+might be ferocious.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not at all pleased with your attitude," John declared. "And
+you'll find me twice as strict as Miss Coldwell."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, we shan't," said Bertram with a smile of jovial incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>John let this contradiction pass: it seemed an imprudent subject for
+debate. "And now, to-day being Sunday, you'd better get ready for
+church."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but we always dress up on Sunday," Viola said.</p>
+
+<p>"So does everybody," John replied. "Go and get ready."</p>
+
+<p>The children left the room, and he rang for Mrs. Worfolk.</p>
+
+<p>"Master Bertram and Miss Viola will shortly be going to church, and I
+want you to arrange for somebody to take them."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Worfolk hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was you thinking of, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't thinking of anybody in particular, but I suppose Maud could
+go."</p>
+
+<p>"Maud has her rooms to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Elsa."</p>
+
+<p>"Elsa has her dinner to get."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, perhaps you would ..."</p>
+
+<p>"Yaul pardon the liberty, sir, but I never go to church except of an
+evening <i>some</i>times; I never could abide being stared at."<a
+name="page_090" id="page_090"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well," said John, fretfully, as Mrs. Worfolk retired. "Though
+I'm hanged if <i>I'm</i> going to take them," he added to himself, "at any
+rate without a rehearsal."</p>
+
+<p>The two children soon came back in a condition of complete preparation
+and insisted so loudly upon their uncle's company that he yielded;
+though when he found himself with a child on either side of him in the
+sabbath calm of the Hampstead streets footfall-haunted, he was appalled
+at his rashness. There was a church close to his own house, but with an
+instinct to avoid anything like a domestic scandal he had told his
+nephew and niece that it was not a suitable church for children, and had
+led them further afield through the ghostly November sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>"But look here," Bertram objected, "we can't go through any slums, you
+know, because the cads will bung things at my topper."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you're with me," John argued. "I am wearing a top-hat myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they did when I went for a walk with Father once on Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>"The slums round Earl's Court are probably much fiercer than the slums
+round Hampstead," John suggested. "And anyway here we are."</p>
+
+<p>He had caught a glimpse of an ecclesiastical building, which
+unfortunately turned out to be a Jewish tabernacle and not open: a few
+minutes later, however, an indubitably Anglican place of worship invited
+their attendance, and John trying not to look as bewildered as he felt
+let himself be conducted by a sidesman to the very front pew.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if he thinks I'm a member of parliament. But I wish to
+goodness he'd put us in the second row. I shall be absolutely lost where
+I am."</p>
+
+<p>John looked round to catch the sidesman's eye and plead for a less
+conspicuous position, but even as he turned his head a terrific crash
+from the organ proclaimed that it was too late and that the service had
+begun.<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a></p>
+
+<p>By relying upon the memories of youthful worship John might have been
+able to cope successfully with Morning Prayer, even with that florid
+variation of it which is generally known as Mattins. Unluckily the
+church he had chosen for the spiritual encouragement of his nephew and
+niece was to the church of his recollections as Mount Everest to a
+molehill. As a simple spectator without encumbrances he might have
+enjoyed the service and derived considerable inspiration from it for the
+decorative ecclesiasticism of his new play; as an uncle it alarmed and
+confused him. The lace-hung acolytes, the candles, the chrysanthemums,
+the purple vestments and the ticking of the thurible affected him
+neither with Protestant disgust nor with Catholic devoutness, but much
+more deeply as nothing but incentives to the unanswerable inquiries of
+Bertram and Viola.</p>
+
+<p>"What are they doing?" whispered his nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" he whispered back in what he tried to feel was the right
+intonation of pious reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that little boy doing with a spoon?" whispered his niece.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" John blew forth again. "Attend to the service."</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't a real service, is it?" she persisted.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily the congregation knelt at this point, and John plunged down with
+a delighted sense of taking cover. Presently he began to be afraid that
+his attitude of devotional self-abasement might be seeming a little
+ostentatious, and he peered cautiously round over the top of the pew; to
+his dismay he perceived that Bertram and Viola were still standing up.</p>
+
+<p>"Kneel down at once," he commanded in what he hoped would be an
+authoritative whisper, but which was in the result an agonized croak.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to see what they're doing," both children protested.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram's Etons appeared too much attentuated for a sharp tug, nor did
+John feel courageous enough in the front row to jerk Viola down upon her
+knees by pulling her petticoats,<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> which might come off. He therefore
+covered his face with his hands in what was intended to look like a
+spasm of acute reverence and growled at them both to kneel down, unless
+they wanted to be sent back instantly to Earl's Court. Evidently
+impressed by this threat the children knelt down; but they were no
+sooner upon their knees than the perverse congregation rose to its feet,
+the concerted movement taking John so completely unawares that he was
+left below and felt when he did rise like a naughty boy who has been
+discovered hiding under a table. He was not put at ease by Viola's
+asking him to find her place in the prayer-book; it seemed to him
+terrible to discern the signs of a vindictive spirit in one so young.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," he whispered. "You must remember that we're in the front row and
+must be careful not to disturb the&mdash;" he hesitated at the word
+"performers" and decided to envelop whatever they were in a cough.</p>
+
+<p>There were no more questions for a while, nothing indeed but tiptoe
+fidgetings until two acolytes advanced with lighted candles to a
+position on each side of the deacon who was preparing to read the
+gospel.</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't he see to read?" Bertram asked. "It's not dark."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush," John whispered. "This is the gospel"</p>
+
+<p>He knew he was safe in affirming so much, because the announcement that
+he was about to read the gospel had been audibly given out by the
+deacon. At this point the congregation crossed its innumerable features
+three times, and Bertram began to giggle; immediately afterward fumes
+poured from the swung censer, and Viola began to choke. John felt that
+it was impossible to interrupt what was presumably considered the <i>pièce
+de resistance</i> of the service by leading the two children out along the
+whole length of the church; yet he was convinced that if he did not lead
+them out their gigglings and snortings would have a disastrous effect
+upon the soloist. Then he had a brilliant idea: Viola was obviously much
+upset by the incense and he would escort<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> her out into fresh air with
+the solicitude that one gives to a sick person: Bertram he should leave
+behind to giggle alone. He watched his nephew bending lower and lower to
+contain his mirth; then with a quick propulsive gesture he hurried Viola
+into the aisle. Unfortunately when with a sigh of relief he stood upon
+the steps outside and put on his hat he found that in his confusion he
+had brought out Bertram's hat, which on his intellectual head felt like
+a precariously balanced inkpot; and though he longed to abandon Bertram
+to his well merited fate he could not bring himself to walk up
+Fitzjohn's Avenue in Bertram's hat, nor could he even contemplate with
+equanimity the notion of Bertram's walking up under his. Had it been a
+week-day either of them might have passed for an eccentric
+advertisement, but on a Sunday....</p>
+
+<p>"And if I stand on the steps of a church holding this minute hat in my
+hand," he thought, "people will think I'm collecting for some charity.
+Confound that boy! And I can't pretend that I'm feeling too hot in the
+middle of November. Dash that boy! And I certainly can't wear it. A
+Japanese juggler wouldn't be able to wear it. Damn that boy!"</p>
+
+<p>Yet John would rather have gone home in a baby's bonnet than enter the
+church again, and the best that could be hoped was that Bertram dismayed
+at finding himself alone would soon emerge. Bertram, however, did not
+emerge, and John had a sudden fear lest in his embarrassment he might
+have escaped by another door and was even now rushing blindly home.
+Blindly was the right adverb indeed, for he would certainly be unable to
+see anything from under his uncle's hat. Viola, having recovered from
+her choking fit, began to cry at this point, and an old lady who must
+have noted with tender approval John's exit came out with a bottle of
+smelling-salts, which she begged him to make use of. Before he could
+decline she had gone back inside the church leaving him with the bottle.
+If he could have forced the contents down Viola's throat without
+attracting more attention he<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> would have done so, but by this time one
+or two passers-by had stopped to stare at the scene, and he heard one of
+them tell his companion that it was a street conjurer just going to
+perform.</p>
+
+<p>"Will anything make you stop crying?" he asked his niece in despair.</p>
+
+<p>"I want Bertram," she wailed.</p>
+
+<p>And at that moment Bertram appeared, led out by two sidesmen.</p>
+
+<p>"Your little boy doesn't know how to behave himself in church," one of
+them informed John, severely.</p>
+
+<p>"I was only looking for my hat," Bertram explained. "I thought it had
+rolled into the next pew. Let go of my arm. I slipped off the hassock. I
+couldn't help making a little noise, Uncle John."</p>
+
+<p>John was grateful to Bertram for thus exonerating him publicly from the
+responsibility of having begotten him, and he inquired almost kindly
+what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"The hassock slipped, and I fell into the next pew."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry my nephew made a noise," said John to the sidesman. "My niece
+was taken ill, and he was left behind by accident. Thank you for showing
+him the way out, yes. Come along, Bertram, I've got your hat. Where's
+mine?" Bertram looked blankly at his uncle.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say&mdash;" John began, and then he saw a passing taxi to
+which he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Those smelling-salts belong to an old lady," he explained hurriedly and
+quite inadequately to the bewildered sidesman into whose hands he had
+thrust the bottle. "Come along," he urged the children, and when they
+were scrambling into the taxi he called back to the sidesmen, "You can
+give to the jumble sale any hat that is swept up after the service."</p>
+
+<p>Inside the taxi John turned to the children.</p>
+
+<p>"One would think you'd never been inside a church before," he said,
+reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram," said Viola, in bland oblivion of all that her<a
+name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> uncle had endured, "when we dress up
+to-day shall we act going to church, or finish Robinson Crusoe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait till we see what we can find for dressing up," Bertram advised.</p>
+
+<p>John displayed a little anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Dressing up?" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"We always dress up every Sunday," the children burst forth in unison.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see&mdash;it's a kind of habit. Well, I dare say Mrs. Worfolk will be
+able to find you an old duster or something."</p>
+
+<p>"Duster," echoed Viola, scornfully. "That's not enough for dressing up."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't suggest a duster as anything but a supplement to your ordinary
+costume. I didn't anticipate that you were going to rely entirely upon
+the duster."</p>
+
+<p>"I say, V, can you twig what Uncle John says?"</p>
+
+<p>Viola shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor more can I," said Bertram, sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>Before the taxi reached Church Row, John found himself adopting a
+positively deferential manner towards his nephew and his niece, and when
+they were once again back in the quiet house, the hall of which was
+faintly savoury with the maturing lunch he asked them if they would mind
+amusing themselves for an hour while he wrote some letters.</p>
+
+<p>"For I take it you won't want to dress up immediately," he added as an
+excuse for attending to his own business.</p>
+
+<p>The children confirmed his supposition, but went on to inform him that
+the domenical régime at Earl's Court prescribed a walk after church.</p>
+
+<p>"Owing to the accident to my hat I'm afraid I must ask you to let me off
+this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Right-o," Bertram agreed, cheerfully. "But I vote we come up and sit
+with you while you write your letters. I think letters are a beastly
+fag, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>John felt that the boy was proffering his own and his sister's company
+in a spirit of altruism, and he could not<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> muster enough gracelessness
+to decline the proposal. So upstairs they all went.</p>
+
+<p>"I think this is rather a ripping room, don't you, V?"</p>
+
+<p>"The carpet's very old," said Viola.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got any decent books?" Bertram inquired, looking round at the
+shelves. "Any Henty's, I mean, or anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm afraid I haven't," said John, apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>"Or bound up Boys Own Papers?"</p>
+
+<p>John shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'll tell you what I have got," he added with a sudden inspiration.
+"Kingsley's <i>Heroes</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a pi book?" asked Bertram, suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. It's about Greek gods and goddesses, essentially
+broad-minded divinities."</p>
+
+<p>"Right-o. I'll have a squint at it, if you like," Bertram volunteered.
+"Come on, V, don't start showing off your rotten dancing. Come and look
+at this book. It's got some spiffing pictures."</p>
+
+<p>"Lunch won't be very long," John announced in order to propitiate any
+impatience at what they might consider the boring entertainment he was
+offering.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the two children left their uncle alone, and he observed with
+pride that they took with them the book. He little thought that so mild
+a dose of romance as could be extracted from Kingsley's <i>Heroes</i> would
+before the twilight of that November day run through 36 Church Row like
+fire. But then John did not know that there was a calf's head for dinner
+that night; he had not realized the scenic capacity of the cistern
+cupboard at the top of the house; and most of all he had not associated
+with dressing up on Sunday afternoon the histrionic force that Bertram
+and Viola inherited from their mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it Androméda or Andrómeda?" Bertram asked at lunch.</p>
+
+<p>"Andrómeda, my boy," John answered. "Perseus and Andromeda."<a
+name="page_097" id="page_097"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I think it would make a jolly good play, don't you?" Bertram went on.</p>
+
+<p>Really, thought John, this nephew was a great improvement upon that
+spectacled inquisitor at Ambles.</p>
+
+<p>"A capital play," he agreed, heartily. "Are you thinking of writing it?"</p>
+
+<p>"V and I thought we'd do it instead of finishing Robinson Crusoe. Well,
+you see, you haven't got any decent fur rugs, and V's awfully stupid
+about having her face blacked."</p>
+
+<p>"It's my turn not to be a savage," Viola pleaded in defense of her
+squeamishness.</p>
+
+<p>"I said you could be Will Atkins as well. I know I'd jolly well like to
+be Will Atkins myself."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," Viola offered. "You can, and I'll be Robinson."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't change like that in the middle of a play," her brother
+argued.</p>
+
+<p>John, who appreciated both Viola's dislike of burnt-cork and Bertram's
+esthetic objection to changing parts in the middle of a piece, strongly
+recommended Perseus and Andromeda.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, you got the idea from Kingsley? Bravo, Bertram," he said,
+beaming with cordial patronage.</p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose," his nephew went on, "that you'd rather we played at the
+top of the house. I expect it would be quieter, if you're writing
+letters. Mother said you often liked to be quiet." He alluded to this
+desire rather shamefully, as if it were a secret vice of his uncle, who
+hurriedly approved the choice of the top landing for the scene of the
+classic drama.</p>
+
+<p>"Then would you please tell Mrs. Worfolk that we can have the calf's
+head?"</p>
+
+<p>"The what?"</p>
+
+<p>"V found a calf's head in the larder, and it would make a fizzing
+Gorgon's head, but Mrs. Worfolk wouldn't let us have it."</p>
+
+<p>John was so much delighted with the trend of Bertram's<a
+name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> ingenuity that he sent for Mrs. Worfolk
+and told her that the calf's head might be borrowed for the play.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take no responsibility for your dinner," said his housekeeper,
+warningly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Mrs. Worfolk. If anything happens to the head I
+shan't grumble. There'll always be the cold beef, won't there?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Worfolk turned up her eyes to heaven and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I think I've arranged that for you successfully."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Uncle John," said Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Uncle John," said Viola.</p>
+
+<p>What nice quiet well-mannered children they were, after all; and he by
+no means ought to blame them for the fiasco of the churchgoing; the
+setting had of course been utterly unfamiliar; these ritualistic places
+of worship were a mistake in an unexcitable country like England. John
+retired to his library and lit a Corona with a sense that he thoroughly
+deserved a good cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Children are not difficult," he said to himself, "if one tries to put
+oneself in their place. That request for the calf's head undoubtedly
+showed a rare combination of adaptiveness with for a schoolboy what was
+almost a poetic fancy. Harold would have wanted to know how much the
+head weighed, and whether in life it preferred to browse on buttercups
+or daisies; but when finally it was cooked he would have eaten twice as
+much as anybody else. I prefer Bertram's attitude; though naturally I
+can appreciate a housekeeper's feelings. These cigars are in capital
+condition. Really, Bertram's example is infectious, and by gad, I feel
+quite like a couple of hours with Joan. Yes, it's a pity Laurence hasn't
+got Bertram's dramatic sense. A great pity."</p>
+
+<p>The sabbath afternoon wore on, and though John did not accumulate enough
+energy to seat himself at his table, he dreamed a good deal of wonderful
+situations in the fourth act, puffing away at his cigar and hearing from
+time to time<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> distant shouts and scamperings; these, however, did not
+keep him from falling into a gentle doze, from which he was abruptly
+wakened by the opening of the library door.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, is that tea?" he asked cheerfully in that tone with which the
+roused sleeper always implies his uninterrupted attention to time and
+space.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, it's me," a grim voice replied. "And if you don't want us all
+to be drowned where we stand, it being a Sunday afternoon, and not a
+plumber to be got, and Maud in the hysterics, and those two young
+Tartars screaming like Bedlamites, and your dinner ruined and done for,
+and the feathers gone from Elsa's new hat, per-raps you could come
+upstairs, Mr. Touchwood. Gordon's head indeed, and the boy as naked as a
+stitch!"</p>
+
+<p>John jumped to his feet and hurried out on the landing; at the same
+moment Bertram with nothing to cover him except a pudding-shape on his
+head, a tea-tray on his arm, a Turkish scimitar at his waist, and the
+pinions of a blue and green bird tied round his ankles leapt six stairs
+of the flight above and alighting at his uncle's feet, thrust the calf's
+head into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"You're turned to stone, Phineus," he yelled. "You can't move. You've
+seen the Gorgon."</p>
+
+<p>"There he goes again with his Gordon and his Gladstone," said Mrs.
+Worfolk. "How dare you be so daring?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Gorgon's sister," cried Bertram lunging at her with the scimitar.
+"Beware, I am invisible."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon he enveloped the calf's head in a napkin, held the tea-tray
+before his face, and darted away upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid he's a little over-excited," said John, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment a stream of water began to flow past his feet and pour
+down upon him from the landing above.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the house is full of water," he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"It's what I'm trying to tell you, sir," Mrs. Worfolk fumed. "He's done
+something with that there cistern and burst it. I can't stop the
+water."<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a></p>
+
+<p>John followed Perseus on his wild flight up the stairs down which every
+moment water was flowing more freely. When he reached the cistern
+cupboard he discovered Maud bound fast to the disordered cistern, while
+Viola holding in her mouth a large ivory paper-knife and wearing what
+looked like Mrs. Worfolk's sealskin jacket that John had given her last
+Christmas was splashing at full length in a puddle on the floor and
+clawing at Maud's skirts with ferocious growls and grunts.</p>
+
+<p>"You dare try to undress me again, Master Bertram," the statuesque Maud
+was screaming.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Andromeda's got practically nothing on in the book, and you said
+you'd rather not be the sea-monster," Bertram was arguing. "Andromeda,"
+he cried seeing by the manner of his uncle's advance that the curtain
+must now be rung down upon the play, "I have turned the monster to
+stone. Go on, V, you can't move from now on."</p>
+
+<p>Viola stiffened and without a twitch let the stream of water pour down
+upon her, while Bertram planting his foot in the small of her back waved
+triumphantly the Gorgon's head, both of whose ears gave way under the
+strain, so that John's dinner was soon as wet as he was.</p>
+
+<p>The cistern emptied itself at last; Maud was released; Bertram and Viola
+were led downstairs to be dried and on Mrs. Worfolk's recommendation
+sent instantly to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you," said Bertram, "that if Miss Coldwell had come, we couldn't
+have done anything decent."</p>
+
+<p>What woman, John wondered, might serve as a comparable deterrent? The
+fantastic idea of appealing for aid to Doris Hamilton flashed through
+his mind, but on second thoughts he felt that there would be something
+undignified in asking her to come at such a moment. Then he remembered
+how often he had heard his sister-in-law Beatrice lament her
+childlessness. Why should he not visit James and Beatrice this very
+evening? He owed them a visit, and his domestics were all obviously too
+much agitated even to contemplate the preparation of dinner. Mrs.
+Worfolk would<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> perhaps be in a better temper when he got back and he
+would explain to her that the seal was a marine animal, the skin of
+which would not be injured by water.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'll ask Mrs. James to give us a helping hand this week," John
+suggested. "I shall be rather busy myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, and so shall I, trying to get the house straight again which
+it looks more like Shooting the Chutes at Earl's Court than a
+gentleman's house, I'm bound to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Still it might have been worse, Mrs. Worfolk. They might have played
+with another element. Fire, for instance. That would have been much more
+awkward."</p>
+
+<p>"And it's thanks to me the house isn't on fire as well," Mrs. Worfolk
+shrilled in her indignation. "For if that young Turk didn't come
+charging down into the kitchen and trying to tell me that the
+kitchen-fire was a serpent and start attacking it tooth and nail. And
+there was poor Elsa shut up in the coal-cellar and hollering fit to
+break anyone's heart. 'She's Daniel in a tower of brass,' he says as
+bold as a tower of brass himself."</p>
+
+<p>"And what were you, Mrs. Worfolk?" John asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, his lordship had the nerve to say I was an atlas. 'Yes,' I said,
+'my lord, you let me catch hold of you and I'll make your behind look
+like an atlas before I've done with it.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that Mrs. James could control them?" John asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't say as the Lord Mayor himself could control them, but it's
+not for me to give advice when good food can be turned into Gordon's
+heads. And whatever give them the idea, I don't know, for I'm sure
+General Gordon was a very handsome man to look at. Yaul excuse me, sir,
+but if you don't want to catch your death, you'd better change your
+things."</p>
+
+<p>John followed Mrs. Worfolk's advice, and an hour later he was walking
+through the misty November night in the direction of St. John's Wood.<a
+name="page_102" id="page_102"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span><b>F</b> a taxi had lurked in any of the melancholy streets through which John
+was making his way to Hill Road he would have taken refuge in it
+gratefully, for there was no atmosphere that preyed upon his mind with
+such a sense of desolation as the hour of evening prayer in a
+respectable Northern suburb. The occasional footsteps of uninspired
+lovers dying away into by-streets; the occasional sounds of stuffy
+worship proceeding from church or chapel; the occasional bark of a dog
+trying to obtain admittance to an empty house; the occasional tread of a
+morose policeman; the occasional hoot of a distant motor-horn; the
+occasional whiff of privet-shrubberies and of damp rusty railings; the
+occasional effusions of chlorotic gaslight upon the raw air, half fog,
+half drizzle; the occasional shadows that quivered upon the dimly
+luminous blinds of upper windows; the occasional mutterings of
+housemaids in basements&mdash;not even John's buoyant spirit could rise above
+such a weight of depressing adjuncts to the influential Sabbath gloom.
+He began to accuse himself of having been too hasty in his treatment of
+Bertram and Viola; the scene at Church Row viewed in retrospect seemed
+to him cheerful and, if the water had not reached his Aubusson rug,
+perfectly harmless. No doubt, in the boarding-house at Earl's Court such
+behavior had been considered impossible. Had not the children talked of
+finishing Robinson Crusoe and alluded to his own lack of suitable fur
+rugs? Evidently last week the drama had been interrupted by the landlady
+because they had been spoiling her fur rugs. John was on the point of
+going back to Church Row and inviting the children to celebrate his
+return in a jolly impromptu supper, when he remembered that there were
+at least five more Sundays before Christmas. Next Sunday they would<a
+name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> probably decide to revive the Argonauts,
+a story that, so far as he could recall the incidents, offered many
+opportunities for destructive ingenuity. Then, the Sunday after, there
+would be Theseus and the Minotaur; if there were another calf's head in
+the larder, Bertram might easily try to compel Mrs. Worfolk to be the
+Minotaur and wear it, which might mean Mrs. Worfolk's resignation from
+his service, a prospect that could not be faced with equanimity. But
+would the presence of Beatrice exercise an effective control upon this
+dressing up, and could he stand Beatrice for six weeks at a stretch? He
+might, of course, engage her to protect him and his property during the
+first few days, and after that to come for every week end. Suppose he
+did invite Doris Hamilton, but, of course, that was absurd&mdash;suppose he
+did invite Beatrice, would Doris Hamilton&mdash;would Beatrice come? Could it
+possibly be held to be one of the duties of a confidential secretary to
+assist her employer in checking the exuberance of his juvenile
+relations? Would not Miss Hamilton decide that her post approximated too
+nearly to that of a governess? Obviously such a woman had never
+contemplated the notion of becoming a governess. But had she ever
+contemplated the notion of becoming a confidential secretary? No, no,
+the plan was fantastic, unreal ... he must trust to Beatrice and hope
+that Miss Coldwell would presently recover, or that Eleanor's tour would
+come to a sudden end, or that George would have paid what he owed his
+landlady and feel better able to withstand her criticism of his
+children. If all these hopes proved unfounded, a schoolboy, like the
+rest of human nature, had his price&mdash;his noiselessness could be bought
+in youth like his silence later on. John was turning into Hill Road when
+he made this reflection; he was within the area of James' cynical
+operations.</p>
+
+<p>John's eldest brother was at forty-six an outwardly rather improved, an
+inwardly much debased replica of their father. The old man had not
+possessed a winning personality, but his energy and genuine powers of
+accomplishment had made<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> him a successful general practitioner, because
+people overlooked his rudeness in the confidence he gave them and
+forgave his lack of sympathy on account of his obvious devotion to their
+welfare. He with his skeptical and curious mind, his passion for
+mathematics and hatred of idealism, and his unaffected contempt for the
+human race could not conceive a worse hell in eternity than a general
+practice offered him in life; but having married a vain, beautiful, lazy
+and conventional woman, he could not bring himself to spoil his honesty
+by blaming for the foolish act anything more tangible than the scheme of
+creation; and having made himself a damned uncomfortable bed with a
+pretty quilt, as he used to say, he had decided that he must lie on it.
+No doubt, many general practitioners go through life with the conviction
+that they were intended to devote themselves to original research; but
+Dr. Robert Touchwood from what those who were qualified to judge used to
+say of him had reason to feel angry with his fate.</p>
+
+<p>James, who as a boy had shown considerable talent, was chosen by his
+father to inherit the practice. It was typical of the old gentleman that
+he did not assume this succession as the right of the eldest son, but
+that he deliberately awarded it to James as the most apparently adequate
+of his offspring. Unfortunately James, who was dyspeptic even at school,
+chose to imitate his father's mannerisms while he was still a student at
+Guy's and helping at odd hours in the dispensary. Soon after he had
+taken his finals and had seen his name engraved upon the brass plate
+underneath his father's, old Dr. Touchwood fell ill of an incurable
+disease and James found himself in full charge of the practice, which he
+proceeded to ruin, so that not long after his father's death he was
+compelled to sell it for a much smaller sum than it would have fetched a
+few years before. For a time he played alternately with the plan of
+setting up as a specialist in Harley Street or of burying himself in the
+country to write a monograph on British dragon-flies&mdash;for some reason
+these fierce and brilliant insects touched a responsive chord<a
+name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> in James. He finally decided upon the
+dragon-flies and went down to Ockham Common in Surrey to search for
+<i>Sympetrum Fonscolombii</i>, a rare migrant that was reported from that
+locality in 1892. He could not prove that it was any more indigenous
+than himself to the sophisticated county, but in the course of his
+observations he met Beatrice Pyrke, the daughter of a prosperous
+inn-keeper in a neighboring town, and married her. Notwithstanding such
+a catch&mdash;he used to vow that she was more resplendent than even <i>Anax
+Imperator</i>&mdash;he continued to take an interest in dragon-flies, until his
+monograph was unluckily forestalled a few years later. It was owing to
+an article of his in one of the entomological journals that he
+encountered Daniel Curtis&mdash;a meeting which led to Hilda's marriage. In
+those days&mdash;John had not yet made a financial success of
+literature&mdash;this result had seemed to the embittered odonatist a
+complete justification of the many hours he had wasted in preparing for
+his never-to-be written monograph, because his sister's future had for
+some time been presenting a disagreeable and insoluble problem. Besides
+observing dragon-flies, James spent one year in making a clock out of
+fishbones, and another year in perfecting a method of applying gold
+lacquer to poker-work.</p>
+
+<p>A more important hobby, however, that finally displaced all the others
+was foreign literature, in the criticism of which he frequently occupied
+pages in the expensive reviews, pages that gradually grew numerous
+enough to make first one book and then another. James' articles on
+foreign literature were always signed; but he also wrote many criticisms
+of English literature that were not signed. This hack-work exasperated
+him so much that he gradually came to despising the whole of English
+literature after the eighteenth century with the exception of the novels
+of George Meredith. These he used to read aloud to his wife when he was
+feeling particularly bilious and derive from her nervous bewilderment a
+savage satisfaction. In her the critic possessed a perpetual incarnation
+of the British public that he so deeply<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> scorned, and he treated his
+wife in the same way as he fancied he treated the larger entity: without
+either of them he would have been intellectually at a loose end. For all
+his admiration of French literature James spoke the language with a
+hideous British accent. Once on a joint holiday John, who for the whole
+of a channel-crossing had been listening to his brother's tirades
+against the rottenness of modern English literature and his pæans on
+behalf of modern French literature, had been much consoled when they
+reached Calais to find that James could not make himself intelligible
+even to a porter.</p>
+
+<p>"But," as John had said with a chuckle, "perhaps Meredith couldn't have
+made himself intelligible to an English porter."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the porter's fault," James had replied, sourly.</p>
+
+<p>For some years now the critic with his wife and a fawn-coloured bulldog
+had lived in furnished apartments at 65 Hill Road, a creeper-matted
+house of the early 'seventies which James characterized as quiet and
+Beatrice as handy; in point of fact it was neither, being exposed to
+barrel-organs and remote from busses. A good deal of the original
+furniture still incommoded the rooms; but James had his own chair,
+Beatrice had her own footstool, and Henri Beyle the bulldog his own
+basket. The fire-place was crowned by an overmantel of six decorative
+panels, all that was left of James' method of applying gold lacquer to
+poker-work. There were also three or four family portraits, which John
+for some reason coveted for his own library, and a drawer-cabinet of
+faded and decrepit dragon-flies. Some bookshelves filled with yellow
+French novels gave an exotic look to the drab room, which, whenever
+James was not smoking his unusually foul pipes, smelt of gravy and malt
+vinegar except near the window, where the predominant perfume was of
+ferns and oilcloth. Between the living-room and the bedroom were
+double-doors hidden by brown plush curtains, which if opened quickly
+revealed nothing but a bleak expanse of bed and a gray window fringed
+with ragged creepers.<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> When a visitor entered this room to wash his
+hands he used to look at James' fishbone clock under its bell-glass on a
+high chest of drawers and shiver in the dampness; the fireplace was
+covered by a large wardrobe, and one of Beatrice's hats was often on the
+bed, the counterpane of which was stenciled with Beyle's paws. John, who
+loathed this bedroom, always said he did not want to wash his hands,
+when he took a meal at Hill Road.</p>
+
+<p>The depression of his Sunday evening walk had made John less critical
+than he usually was of James' rooms, and he heard the gate of the
+front-garden swing back behind him with a sense of pleasurable
+expectation.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be cold mutton for supper," he said to himself, thinking
+rather guiltily of the calf's head that he might have eaten and to
+partake of which he had not invited his brother and Beatrice. "Cold
+mutton and a very wet salad, with either tinned pears or tinned
+pineapple to follow&mdash;or perhaps stewed figs."</p>
+
+<p>When John entered, James was deep in his armchair with Beyle snoring on
+his lap, where he served as a rest for the large book that his master
+was reading.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo," the critic exclaimed without attempting to rise. "You are back
+in town then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I came back on Friday."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you wouldn't be able to stand the country for long. Remember
+what Horry Walpole said about the country?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said John, quickly. He had not the least idea really, but he had
+long ago ceased to have any scruples about preventing James first of all
+from trying to remember a quotation, secondly from trying to find it,
+thirdly from asking Beatrice where she had hidden the book in which it
+was to be found, and finally from not only reading it when the book was
+found, but also from reading page after page of irrelevant matter in the
+context. "Though Ambles is really very jolly," he added. "I'm expecting
+you and Beatrice to spend Christmas with me, you know."<a
+name="page_108" id="page_108"></a></p>
+
+<p>James grunted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'll see about that. I don't belong to the Dickens Fellowship
+and I shall be pretty busy. You popular authors soon forget what it
+means to be busy. So you've had another success? Who was it this
+time&mdash;Lucretia Borgia, eh?" he laughed, bitterly. "Good lord, it's
+incredible, isn't it? But the English drama's in a sick state&mdash;a very
+sick state."</p>
+
+<p>"All contemporary art is in a sick state according to the critics," John
+observed. "Critics are like doctors; they are not prejudiced in favor of
+general good-health."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, isn't it in a sick state?" James demanded, truculently.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I think it is. However, don't let's begin an argument
+before supper. Where's Beatrice?"</p>
+
+<p>"She bought a new hat yesterday and has gone to demonstrate its
+becomingness to God and woman."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you mean she's gone to church? I went to church myself this
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"What for? Copy?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no. I took George's children."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say that you've got <i>them</i> with you?"</p>
+
+<p>John nodded, and his brother exploded with an uproarious laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I was fool enough to marry before I was thirty," he bellowed.
+"But at any rate I wasn't fool enough to have any children. So you're
+going to sup with us. I ought to warn you it's cold mutton to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Really? Capital! There's nothing I like better than cold mutton."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my soul, Johnnie, I'll say this for you. You may write stale
+romantic plays about the past, but you manage to keep plenty of romantic
+sauce for the present. Yes, you're a born optimist. Look at your
+skin&mdash;pink as a baby's. Look at mine&mdash;yellow as a horse's tooth. Have
+you heard my new name for your habit of mind? Rosification. Rather good,
+eh? And you can rosify anything from Lucretia Borgia to<a
+name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> cold mutton. Now don't look angry with
+me, Johnnie; you must rosify my ill-humor. With so many roses you can't
+expect not to have a few thorns as well, and I'm one of them. No,
+seriously, I congratulate you on your success. And I always try to
+remember that you write with your tongue in your cheek."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary I believe I write as well as I can," said John,
+earnestly. "I admit that I gave up writing realistic novels, but that
+was because they didn't suit my temperament."</p>
+
+<p>"No, by gad, they didn't! And, anyway, no Englishman can write a
+realistic novel&mdash;or any other kind of a novel if it comes to that. My
+lord, the English novel!"</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," John protested. "I do not want to argue about either plays
+or novels to-night. But if you must talk about books, talk about your
+own, not mine. Beatrice wrote to me that you had something coming along
+about the French Symbolists. I shouldn't have thought that they would
+have appealed to you."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't. I hate them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why write a book about them? Their day has been over a long
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"To smash them. To prove that they were a pretentious set of epileptic
+humbugs."</p>
+
+<p>"Sort of Max Nordau business?"</p>
+
+<p>"Max Nordau! I hope you aren't going to compare me with that flat-footed
+bus-conductor. No, no, Johnnie, the rascals took themselves seriously
+and I'm going to smash them on their own estimate of their own
+importance. I'm going to prove that they were on the wrong track and led
+nowhere."</p>
+
+<p>"It's consoling to learn that even French literature can go off the
+lines sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it can, because it runs on lines. English literature on the
+contrary never had any lines on which to run, though in the eighteenth
+century it followed a fairly decent coaching-road. Modern English
+literature, however, is like<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> a rogue elephant trampling down the jungle
+that its predecessors made some attempt to cultivate."</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew that even moral elephants had taken up agriculture
+seriously."</p>
+
+<p>James blew all the ashes of his pipe over Beyle in a gust of contempt,
+and rose from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"The smirk!" he cried. "The traditional British smirk! The gerumky-gerum
+horse-laugh! British humor! Ha-ha! Begotten by Punch out of Mrs. Grundy
+with the Spectator for godfather. '<i>Go to, you have made me mad.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity you can't tell me about your new book without flying into a
+rage," John said, mildly. "You haven't told me yet when it's to appear."</p>
+
+<p>"My fourteen readers aren't languishing. But to repay politeness by
+politeness, my book will come out in March."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm looking forward to it," John declared. "Have you got good terms
+from Worrall?"</p>
+
+<p>"As good terms as a consumptive bankrupt might expect from Shylock. What
+does the British public care for criticism? You should hear me reading
+the proofs to Beatrice. You should really have the pleasure of watching
+her face, and listening to her comments. Do you know why Beatrice goes
+to church? I'll tell you. She goes to indulge in a debauch of the
+accumulated yawns of the week."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, here she is," John warned him.</p>
+
+<p>James laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Johnnie, you're <i>impayable</i>. Your sensitiveness to Beatrice betrays the
+fount of your success. You treat the British public with just the same
+gentlemanly gurgle. And above all you're a good salesman. That's where
+George failed when he tried whisky on commission."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe you're half the misanthropist you make yourself out."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I'm not. I love human nature. Didn't I marry Beatrice, and
+didn't I spend a year in making a clock out of fishbones to amuse my
+landlady's children, and wasn't I a doctor of medicine without once
+using my knowledge of<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> poisons? I love mankind&mdash;but dragon-flies were
+more complex and dogs are more admirable. Well, Beatrice, did you enjoy
+the sermon?"</p>
+
+<p>His wife had come in and was greeting John broadly and effusively, for
+when she was excited her loud contralto voice recaptured many rustic
+inflections of her youth. She was a tall woman, gaudily handsome,
+conserving in clothes and coiffure the fashions of her prime as queens
+do and barmaids who become the wives of publicans. On Sundays she wore a
+lilac broadcloth with a floriated bodice cut close to the figure; but
+she was just as proud of her waist on weekdays and discreet about her
+legs, which she wrapped up in a number of petticoats. She was as real or
+as unreal as a cabinet-photograph of the last decade of the nineteenth
+century: it depended on the attitude of the observer. Although there was
+too much of her for the apartments, it could not be said that she
+appeared out of place in them; in fact she was rather like a daughter of
+the house who had come home for the holidays.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's John," she expanded in a voice rich with welcome. "How are
+you, little stranger?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much for the flowers, Beatrice. They were much
+appreciated."</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted you to know that we were still in the land of the livin'.
+You're goin' to stay to supper, of course? But you'll have to be content
+with cold mutton, don't you know."</p>
+
+<p>There was a tradition among novelists that well-bred people leave out
+their final "g's"; so Beatrice saved on these consonants what she
+squandered upon aspirates.</p>
+
+<p>"And how do you think Jimmie's lookin'?" she went on. "I suppose he's
+told you about his new book. Comin' out in March, don't you know. I feel
+awfully up in French poitry since he read it out to me. Don't light
+another pipe now, dear. The girl's gettin' the supper at once. I think
+you're lookin' very well, Johnnie, I do indeed. Don't you think he's
+lookin' very well, Jimmie? Has Bill Bailey been<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> out for his run?" This
+was Beatrice's affectionate diminutive for Henri Beyle, the dog.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't bother about my hands," John put in hastily to forestall
+Beatrice's next suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"We had such a dull sermon," she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband grunted a request to spare them the details.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't you know, it's a dull time for sermons now before
+Christmas. But it didn't matter, as what I really wanted was a puff of
+fresh air. Yes, I'd begun to think you'd forgotten all about us," she
+rambled on, turning archly to John. "I know we must be dull company, but
+all work and no play, don't you know ... yours is all plays and no work.
+Jimmie, I made a joke," she laughed, twitching her husband's sleeve to
+secure his attention. "Did you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I heard," he growled.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was rather good, didn't you, Johnnie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very good indeed," he assented, warmly. "Though I do work
+occasionally."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course, you silly thing, I wasn't bein' serious. I told you it
+was a joke. I know you must work a bit. Here comes the girl with supper.
+You'll excuse me, Johnnie, while I go and titivate myself. I sha'n't be
+a minute."</p>
+
+<p>Beatrice retired to the bedroom whence she could be heard humming over
+her beautification.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not meditating marriage, are you?" James mocked.</p>
+
+<p>The bachelor shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"At the same time," he protested, stoutly, "I don't think you're
+entitled to sneer at Beatrice. Considering&mdash;" he was about to say
+"everything," but feeling that this would include his brother too
+pointedly he substituted, "the weather, she's wonderfully cheerful. And
+you know I've always insisted that these rooms are cramped."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, well, when a popular success oils my palm, John, we'll move next
+door to you in Church Row."</p>
+
+<p>John wished that James would not always harp upon their respective
+fortunes: it made him feel uncomfortable,<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> especially when he was
+sitting down to cold mutton. Besides, it was unfair; had he not once
+advised James to abandon criticism and take up&mdash;he had been going to
+suggest "anything except literature," but he had noticed James' angry
+dismay and had substituted "creative work." What had been the result? An
+outburst of contemptuous abuse, a violent renunciation of anything that
+approximated to his own work. If James despised his romantic plays, why
+could he not be consistent and despise equally the wealth they brought
+him? He honored his brother's intellectual sincerity, why could not his
+brother do as much for his?</p>
+
+<p>"What beats me," James had once exclaimed, "is how a man like you who
+professes to admire&mdash;no, I believe you're honest&mdash;who does admire
+Stendhal, Turgenev, Flaubert and Merimée, who recognizes the perfection
+of <i>Manon Lescaut</i> and <i>Adolphe</i>, who in a word has taste, can bring
+himself to eructate the <i>Fall of Babylon</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all a matter of knowing one's own limitations," John had replied.
+"I tried to write realistic novels. But my temperament is not
+realistic."</p>
+
+<p>"No, if it were," James had murmured, "you wouldn't stand my affectation
+of superiority."</p>
+
+<p>It was this way James had of once in a very long while putting himself
+in the wrong that used always to heal John's wounded generosity. But
+these occasional lapses&mdash;as he supposed his cynical brother would call
+them&mdash;were becoming less and less frequent, and John had no longer much
+excuse for clinging to his romantic reverence for the unlucky head of
+his family.</p>
+
+<p>During the first half of supper Beatrice delivered a kind of lecture on
+housekeeping in London on two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a
+week, including bones for the dog; by the time that the stewed figs were
+put on the table this monologue had reduced both brothers to such a
+state of gloom by striking at James' experience and John's imagination,
+that the sourness of the cream came as a natural corollary; anything but
+sour cream would have seemed an obtrusive<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> reminder of housekeeping on
+more than two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week, including
+bones for the dog. John was convinced by his sister-in-law's mood that
+she would enjoy a short rest from speculating upon the comparative
+versatility of mutton and beef, and by James' reception of her remarks
+that he would appreciate her housekeeping all the more after being
+compelled to regard for a while the long procession of chops that his
+landlady would inevitably marshal for him while his wife was away. The
+moment seemed propitious to the unfolding of his plan.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to ask you both a favor," he began. "No, no, Beatrice, I
+disagree with you. I don't think the cream is really sour. I find it
+delicious, but I daren't ever eat more than a few figs. The cream,
+however, is particularly delicious. In fact I was on the point of
+inquiring the name of your dairy."</p>
+
+<p>"If we have cream on Sundays," Beatrice explained, "Jimmie has to put up
+with custard-powder on Wednesdays. But if we don't have cream on
+Sundays, I can spare enough eggs on Wednesdays for real custard."</p>
+
+<p>"That's very ingenious of you," John declared. "But you didn't hear what
+I was saying when I broke off in defense of the cream, <i>which</i> is
+delicious. I said that I wanted to ask a favor of you both."</p>
+
+<p>"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," James chuckled. "Or were you going
+to suggest to Beatrice that next time you have supper with us she should
+experiment not only with fresh cream, but also with some rare dish like
+nightingales' tongues&mdash;or even veal, for instance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Jimmie, you're always puttin' hits in at me about veal; but if I
+get veal, it throws me out for the whole week."</p>
+
+<p>John made another effort to wrench the conversation free from the topic
+of food:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, James. I was going to ask you to let Beatrice come and give me
+a hand with our nephew and our niece." He slightly accentuated the
+pronoun of plural possession. "Of course, that is to say, if Beatrice
+would be so kind."<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a></p>
+
+<p>"What do you want her to do? Beat them?" James asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no, James. I'm not joking. As I explained to you, I've got
+these two children&mdash;er&mdash;staying with me. It appears that George is too
+overstrained, too ill, that is, to manage them during the few weeks that
+Eleanor will be away on tour, and I thought that if Beatrice could be my
+guest for a week or two until the governess has re-created her nervous
+system, which I understand will take about a month, I should feel a
+great weight off my mind. A bachelor household, you know, is not
+primarily constructed to withstand an invasion by children. You'd find
+them very difficult here, James, if you hadn't got Beatrice."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Johnnie, I should love it," his sister-in-law cried. "That is if
+Jimmie could spare me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I could. You'd better take her back with you to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"No, really?" said John. "Why that would be splendid. I'm immensely
+obliged to you both."</p>
+
+<p>"He's quite anxious to get rid of me," Beatrice laughed, happily. "I
+sha'n't be long packin'. Fancy lookin' after Eleanor's two youngsters.
+I've often thought I <i>would</i> rather like to see if I couldn't bring up
+children."</p>
+
+<p>"Now's your chance," John jovially offered.</p>
+
+<p>"Jimmie didn't ever care much for youngsters," Beatrice explained.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband laughed bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite enough people hate me, as it is," he sneered, "without
+deliberately creating a child of my own to add to the number."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, of course, dear, I know we're better off as we are," Beatrice
+said with a soothing pat for her husband's round shoulders. "Only the
+idea comes into my head now and again that I'd just like to see if I
+couldn't manage them, that's all, dear. I'm not complaining."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to hurry you away," James muttered. "But I've got some
+work to do."<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a></p>
+
+<p>"We'd better send the servant out to look for a taxi at once," John
+suggested. "It's Sunday night, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Twenty minutes later, Beatrice looking quite fashionable now in her
+excitement&mdash;so many years had it obliterated&mdash;was seated in the taxi;
+John was half-way along the garden path on his way to join her, when his
+brother called him back.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, by the way, Johnnie," he said in gruff embarrassment, "I've got an
+article on Alfred de Vigny coming out soon in <i>The Nineteenth Century</i>.
+It can't bring me in less than fifteen guineas, but it might not be
+published for another three months. I can show you the editor's letter,
+if you like. I wonder if you could advance me ten guineas? I'm a little
+bothered just at the moment. There was a vet's bill for the dog and...."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, of course, my dear fellow. I'll send you a check to-night.
+Thanks very much for&mdash;er&mdash;releasing Beatrice, I mean&mdash;helping me out of
+a difficulty with Beatrice. Very good of you. Good-night. I'll send the
+check at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't cross it," said James.</p>
+
+<p>On the way back to Hampstead in the dank murkiness of the cab, Beatrice
+became confidential.</p>
+
+<p>"Jimmie always hated me to pass remarks about havin' children, don't you
+know, but it's my belief that he feels it as much as anyone. Look at the
+fuss he makes of poor old Bill Bailey. And bein' the eldest son and
+havin' the pictures of his grandfather and grandmother, I'm sure there
+are times when he'd give a lot to explain to a youngster of his own who
+they really were. It isn't so interestin' to explain to me, don't you
+know, because they aren't my relations, except, of course, by marriage.
+I always feel myself that Jimmie for an eldest son has been very
+unlucky. Well, there's you, for instance. I don't mean to say he's
+jealous, because he's not; but still I dare say he sometimes thinks that
+he ought to be where you are, though, of course, that doesn't<a
+name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> mean to say that he'd like you to be
+where he is. But a person can't help feelin' that there's no reason why
+you shouldn't both have been where you are. The trouble with Jimmie was
+that he wasted a lot of time when he was young, and sometimes, though I
+wouldn't say this to anybody but you, sometimes I do wonder if he
+doesn't think he married too much in a hurry. Then there were his
+dragon-flies. There they all are falling to pieces from want of
+interest. I don't suppose anybody in England has taken so much trouble
+as Jimmie over dragon-flies, but what is a dragon-fly? They'll never be
+popular with the general public, because though they don't sting, people
+think they do. And then that fellow&mdash;who is it&mdash;it begins with an M&mdash;oh
+dear, my memory is something chronic! Well, anyway, he wrote a book
+about bees, and it's tremendously popular. Why? Because a bee is
+well-known. Certainly they sting too, but then they have honey and
+people keep them. If people kept dragon-flies, it would be different.
+No, my opinion is that for an eldest son Jimmie has been very unlucky."</p>
+
+<p>The next day Bertram disappeared to school at an hour of the morning
+which John remembered did exist in his youth, but which he had for long
+regarded as a portion of the great backward and abysm of time. Beatrice
+tactfully removed his niece immediately after breakfast, not the auroral
+breakfast of Bertram, but the comfortable meal of ten o'clock; and
+except for a rehearsal of the <i>bolero</i> in the room over the library John
+was able to put in a morning of undisturbed diligence. Beatrice took
+Viola for a walk in the afternoon, and when Bertram arrived back from
+school about six o'clock she nearly spoilt her own dinner by the
+assistance she gave him with his tea. John had a couple of quiet hours
+with <i>Joan of Arc</i> before dinner, when he was only once interrupted by
+Beatrice's coming as her nephew's ambassador to ask what was the past
+participle of some Latin verb, which cost him five minutes' search for a
+dictionary. After dinner John played two sets of piquet with his
+sister-in-law<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> and having won both began to feel that there was a good
+deal to be said for a woman's presence in the house.</p>
+
+<p>But about eleven o'clock on the morning of the next day James arrived,
+and not only James but Beyle the bulldog, who had, if one might judge by
+his behavior, as profound a contempt as his master for John's library,
+and a much more unpleasant way of showing it.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd leave your dog in the hall," John protested. "Look at him
+now; he's upset the paper-basket. Get down off that chair! I say, do
+look at him!"</p>
+
+<p>Beyle was coursing round the room, steering himself with the kinked blob
+that served him for a tail.</p>
+
+<p>"He likes the soft carpet," his master explained. "He thinks it's
+grass."</p>
+
+<p>"What an idiotic dog," John scoffed. "And I suppose he thinks my
+Aubusson is an herbaceous border. Drop it, you brute, will you. I say,
+do put him downstairs. He's going to worry it in a minute, and all agree
+that bulldogs can't be induced to let go of anything they've once fairly
+gripped. Lie down, will you!"</p>
+
+<p>James roared with laughter at his brother's disgust, but finally he
+turned the dog out of the room, and John heard what he fancied was a
+panic-stricken descent of the stairs by Maud or....</p>
+
+<p>"I say, I hope he isn't chasing Mrs. Worfolk up and down the house," he
+ejaculated as he hurried out on the landing. What ever Beyle had been
+doing, he was at rest now and smiling up at John from the front-door
+mat. "I hope it wasn't Mrs. Worfolk," he said, coming back. "She's in a
+very delicate state just at present."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" James shouted, incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not in that way, my dear fellow, not in that way. But she's not
+used to having so many visitors in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to take one of them away with me, if that'll be any
+consolation to her," James announced.</p>
+
+<p>"Not Beatrice?" his brother stammered.</p>
+
+<p>James nodded grimly.<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It's all very fine for you with a mob of servants to look after you:
+but I can't spare Beatrice any more easily than you could spare Mrs.
+Worfolk. I've been confoundedly uncomfortable for nearly two days, and
+my wife must come back."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but look here," John protested. "She's been managing the children
+magnificently. I've hardly known they were in the house. You can't take
+Beatrice away."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, Johnnie, but my existence is not so richly endowed with comforts
+as yours. You'd better get a wife for yourself. You can afford one."</p>
+
+<p>"But can't we arrive at a compromise?" John pleaded. "Why don't you come
+and camp out with me, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Camp out, you hypocrite!" the critic jeered. "No, no, you can't bribe
+me with your luxuries. Do you think that I could work with two children
+careering all over the place? I dare say they don't disturb your plays.
+I dare say you can't hear them above the clash of swords and the rolling
+of thunder, but for critical work I want absolute quiet. Sorry, but I'm
+afraid I must carry off Beatrice."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, if you must...." John murmured, despondently. And it
+was very little consolation to think, while Viola practised the
+<i>fandango</i> in the library preparatory to dislocating the household by
+removing Maud from her work to escort her to the dancing-class, that
+Beatrice herself would have liked to stay.</p>
+
+<p>"However," John sternly resolved, "the next time that James tries to
+scoff at married life I shall tell him pretty plainly what I think of
+his affectation."</p>
+
+<p>He decided ultimately to keep the children at Church Row for a week, to
+give them some kind of treat on Saturday, and on Saturday evening,
+before dinner, to take them back to their father and insist upon his
+being responsible for them. If by chance George proved to be really ill,
+which he did not suppose for a moment that he would, he should take
+matters firmly into his hands and export the children to Ambles until
+their mother came home: Viola could practise<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> every known variety of
+Spanish dance over Laurence's head, or even in Laurence's room; and as
+for Bertram he could corrupt Harold to his heart's content.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, the week passed off well. Although Viola had fallen like
+Lucifer from being an angel in Maud's mind, she won back her esteem by
+behaving like a human little girl when they went to the dancing-class
+together and did not try to assume diabolic attributes in exchange for
+the angelic position she had forfeited. John was allowed to gather that
+Viola's chief claim to Maud's forgiveness was founded upon her
+encouragement of the advances made to her escort by a handsome young
+sergeant of the Line whom they had encountered in the tube.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Viola behaved herself like a little lady," Maud had informed John
+when they came home.</p>
+
+<p>"You enjoyed taking her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, sir, it's a pleasure to go about with anyone so lady-like.
+Several very nice people turned round to admire her."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they, Maud, did they?"</p>
+
+<p>Later, when Viola's account of the afternoon reached him he wondered if
+the sergeant was one of those nice people.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Worfolk, too, was reconciled to Bertram by the profound respect he
+accorded to her tales and by his appreciation of an album of family
+photographs she brought out for him from the bottom of her trunk.</p>
+
+<p>"The boy can be as quiet as a mouse," she assured John, "as long as he
+isn't encouraged to make a hullabaloo."</p>
+
+<p>"You think I encourage him, Mrs. Worfolk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, it's not my place to offer an opinion about managing
+children, but giving them a calf's head is as good as telling them to
+misbehave theirselves. It's asking for trouble. There he is now, doing
+what he calls his home work with a little plate of toffee I made for
+him&mdash;as good as gold. But what I do ask is where's the use in filling up
+a child's head with Latin and Greece. Teach a child to be a heathen
+goddess and a heathen goddess he'll be. Teach him<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> the story of the
+Infant Samuel and he'll behave like the Infant Samuel, though I must say
+that one child who I told about God's voice, in the family to which I
+was nursemaid, had a regular fit and woke up screaming in the middle of
+the night that he could hear God routing about for him under the bed.
+But then he was a child with very old-fashioned notions and took the
+whole story for gospel, and his mother said after that no one wasn't to
+read him nothing except stories about animals."</p>
+
+<p>"What happened to him when he grew up?" John asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I lost sight of the whole family, but I dare say he became a
+clergyman, for he never lost this habit of thinking God was dodging him
+all the time. It was God here, and God there, till I fairly got the
+jumps myself and might have taken up with the Wesleans if I hadn't gone
+as third housemaid to a family where the master kept race-horses which
+gave me something else to think about, and I never had anything more to
+do with children until my poor sister's Herbert."</p>
+
+<p>"That must have been a great change, Mrs. Worfolk."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, so it was; but life's only one long changing about, though
+they do say there's nothing new under the sun. But good gracious me,
+fellows who make up mottoes always exaggerate a bit: they've got to, so
+as to keep up with one another."</p>
+
+<p>When Friday evening arrived John nearly emphasized Mrs. Worfolk's
+agreement with Heraclitus by keeping the children at Church Row. But by
+the last post there came a letter from Janet Bond to beg an earlier
+production of <i>Joan of Arc</i> if it was by any means possible, and John
+looking at the infinitesimal amount he had written during the week
+resolved that he must stick to his intention of taking the children back
+to their father on the following day.</p>
+
+<p>"What would you like to do to-morrow?" he inquired. "I happen to have a
+free afternoon, and&mdash;er&mdash;I'm afraid your father wants you back in Earl's
+Court, so it will be your last opportunity of enjoying yourselves for
+some time&mdash;I<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> mean of our enjoying ourselves for some time, in fact,
+until we all meet at Ambles for Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say," Bertram protested. "Have we got to go back to rotten old
+Earl's Court? What a sell!"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought we were going to live here always," Viola exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you want to go back to your father?" John demanded in what he
+hoped was a voice brimming with reproaches for their lack of filial
+piety, but which he could not help feeling was bubbling over with
+something very near elation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," both children affirmed, "we like being with you much best."</p>
+
+<p>John's gratification was suddenly darkened by the suspicion that perhaps
+Eleanor had told them to flatter him like this; he turned swiftly aside
+to hide the chagrin that such a thought gave him, and when he spoke
+again it was almost roughly, because in addition to being suspicious of
+their sincerity he was vexed with himself for displaying a spirit of
+competitive affection. It occurred to him that it was jealousy rather
+than love which made the world go round&mdash;a dangerous reflection for a
+romantic playwright.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it can't be helped," he said. "To-morrow is definitely our
+last day. So choose your own method of celebrating it without dressing
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we only dress up on Sundays," Viola said, loftily.</p>
+
+<p>"I vote we go to the Zoo," Bertram opinionated after a weighty pause.</p>
+
+<p>Had his nephew Harold suggested a visit to the Zoo, John would have
+shunned the proposal with horror; but with Bertram and Viola the
+prospect of such an expedition was positively enticing.</p>
+
+<p>"I must beware of favoritism," John warned himself. "Yes, and I must
+beware of being blarneyed." Then aloud he added:</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, we will visit the Zoo immediately after lunch to-morrow."<a
+name="page_123" id="page_123"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but we must go in the morning," Bertram cried. "There won't be
+nearly time to see everything in the afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"What about our food?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can eat there."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear boy," John said. "You are confusing us with the lions. I
+much doubt if a human being <i>can</i> eat at the Zoo, unless he has a
+passion for peanuts and stale buns, which I have not."</p>
+
+<p>"I swear you can," Bertram maintained. "Anyhow, I know you can get ices
+there in the summer."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll risk it," John declared, adventurously; and the children echoed
+his enthusiasm with joy.</p>
+
+<p>"We must see the toucans this time," Bertram announced in a grave voice,
+"and last time we missed the zebu."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't have thought that possible," John demurred, "with all those
+stripes."</p>
+
+<p>"Not the zebra," Bertram severely corrected him. "The zebu."</p>
+
+<p>"Never heard of the beast," John said.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, V," Bertram exclaimed, incredulously. "He's never heard of the
+zebu."</p>
+
+<p>Viola was too much shocked by her uncle's ignorance to do more than
+smile sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll show it you to-morrow," Bertram promised.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks very much. I shall enjoy meeting the zebu," John admitted,
+humbly. "And any other friends of yours in the animal world whose names
+begin with Z."</p>
+
+<p>"And we also missed the ichneumon," Viola reminded her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Your last visit seems to have been full of broken appointments. It's
+just as well you're going again to-morrow. You'll be able to explain
+that it wasn't your fault."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it wasn't," said Bertram, bitterly. "It was Miss Coldwell's."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Viola. "She simply tore past everything. And when Bertram
+gave the chimpanzee a brown marble<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> instead of a nut and he nearly broke
+one of his teeth, she said it was cruel."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, fancy thinking <i>that</i> was cruel," Bertram scoffed. "He was in an
+awful wax, though; he bunged it back at me like anything. But I swopped
+the marble on Monday with Higginbotham Minor for two green commonys: at
+least I said it was the marble; only really I dropped it while we were
+waiting for the bus."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a kind of juvenile Lord Elgin," John declared.</p>
+
+<p>"What did he do?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did the Greek nation over marbles, just as you did the chimpanzee
+and Higginbotham Minor."</p>
+
+<p>Next morning John made arrangements to send the children's luggage to
+Earl's Court so that he should be able when the Zoological Gardens were
+closed to take them directly home and not be tempted to swerve from his
+determination: then under the nearest approach to a blue sky that London
+can produce in November they set out for Regent's Park.</p>
+
+<p>John with his nephew and niece for guides spent a pleasant if exhausting
+day. Remembering the criticism leveled against Miss Coldwell's rapidity
+of transit, he loitered earnestly by every cage, although he had really
+had no previous conception of how many animals the Zoo included and
+began to dread a long list of uninvited occupants at the day's end. He
+had a charming triumph in the discovery of two more animals beginning
+with Z, to wit, the zibet and the zoril, which was the sweeter for the
+fact that they were both new beasts to the children. There was an
+argument with the keeper of the snake's house, because Bertram nearly
+blinded a lethargic alligator with his sister's umbrella, and another
+with the keeper of the giraffes, because in despite of an earnest plea
+not to feed them, Viola succeeded in tempting one to sniff moistly a
+piece of raspberry noyau. If some animals were inevitably missed, there
+were several welcome surprises such as seeing much more of the
+hippopotamus than the tips of his nostrils floating like two bits of
+mud<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> on the surface of the water; others included the alleged visibility
+of a beaver's tail, a conjugal scene between the polar-bears, a truly
+demoniac exhibition of rage by the Tasmanian-devil, some wonderful
+gymnastics by a baby snow-leopard, a successful attempt to touch a
+kangaroo's nose, an indisputable wriggle of vitality from the anaconda,
+and the sudden scratching of its ear by a somnolent fruit-eating bat.</p>
+
+<p>About ten minutes before the Gardens closed John, who was tired out and
+had somehow got his cigar-case full of peanuts, declared it was time to
+go home.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but we must just have a squint at the Small Cats' House," Bertram
+cried, and Viola clasped her hands in apprehension at the bare idea of
+not doing so.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," John agreed. "I'll wait for you three minutes, and then I'm
+going slowly along towards the exit."</p>
+
+<p>The three minutes passed, and since the children still lingered he
+walked on as he had promised. When they did not catch him up as soon as
+he expected, he waited for a while and then with an exclamation of
+annoyance turned back.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth can they find to enjoy in this awful smell?" he wondered,
+when he entered the Small Cats' House to drag them out. The house was
+empty except for a bored keeper thinking of his tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen two children?" John asked, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, this is the Small Cats' House," replied the keeper.</p>
+
+<p>"Children," repeated John, irritably.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. Or, yes, I believe there <i>was</i> a little boy and a little girl
+in here, but they've been gone some minutes now. It's closing time," he
+added, significantly.</p>
+
+<p>John rushed miserably along deserted paths through the dusk, looking
+everywhere for Bertram and Viola without success.</p>
+
+<p>"All out," was being shouted from every direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Two children," he panted to a keeper by the exit.<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a></p>
+
+<p>"All out"</p>
+
+<p>"But two children are lost in the Gardens."</p>
+
+<p>"Closing time, sir. They must have gone out by another gate."</p>
+
+<p>He herded John through the turnstile into the street as he would have
+herded a recalcitrant gnu into its inclosure.</p>
+
+<p>"But this is terrible," John lamented. "This is appalling. I've lost
+George's children."</p>
+
+<p>He hailed a taxi, drove to the nearest police-station, left their
+descriptions, and directed the driver to Halma House, Earl's Court
+Square.<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">J</span><b>OHN</b> came to the conclusion while he was driving to Earl's Court that
+the distinctive anxiety in losing two children was to be sought for in
+an acute consciousness of their mobility. He had often enough lost such
+articles as sovereigns, and matchboxes, and income-tax demands; but in
+the disappearance of these he had always been consoled by the knowledge
+that they were stationary in some place or another at any given moment,
+and that somebody or another must find them at some time or another,
+with profit or disappointment to himself. But Bertram and Viola might be
+anywhere; if at this moment they were somewhere, before the taxi had
+turned the next corner they might be somewhere else. The only kind of
+loss comparable to this was the loss of a train, in which case also the
+victim was dismayed by the thought of its mobility. Moreover, was it
+logically possible to find two children, any more than it was possible
+to find a lost train? They could be caught like a train by somebody
+else; but except among gipsies, who were practically extinct, the sport
+of catching children was nowadays unknown. The classic instance of two
+lost children&mdash;and by the way an uncle came into that&mdash;was <i>The Babes in
+the Wood</i>, in which story they were neither caught nor found, though
+certainly their bodies were found owing to the eccentric behavior of
+some birds in the vicinity. It would be distressing to read in the paper
+to-morrow of two children's having been found under a drift of
+paper-bags in the bear-pit at the Zoo, hugged to death not by each
+other, but by the bears. Or they might have hidden themselves in the
+Reptile House&mdash;Bertram had displayed a dreadful curiosity about the
+effect of standing upon one of the alligators&mdash;and their fate might
+remain for ever a matter<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> of conjecture. Yet even supposing that they
+were not at this moment regarding with amazed absorption&mdash;absorption was
+too ominous a word&mdash;with amazed interest the nocturnal gambols of the
+great cats, were they on that account to be considered safe? If it was a
+question of being crunched up, it made little difference whether one was
+crunched up by the wheels of an omnibus or by the jaws of a panther. To
+be sure, Bertram was accustomed to go to school by tube every morning,
+and obviously he must know by this time how to ask the way to any given
+spot....</p>
+
+<p>The driver of the taxi was taking no risks with the traffic, and John's
+tightly strung nerves were relaxed; he began to perceive that he was
+agitating himself foolishly. The wide smoothness of Cromwell Road was
+all that was needed to persuade him that the shock had deprived him for
+a short time of common sense. How absurd he had been! Of course the
+children would be all right; but he should take good care to administer
+no less sharp a shock to George than he had experienced himself. He did
+not approve of George's attitude, and if the temporary loss of Bertram
+and Viola could rouse him to a sense of his paternal responsibilities,
+this disturbing climax of a jolly day would not have been led up to in
+vain. No, George's moral, mental, and physical laziness must no longer
+be encouraged.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall make the whole business out to be as bad as possible," he
+decided. "Though, now that I have had time to think the situation out, I
+realize that there is really not the least likelihood of anything's
+serious having happened to them."</p>
+
+<p>For James even when he was most exasperating John always felt an
+involuntary deference that stood quite apart from the sentimental regard
+which he always tried to owe him as head of the family; for his second
+brother George he had nothing but contempt. James might be wrongheaded;
+but George was fatheaded. James kept something of their father's fallen
+day about him; George was a kind of gross caricature of his own self.
+Every feature in this brother's<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> face reproduced the corresponding
+feature in his own with such compelling suggestiveness of a potentially
+similar degeneration that John could never escape from the reproach of
+George's insistent kinship. Many times he had been seized by a strong
+impulse to cut George ruthlessly out of his life; but as soon as he
+perceived that gibbous development of his own aquiline nose, that
+reduplication of his own rounded chin, that bull-like thickening of his
+own sanguine neck, and that saurian accentuation of the eloquent pouches
+beneath his own eyes, John surrendered to the claims of fraternity and
+lent George as much as he required at the moment. If Daniel Curtis's
+desire to marry Hilda had always puzzled him, Eleanor's willingness to
+be tied for life to George was even more incomprehensible. Still, it was
+lucky that she had been taken with such a whim, because she was all that
+stood between George and absolute dependence upon his family, in other
+words upon his younger brother. Whatever Eleanor's faults, however
+aggressive her personality, John recognized that she was a hard worker
+and that the incubus of a husband like George (to whom she seemed
+curiously and inexplicably devoted) entitled her to a great deal of
+indulgence.</p>
+
+<p>It was strange to look back now to the time when he and George were both
+in the city, himself in dog-biscuits and George in wool, and to remember
+that except their father everybody in the family had foretold a
+prosperous commercial career for George. Beyond his skill at Solo Whist
+and a combination of luck with judgment in betting through July and
+August on weight for age selling-plates and avoiding the big autumn
+handicaps, John could not recall that George had ever shown a glimmer of
+financial intelligence. Once or twice when he had visited his brother in
+the wool-warehouse he had watched an interview between George and a bale
+of wool, and he had often chuckled at the reflection that the
+protagonists were well matched&mdash;there had always been something woolly
+about George in mind and body; and when one day he rolled stolidly forth
+from the warehouse<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> for the last time in order to enter into partnership
+with a deluded friend to act as the British agents for a society of
+colonial housewives, John felt that the deluded friend would have been
+equally well served by a bale of wool. When George and his deluded
+friend had tried the patience of the colonial housewives for a year by
+never once succeeding in procuring for them what they required, the
+partnership was dissolved, and George processed from undertaking to
+undertaking till he became the business manager of a theatrical touring
+company. Although as a business manager he reached the nadir of his
+incompetence he emerged from the post with Eleanor for wife, which
+perhaps gave rise to a family legend that George had never been so
+successful as when he was a business manager. This legend he never
+dispelled by a second exhibition of himself in the part, although he
+often spoke regretfully of the long Sundays in the train, playing nap
+for penny points. After he married Eleanor he was commission-agent for a
+variety of gentlemanly commodities like whisky and cigars; but he drank
+and smoked much more than he sold, and when bridge was introduced and
+popularized, having decided that it was the best investment for his
+share of Eleanor's salary, he abandoned everything else. Moreover,
+John's increasing prosperity gave his play a fine stability and
+confidence; he used to feel that his wife's current account merely
+lapped the base of a solid cliff of capital. A bad week at Bridge came
+to be known as another financial disappointment; but he used to say
+cheerfully when he signed the I.O.U. that one must not expect everybody
+in the family to be always lucky, and that it was dear old John's turn
+this week. John himself sometimes became quite giddy in watching the
+swift revolutions of the wheel of fortune as spun by George. The effect
+of sitting up late at cards usually made George wake with a headache,
+which he called "feeling overworked"; he was at his best in the dusky
+hours before dinner, in fact just at the time when John was on his way
+to explode in his ear the news of the children's disappearance; it was
+then that<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> among the attenuated spinsters of Halma House his grossness
+seemed nothing more than a ruddy well-being and that his utter
+indifference to any kind of responsibility acquired the characteristics
+of a ripe geniality.</p>
+
+<p>Halma House, Earl's Court Square, was a very large boarding-house, so
+large that Miss Moxley, the most attenuated spinster who lived in it,
+once declared that it was more like a residential hotel than a
+boarding-house, a theory that was eagerly supported by all the other
+attenuated spinsters who clung to its overstuffed furniture or like
+dusty cobwebs floated about its garish saloons. Halma House was indeed
+two houses squeezed or knocked (or whatever other uncomfortable verb can
+be found to express the welding) into one. Above the front-door of
+number 198 were the large gilt letters that composed HALMA: above the
+front-door of what was once number 200 the equally large gilt letters
+that made up HOUSE. The division between the front-door steps had been
+removed so as to give an almost Medician grandeur to the entrance, at
+the top of which beneath a folded awning a curved garden-seat against
+the disused door of number 20 suggested that it was the resort for the
+intimate gayety of the boarders at the close of a fine summer day; as
+Miss Moxley used to vow, it was really quite an oasis, with the
+plane-trees of the square for contemplation not to mention the noising
+of the sparrows and the distant tinkling of milk-cans, quite an oasis in
+dingy old London. But then Miss Moxley had the early symptoms of
+exophthalmus, a malady that often accompanies the poetic temperament;
+Miss Moxley, fluttering out for five minutes' fresh air before dinner on
+a gentle eve in early June, was capable of idealizing to the semblance
+of a careless pastoral group the spectacle of a half-pay major, a portly
+widow or two up from the country, and George Touchwood, all brushing the
+smuts from their noses while they gossiped together on that seat: this
+was by no means too much for her exophthalmic vision.</p>
+
+<p>John's arrival at Halma House in raw November was not greeted by such
+evidence of communal felicity; on the contrary,<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> when he walked up the
+steps, the garden-seat looked most defiantly uninviting; nor did the
+entrance hall with its writhing gilt furniture symbolize anything more
+romantic than the competitive pretentiousness of life in a
+boarding-house that was almost a residential hotel. A blond waiter whose
+hair would have been dishevelled but for the uses of perspiration
+informed him that Mr. Tooshvood was in his sitting-room, and led him to
+a door at the end of the hall opposite another door that gave descent to
+the dungeons of supply, the inmates of which seemed to spend their time
+in throwing dishes at one another.</p>
+
+<p>The possession of this sitting-room was the outstanding advantage that
+George always claimed for Halma House, whenever it was suggested that he
+should change his quarters: Adam discoursing to his youngest descendant
+upon the glories of Eden could hardly have outbragged George on the
+subject of that sitting-room. John on the other hand disliked it and
+took pleasure in pointing out the impossibility of knowing whether it
+was a conservatory half transformed into a box-room or a box-room nearly
+turned into a conservatory. He used to call it George's amphibious
+apartment, with justice indeed, for Bertram and Viola with true
+appreciation had once selected it as the appropriate setting in which to
+reproduce Jules Verne's <i>Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea</i>. The
+wallpaper of dark blue flock was smeared with the glistening pattern as
+of seaweed upon rocks at low tide; the window was of ground-glass tinted
+to the hue of water in a swimming-bath on Saturday afternoon, and was
+surrounded by an elaborate arrangement of cork that masked a number of
+flower pots filled with unexacting plants; while as if the atmosphere
+was not already sufficiently aqueous, a stage of disheartened
+aspidistras cast a deep-sea twilight upon the recesses of the room, in
+the middle of which was a jagged table of particolored marble, and upon
+the walls of which were hung cases of stuffed fish. Mrs. Easton, the
+proprietress of Halma House, only lent the room to George as a favor: it
+was not really his own, and while he lay in bed<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> of a morning she used
+to quarrel there with all the servants in turn. Moreover, any of the
+boarders who had bicycles stabled them in this advantageous apartment,
+the fireplace of which smoked. Nevertheless, George liked it and used to
+knit there for an hour after lunch, sitting in an armchair that smelt
+like the cushions of a third-class smoker and looking with his knitting
+needles and opaque eyes like a large lobster preening his antennæ in the
+corner of a tank.</p>
+
+<p>When John visited him now, he was reading an evening paper by the light
+of a rugged mantle of incandescent gas and calculating how much he would
+have won if he had backed the second favorite for every steeplechase of
+the day.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, is that you, John?" he inquired with a yawn, and one hand swam
+vaguely in his brother's direction while the other kept its fingers
+spread out upon the second favorites like a stranded starfish.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm afraid I've got very bad news for you, George."</p>
+
+<p>George's opaque eyes rolled slowly away from the races and fixed his
+brother's in dull interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram and Viola are lost," John proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right," George sighed with relief. "I thought you were
+serious for a minute. Crested Grebe at 4 to 1&mdash;yes, my theory that you
+ought to back second favorites works out right for the ninth time in
+succession. I should have been six pounds up to-day, betting with level
+sovereigns. Tut-tut-tut!"</p>
+
+<p>John felt that his announcement had not made quite the splash it ought
+to have made in George's deep and stagnant pool.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you heard what I said," he repeated. "Bertram and
+Viola&mdash;<i>your</i> children&mdash;are definitely lost."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't expect they are really," said George, soothingly. "No, no, not
+really. The trouble is that not one single bookie will take on this
+second-favorite system. Ha-ha&mdash;they daren't, the cowards! Don't you
+bother about the kids; no, no, they'll be all right. They're probably
+hanging on behind a van&mdash;they often do that when I'm out with them,<a
+name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> but they always turn up in the end. Yes,
+I should have made twenty-nine pounds this week."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," said John, severely, "I want you clearly to understand that
+this is not a simple question of losing them for a few minutes or so.
+They have been lost now since the Zoo was closed this afternoon, and I
+am not yet convinced that they are not shut up inside for the night."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, very likely," said George. "That's just the kind of place they
+might get to."</p>
+
+<p>"The prospect of your children's passing the night in the Zoo leaves you
+unaffected?" John demanded in the tone of an examining counsel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they'll have been cleared out by now," said George. "You really
+mustn't bother yourself about them, old boy."</p>
+
+<p>"You have no qualms, George, at the notion of their wandering for hours
+upon the outskirts of Regent's Park?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't you worry, John. I'm not going to worry, and I don't want you
+to worry. Why worry? Depend upon it, you'll find them safe and sound in
+Church Row when you get back. By the way, is your taxi waiting?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I dismissed it."</p>
+
+<p>"I was afraid it might be piling up the twopences. Though I dare say a
+pyramid of twopences wouldn't bother you, you old plutocrat. Yes, these
+second favorites...."</p>
+
+<p>"Confound the second favorites," John exclaimed. "I want to discuss your
+children."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't, if you were their father. They involve me in far too many
+discussions. You see, you're not used to children. I am."</p>
+
+<p>John's eyes flashed as much as the melancholy illumination permitted;
+this was the cue for which he had been waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so, my dear George. You are used to children: I am not. And that
+is why I have come to tell you that the police have been instructed to
+return them, when found, to <i>you</i> and not to me."</p>
+
+<p>George blinked in a puzzled way.</p>
+
+<p>"To me?" he echoed.<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to you. To their father. Hasn't their luggage arrived? I had it
+sent back here this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes," George said. "Of course! I was rather late getting up this
+morning. I've been overworking a bit lately, and Karl did mutter
+something about luggage. Didn't it come in a taxi?"</p>
+
+<p>John nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I remember now, in a prepaid taxi; but as I couldn't remember that
+I was expecting any luggage, I told Karl to send it back where it came
+from."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say that you sent their luggage back after I'd taken the
+trouble to...."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, old boy. I was feeling too tired to deal with any
+problems this morning. The morning is the only opportunity I get for a
+little peace. It never occurred to me whose luggage it was. It might
+have been a mistake; in fact I thought it was a mistake. But in any case
+it's very lucky I did send it back, because they'll want it to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't keep them with me any longer."</p>
+
+<p>Though irony might be lost on George's cold blood, the plain fact might
+wake him up to the actuality of the situation and so it did.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but look here, old boy," he expostulated, "Eleanor won't be home
+for another five weeks. She'll be at Cardiff next week."</p>
+
+<p>"And Bertram and Viola will be at Earl's Court," said John, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"But the doctor strongly recommended me to rest. I've been very seedy
+while you were in America. Stomachic, old boy. Yes, that's the trouble.
+And then my nerves are not as strong as yours. I've had a lot of worry
+lately."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," John insisted. "But I've been called away on urgent
+business, and I can't leave the children at Church Row. I'm sorry,
+George, but as soon as they are found, I must hand them over to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall send them down to the country," George threatened.<a
+name="page_136" id="page_136"></a></p>
+
+<p>"When they are once more safely in your keeping, you can do what you
+like with them."</p>
+
+<p>"To your place, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>Normally John would have given a ready assent to such a proposal; but
+George's attitude had by now aroused his bitter disapproval, and he was
+determined that Bertram and Viola should be planted upon their father
+without option.</p>
+
+<p>"Ambles is impossible," he said, decidedly. "Besides, Eleanor is anxious
+that Viola shouldn't miss her series of Spanish dances. She attends the
+dancing-class every Tuesday and Friday. No doubt your landlady will lend
+you Karl to escort her."</p>
+
+<p>"Children are very difficult in a boarding-house," George argued.
+"They're apt to disturb the other guests. In fact, there was a little
+trouble only last week over some game&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Robinson Crusoe," John put in.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, they told you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, go on. I'm curious to know exactly what we missed at Church
+Row."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they have a habit, which Eleanor most imprudently encourages, of
+dressing up on Sundays, and as I've had to make it an understood thing
+that <i>none</i> of <i>my</i> clothes are to be used, they are apt to borrow other
+people's. I must admit that generally people have been very kind about
+lending their clothes; but latterly this dressing up has taken a more
+ambitious form, and on Sunday week&mdash;I think it was&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it would have been a Sunday," John agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"On Sunday week they borrowed Miss Moxley's parrot for Robinson Crusoe.
+You remember poor Miss Moxley, John?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she lent you five pounds once," said John, sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely. Oh yes, she did. Yes, yes, that was why I was so vexed about
+her lending her parrot."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't she lend her parrot?"</p>
+
+<p>"No reason at all why she shouldn't lend it; but apparently parrots are
+very excitable birds, and this particular one went mad under the strain
+of the children's performance,<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> bit Major Downman's finger, and escaped
+by an upper window. Poor Miss Moxley was extremely upset, and the bird
+has never been seen since. So you see, as I told you, children are apt
+to be rather a nuisance to the other guests."</p>
+
+<p>"None of the guests at Halma House keeps a tame calf?"</p>
+
+<p>George looked frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, I don't think so. There's certainly never been the least sign of
+mooing in the garden. Besides, I'm sure Mrs. Easton would object to a
+calf. She even objects to dogs, as I had to tell James the other day
+when he came to see me <i>very</i> early about signing some deed or other.
+But what made you ask about a calf? Do you want one?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't want one: I hate cows and calves. Bertram and Viola,
+however, are likely to want one next week."</p>
+
+<p>"You've been spoiling them, old chap. They'd never dare ask me for a
+calf. Why, it's preposterous. Yes, you've been spoiling them. Ah, well,
+you can afford it; that's one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I dare say I have been spoiling them, George; but you'll be able
+to correct that when they're once again in your sole charge."</p>
+
+<p>George looked doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very strict with them," he admitted. "I had to be after they lost
+the parrot and burned Mrs. Easton's rug. It was most annoying."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, luckily I hadn't got any suitable fur rugs," John chuckled. "So
+they actually burnt Mrs. Easton's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and&mdash;er&mdash;she was so much upset," George went on, "that
+she's&mdash;well&mdash;the fact is, they <i>can't</i> come back, John, because she's
+let their room."</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you owe her?" John demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very little. I think only from last September. Well, you see,
+Eleanor was out of an engagement all the summer and had a wretched
+salary at the Parthenon while she was understudying&mdash;these
+actress-managers are awful harpies&mdash;do you know Janet Bond?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm writing a tragedy for her now."<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Make her pay, old boy, make her pay. That's my advice. And I know the
+business side of the profession. But to come back to Mrs. Easton&mdash;I was
+really very angry with her, but you see, I've got my own room here and
+it's uncommonly difficult to find a private room in a boarding-house, so
+I thought we'd stay on here till Eleanor's tour was over. She intends to
+save three pounds a week, and if I have a little luck over the sticks
+this winter, we shall be quite straight with Mrs. Easton, and then the
+children will be able to come back in the New Year."</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you owe her?" John demanded for the second time.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I think it's about twenty pounds&mdash;it may be a little more."</p>
+
+<p>John knew how much the little more always was in George's calculations,
+and rang the bell, which fetched his brother out of the armchair almost
+in a bound.</p>
+
+<p>"Old boy, I never ring the bell here," he expostulated. "You see, I
+never consider that my private room is included in the attendance."</p>
+
+<p>George moved nervously in the direction of the door to make his peace
+with whoever should answer the unwonted summons; but John firmly
+interposed himself and explained that he had rung for Mrs. Easton
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Rung for Mrs. Easton?" George repeated in terrified amazement. "But she
+may come!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope she will," replied John, becoming more divinely calm every
+moment in the presence of his brother's agitation.</p>
+
+<p>A tangled head flung itself round the door like one of the minor
+characters in a Punch and Judy show.</p>
+
+<p>"Jew ring?" it asked, hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"Please ask Mrs. Easton to come down to Mr. Touchwood's sitting-room,"
+said John, seriously.</p>
+
+<p>The head sniffed and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could realize, old chap, that in a boarding-house far more
+tact is required than anywhere else in the world," George muttered in
+melancholy apprehension. "An<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> embassy isn't in it with a boarding-house.
+For instance, if I hadn't got the most marvelous tact, I should never
+have kept this room. However," he added more cheerfully, "I don't
+suppose for a moment that she'll come&mdash;unless of course she thinks that
+the chimney is on fire. Dash it, John, I wish you could understand some
+of the difficulties of my life. That's why I took up knitting. My nerves
+are all to pieces. If I were a rich man I should go for a long
+sea-voyage."</p>
+
+<p>George fell into a silent brooding upon his misfortunes and ill-health
+and frustrated ambitions; John examined the stuffed fish upon the walls,
+which made him think of wet days upon the river and waiting drearily in
+hotel smoking-rooms for the weather to clear up. Then suddenly Mrs.
+Easton filled the room. Positive details of this lady's past were
+lacking, although the gossip of a long line of attenuated spinsters had
+evolved a rich apocrypha. It was generally accepted, however, that Halma
+House was founded partly upon settlements made in her favor long ago by
+a generous stockbroker and partly upon an insurance-policy taken out by
+her late husband Dr. Easton, almost on the vigil of his death, the only
+successful operation he ever performed. The mixed derivation of her
+prosperity was significantly set forth in her personal appearance: she
+either wore widow's black and powdered her face with pink talcum or she
+wore bright satins with plumed hats and let her nose shine: so that
+although she never looked perfectly respectable, on the other hand she
+never looked really fast.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, ma'am," John began at once, assuming an air of
+Grandisonian courtesy. "My brother is anxious to settle his account."</p>
+
+<p>The clouds rolled away from Mrs. Easton's brow; the old Eve glimmered
+for a moment in her fierce eye; if he had been alone with her, John
+would have thought that she was about to wink at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear my nephew and niece have been taking liberties with your rug,"
+he went on, but feeling that he might have<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> expressed the last sentence
+better, he hurriedly blotted the check and with a bow handed it to the
+proprietress. "No doubt," he added, "you will overlook it this time? I
+am having a new rug sent to you immediately. What&mdash;er&mdash;skin do you
+prefer? Bear? I mean to say, the rug."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to think of any other animal whose personality survived in
+rugs, but could think of none except a rabbit, and condemning the
+ambiguity of the English language waited in some embarrassment for Mrs.
+Easton to reply. She was by this time so surely convinced of John's
+interest in her that she opened to him with a trilling flutter of
+complacency like a turkey's tail.</p>
+
+<p>"It happened to be a bearskin," she murmured. "But children will be
+children. We oughtn't to forget that we were all children once, Mr.
+Touchwood."</p>
+
+<p>"So no doubt," John nervously continued, "you will be glad to see them
+when they come back to-night. Their room...."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall give orders at once, Mr. Touchwood."</p>
+
+<p>He wished that she would not harp upon the Mr. Touchwood; he seemed to
+detect in it a kind of reproachful formality; but he thanked her and
+hoped nervously she would now leave him to George.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear me, why the girl hasn't lit the fire," Mrs. Easton exclaimed,
+evidently searching for a gracious action.</p>
+
+<p>George eying his brother with a glance between admiration and
+disquietude told his landlady that he thought the fire smoked a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have the chimney swept to-morrow," she answered as grandly as
+if she had conferred a dukedom upon John and an earldom upon George.</p>
+
+<p>Then with a special smile that was directed not so much toward the
+successful author as toward the gallant male she tucked away the check
+in her bodice, where it looked as forlorn as a skiff upon the tumultuous
+billows of the Atlantic, and went off to put on her green satin for
+dinner.<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a></p>
+
+<p>"We shall all hope to see you at half-past seven," she paused in the
+doorway to assure John.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, I'll tell you what it is, old chap," said George when they
+were alone again. "<i>You</i> ought to have taken up the commission business
+and <i>I</i> ought to have written plays. But thanks very much for tiding me
+over this difficult time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said John, a little sharply. "Your wife's current account wasn't
+flowing quite strongly enough, was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful woman, Mrs. Easton," George declared. "She has a keen eye for
+business."</p>
+
+<p>"And for pleasure too, I should imagine," said John, austerely. "But get
+on your coat, George," he added, "because we must go out and inquire at
+all the police stations in turn for news of Bertram and Viola. We can't
+stop here discussing that woman."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you the kids will be all right. You mustn't get fussy, John.
+It's absurd to go out now," George protested. "In fact I daren't. I must
+think of my health. Dr. Burnham who's staying here for a congress of
+medical men has given me a lot of advice, and as he has refused to
+charge me a penny for it, the least I can do is to pay attention to what
+he says. Besides, what are we going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Visit all the police stations in London."</p>
+
+<p>"What shall we gain by doing that? Have you ever been to a police
+station? They're most uncomfortable places to hang about in before
+dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Get on your coat," John repeated.</p>
+
+<p>George sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you insist, I suppose you have the right to insist; but in my
+opinion it's a waste of time. And if the kids are in a police station, I
+think it would teach them a dashed good lesson to keep them there for
+awhile. You don't want to encourage them to lose themselves every day. I
+wish <i>you</i> had half a dozen kids."</p>
+
+<p>John, however, was inflexible; the sight of his brother sitting in that
+aqueous room and pondering the might-have-beens of the race course had
+kindled in his breast the fire of a<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> reformer; George must be taught
+that he could not bring children into the world without being prepared
+to look after them. He must and should be taught.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you'd take more trouble," he declared, "if you'd lost a fox
+terrier."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I should," George agreed. "I should have to."</p>
+
+<p>John reddened with indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be angry, old chap. I didn't mean that I should think more of a
+fox terrier. But, don't you see, a dog is dependent upon its collar,
+whereas Bertram and Viola can explain where they come from. Is it very
+cold out?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better wear your heavy coat."</p>
+
+<p>"That means I shall have to go all the way upstairs," groaned George.</p>
+
+<p>The two brothers walked along the hall, and John longed to prod George
+with a heavy, spiked pole.</p>
+
+<p>"Going out, Touchwood?" inquired an elderly man of military appearance,
+who was practicing golf putts from one cabbage rose to another on the
+Brussels carpet.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm going out, Major. You know my brother, don't you? You remember
+Major Downman, John?"</p>
+
+<p>George left his brother with the major and toiled listlessly upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I once saw a play of yours, Mr. Touchwood."</p>
+
+<p>John smiled as mechanically as the major might have returned a salute.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The Fall of Nineveh</i>, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The author bowed an affirmative: it was hardly worth while
+differentiating between Nineveh and Babylon when he was just going out.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," the major persisted. "Wasn't there a good deal of talk about the
+scantness of some of the ladies' dresses?"</p>
+
+<p>"There may have been," John said. "We had to save on the dresses what we
+spent on the hanging gardens."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," agreed the major, wisely. "But I'm not a puritan myself."<a
+name="page_143" id="page_143"></a></p>
+
+<p>John bowed again to show his appreciation of the admission.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. Rather the reverse, in fact. I play golf every Sunday, and if
+it's wet I play bridge."</p>
+
+<p>John wished that George would be quick with his coat.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't go in much for the theater nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, though I used to when I was a subaltern. By gad, yes! But it was
+better, I think, in my young days. No offense to you, Mr. Touchwood."</p>
+
+<p>"Distance does lend enchantment," John assented.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, quite. I suppose you don't remember a piece at the old Prince of
+Wales? What was it called? Upon my soul, I've forgotten. It was a
+capital piece, though. I remember there was a scene in which the
+uncle&mdash;or it may not have been the uncle&mdash;no, I'm wrong. It was at the
+Strand. Or was it? God bless my soul, I don't know which it was. You
+don't remember the piece? It was either at the Prince of Wales or the
+Strand, or, by Jove, was it Toole's?"</p>
+
+<p>Was George never coming? Every moment would bring Major Downman nearer
+to the heart of his reminiscence, and unless he escaped soon he might
+have to submit to a narrative of the whole plot.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what I'm doing?" the Major began again. "I'm confusing two
+pieces. That's what I'm doing. But I know an uncle arrived suddenly."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, uncles are often rather fidgety," John agreed. "Ah, excuse me,
+Major. I see my brother coming downstairs. Good-by, Major, good-by. I
+should like to have a chat with you one of these days about the
+mid-Victorian theater."</p>
+
+<p>"Delighted," the Major said, fervently. "I shall think of that play
+before to-night. Don't you be afraid. Yes, it's on the tip of my tongue.
+On the very tip. But I'm confusing two theaters. I see where I've gone
+wrong."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was the sound of a taxi's arrival at Halma House;
+the bell rang; when George opened the door<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> for John and himself to pass
+out, they were met by Mrs. Worfolk holding Viola and Bertram tightly,
+one in each hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you they'd turn up," George said, and immediately took off his
+overcoat with a sigh of relief. "Well, you've given us a nice hunt," he
+went on with an indignant scowl at the children. "Come along to my room
+and explain where you've been. Good evening, Mrs. Worfolk."</p>
+
+<p>In their father's sitting-room Bertram and Viola stood up to take their
+trial.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," opened Mrs. Worfolk, on whom lay the burden of narrating the
+malefactors' behavior. "Yes, I've brought back the infant prodigals, and
+a nice job I've had to persuade them to come quiet. In fact, I never had
+such a job since I took my poor sister's Herbert hollering to the
+hospital with a penny as he'd nearly choked himself with, all through
+him sucking it to get at some sweet stuff which was stuck to the edge.
+He <i>didn't</i> choke, though, because I patted him all down the street the
+same as if I'd been bowling a hoop, and several people looked at me in a
+very inquisitive way. Not that I ever pay attention to how people looks,
+except in church. To begin with, the nerve they've got. Well, I mean to
+say, when any one packs up some luggage and sends it off in a taxi,
+whoever expects to see it come back again almost at once? It came
+bouncing back, I do declare, as if it had been India rubber. 'Well,' as
+I said to Maud, 'It just shows how deep they are, and Mr. Touchwood'll
+have trouble with them before the day's done. You mark my words.' And,
+sure enough, just as I'd made up my mind that you wouldn't be in to tea,
+rat-a-tat-tat on the front door, and up drives my lord and my lady as
+grand as you like in a taxi. Of course, it give me a bit of a turn, not
+seeing you, sir, and I was just going to ask if you'd had an accident or
+something, when my lord starts in to argue with the driver that he'd
+only got to pay half fare for himself and his sister, the same as his
+father does when they travel by train. Oh, yes; he was going to pay the
+man himself. Any one would<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> of thought it was the Juke of Wellington, to
+hear him arguing with that driver. Well, anyway, in the end, of course I
+had to pay the difference out of my housekeeping money, which you'll
+find entered in the book. And then, without so much as a blink, my lord
+starts in to tell how they'd gone into the Small Rat's House&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Cats," interrupted Viola, solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, rats or cats, what does it matter, you naughty girl? It wasn't of
+rats or cats you were thinking, but running away from your poor uncle,
+as you perfeckly well know. Yes, indeed, sir, they went into this small
+house and dodged you like two pickpockets and then went careering out of
+the Zoo in the opposite direction. The first taxi that came along they
+caught hold of and drove back to Church Row. 'But your uncle intended
+for you to go back to your father, Mr. George, in Earl's Court,' I
+remarked very severely. 'We know,' they says to me, laughing like two
+hyenas. 'But we don't want to go back to Earl's Court,' putting in a
+great deal of rudeness about Earl's Court, which, not wanting to get
+them into worse trouble than what they will get into as it is, I won't
+repeat. 'And we won't go back to Earl's Court,' they said, what's more.
+'We <i>won't</i> go back.' Well, sir, when I've had my orders given me, I
+know where I am, and the policeman at the corner being a friend of
+Elsa's, he helped; for, believe me or not, they struggled like two
+convicks with Maud and I. Well, to cut a long story short, here they
+are, and just about fit to be put to bed on the instant."</p>
+
+<p>John could not fancy that Eleanor had contrived such an elaborate
+display of preference for his company, and with every wish to support
+Mrs. Worfolk by an exhibition of avuncular sternness he could only smile
+at his nephew and niece. Indeed, it cost him a great effort not to take
+them back with him at once to Hampstead. He hardened himself, however,
+and tried to look shocked.</p>
+
+<p>"We wanted to stay with you," said Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>"We wanted to stay with you," echoed Viola.<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a></p>
+
+<p>"We didn't <i>want</i> to dodge you in the Small Cats' House. But we had to,"
+said Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we had to," echoed Viola.</p>
+
+<p>"Their luggage <i>'as</i> come back with them," interrupted Mrs. Worfolk,
+grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course, they must stay here," John agreed. "Oh, unquestionably!
+I wasn't thinking of anything else."</p>
+
+<p>He beckoned to Bertram and Viola to follow him out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he whispered to them in the passage, "be good children and
+stay quietly at home. We shall meet at Christmas." He pressed a
+sovereign into each hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Good lummy," Bertram gasped. "I wish I'd had this on the fifth of
+November. I'd have made old Major Downman much more waxy than he was
+when I tied a squib to his coat."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you, Bertram, did you? You oughtn't to have done that. Though I can
+understand the temptation. But don't waste this on fireworks."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no," said Bertram. "I'm going to buy Miss Moxley a parrot, because
+we lost hers."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you, Bertram?" John exclaimed with some emotion. "That shows a fine
+spirit, my boy. I'm very pleased with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Bertram, "because then with what you gave V we'll buy a
+monkey at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens," cried John, turning pale. "A monkey?"</p>
+
+<p>"That will be nice, won't it, Uncle John?" Viola asked, tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps it would escape from an upper window like the parrot, John
+thought, before Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>When the children had been sent upstairs and Mrs. Worfolk had gone back
+to Hampstead, John told his brother that he should not stop to dinner
+after all.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, all right," George said. "But I had something to talk over with
+you. Those confounded children put it clean out of my mind. I had a
+strange letter from Mama this<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a> week. It seems that Hugh has got into
+rather a nasty fix. She doesn't say what it is, and I don't know why she
+wrote to me of all people. But she's evidently frightened about Hugh and
+asks me to approach you on his behalf."</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth has he been doing now?" asked John, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think it was probably money," said George. "Well, I told you
+I'd had a lot of worry lately, and I <i>have</i> been very worried about this
+news of Hugh. Very worried. I'm afraid it may be serious this time. But
+if I were you, old chap, I should refuse to do anything about it. Why
+should he come to you to get him out of a scrape? You've done enough for
+him, in my opinion. You mustn't let people take advantage of your good
+nature, even if they are relations. I'm sorry my kids have been a bit of
+a nuisance, but, after all, they are still only kids, and Hugh isn't.
+He's old enough to know better. Mama says something about the police,
+but that may only be Hugh's bluff. I shouldn't worry myself if I were
+you. It's no good for us all to worry."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go and see Hugh at once," John decided. "You're not keeping
+anything from me, George? He's not actually under arrest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, you won't have to visit any more police stations to-night,"
+George promised. "Hugh is living with his friend, Aubrey Fenton, at 22
+Carlington Road, West Kensington."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go there to-night," John declared.</p>
+
+<p>He had almost reached the front door when George called him back.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been trying to work out a riddle," he said, earnestly. "You know
+there's a medicine called Easton's Syrup? Well, I thought ... don't be
+in such a hurry; you'll muddle me up ... and I shall spoil it...."</p>
+
+<p>"Try it on Major Downman," John advised, crossly, slamming the door of
+Halma House behind him. "Fatuous, that's what George is, utterly
+fatuous," he assured himself as he hurried down the steps.<a
+name="page_148" id="page_148"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">J</span><b>OHN</b> decided to walk from Earl's Court to West Kensington. Being still
+in complete ignorance of what Hugh had done, he had a presentiment that
+this time it was something really grave, and he was now beginning to
+believe that George knew how grave it was. Perhaps his decision to go on
+foot was not altogether wise, for he was tired out by a convulsive day,
+and he had never experienced before such a fathomless sinking of the
+stomach on the verge of being mixed up in a disagreeable family
+complication, which was prolonged by the opportunity that the walk
+afforded him for dismal meditation. While he hurried with bowed head
+along one ill-lighted road after another a temptation assailed him to
+follow George's advice and abandon Hugh, and not merely Hugh, but all
+the rest of his relations, a temptation that elaborated itself into
+going back to Church Row, packing up, and escaping to Arizona or British
+East Africa or Samoa. In the first place, he had already several times
+vowed never more to have anything to do with his youngest brother;
+secondly, he was justified in resenting strongly the tortuous road by
+which he had been approached on his behalf; thirdly, it might benefit
+Hugh's morals to spend a week or two in fear of the ubiquitous police,
+instead of a few stay-at-home tradesmen; fourthly, if anything serious
+did happen to Hugh, it would serve as a warning to the rest of his
+relations, particularly to George; finally, it was his dinner hour, and
+if he waited to eat his dinner before tackling Hugh, he should
+undoubtedly tackle him afterward in much too generous a frame of mind.
+Yes, it would be wiser to go home at once, have a good dinner, and start
+for Arizona to-morrow morning. The longer he contemplated it, the less
+he liked the way he had been beguiled into visiting Hugh. If the&mdash;the<a
+name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> young bounder&mdash;no, really bounder was not
+too strong a word&mdash;if the young bounder was in trouble, why could he not
+have come forward openly and courageously to the one relation who could
+help him? Why had he again relied upon his mother's fondness, and why
+had she, as always, chosen the indirect channel by writing to George
+rather than to himself? The fact of the matter was that his mother and
+George and Hugh possessed similar loose conceptions of integrity, and
+now that it was become a question of facing the music they had
+instinctively joined hands. Yet George had advised him to have nothing
+more to do with Hugh, which looked as if his latest game was a bit too
+strong even for George to relish, for John declined to believe that
+George possessed enough of the spirit of competitive sponging to bother
+about trying to poach in Hugh's waters; Hilda or Eleanor might, but
+George.... George was frightened, that was it; obviously he knew more
+than he had told, and he did not want to be exposed ... it would not
+astonish him to learn that George was in the business with Hugh and had
+invented that letter from Mama to invoke his intervention before it was
+too late to save himself. What could it all be about? Curiosity turned
+the scale against Arizona, and John pressed forward to West Kensington.</p>
+
+<p>The houses in Carlington Road looked like an over-crowded row of tall,
+thin men watching a football match on a cold day; each red-faced house
+had a tree in front of it like an umbrella and trim, white steps like
+spats; in a fantastic mood the comparison might be prolonged
+indefinitely, even so far as to say that, however outwardly
+uncomfortable they might appear, like enthusiastic spectators, they were
+probably all aglow within. If John had been asked whether he liked an
+interior of pink lampshades and brass gongs, he would have replied
+emphatically in the negative; but on this chill November night he found
+the inside of number 22 rather pleasant after the street. The maid
+looked doubtful over admitting him, which was not surprising, because
+an<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> odor of hot soup in the hall and the chink of plates behind a closed
+door on the right proclaimed that the family was at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you wait in the drawing-room, sir?" she inquired. "I'll inform Mr.
+Touchwood that you're here."</p>
+
+<p>John felt a grim satisfaction in thus breaking in upon Hugh's dinner;
+there was nothing so well calculated to disturb even a tranquil
+conscience as an unexpected visit at such an hour; but the effect upon
+guilt would be....</p>
+
+<p>"Just say that a gentleman wishes to speak to him for a minute. No
+name," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>The walk through the dim streets, coupled with speculations upon the
+various crimes that his brother might have committed, had perhaps
+invested John's rosy personality with an unusual portentousness, for the
+maid accepted his instructions fearfully and was so much flustered by
+them that she forgot to turn up the gas in the drawing-room, of which
+John was glad; he assured himself that the heavily draped room in the
+subdued light gave the final touch to the atmosphere of horror which he
+aimed at creating; and he could not resist opening the door to enjoy the
+consternation in the dining-room just beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>A murmur from the maid.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'd better finish your soup first. I wouldn't let my soup get
+cold for anybody."</p>
+
+<p>There followed a general buzz from the midst of which Hugh emerged, his
+long, sallow face seeming longer than usual in his anxiety, his long,
+thin neck craning forward like an apprehensive bird's, and his bony
+fingers clutching a napkin with which he dusted his legs nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a flag of truce," John thought, and almost simultaneously felt a
+sharp twinge of resentment at Hugh's daring to sport a dinner jacket
+with as much effrontery as if his life had been as white as that expanse
+of shirt.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord," Hugh exclaimed when he recognized his brother. "I thought
+you were a detective, at least. Come<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> in and have some grub, won't you?
+Mrs. Fenton will be awfully glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>John demurred at the invitation. Judging by what he had been told about
+Mrs. Fenton's attitude toward Hugh, he did not think that Touchwood was
+a welcome name in 22 Carlington Road.</p>
+
+<p>"Aubrey!" Hugh was shouting. "One of my brothers has just blown in."</p>
+
+<p>John felt sure that the rapid feminine voice he could faintly hear had a
+distinct note of expostulation in it; but, however earnest the
+objection, it was at once drowned in the boisterous hospitality of
+Aubrey, who came beaming into the hall&mdash;a well set up young man of about
+twenty-five with a fresh complexion, glasses, an opal solitaire in his
+shirt, and a waxy white flower in his buttonhole.</p>
+
+<p>"Do come in," he begged, with an encouraging wave of his napkin. "We've
+only just begun."</p>
+
+<p>Although John felt that by dining in this house he was making himself an
+accessory after the still undivulged fact, he was really so hungry by
+now that he could not bring himself to refuse. He knew that he was
+displaying weakness, but he compounded with his austere self by arguing
+that he was more likely to arrive at the truth if he avoided anything in
+the nature of precipitate action.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenton did not receive her guest as cordially as her son; in fact,
+she showed plainly that she resented extremely his having been invited
+to dinner. She was a well-preserved woman and reminded John of a pink
+crystallized pear; her frosted transformation glistened like encrusted
+sugar round the stalk, which was represented by a tubular head ornament
+on the apex of the carefully tended pyramid; her greeting was sticky.</p>
+
+<p>"My son's friend has spoken of you," Mrs. Fenton was saying, coldly, in
+reply to John's apologies for intruding upon her like this. He for his
+part was envying her ability to refer to Hugh without admitting his
+individual existence, when somebody kicked him under the table, and,
+looking up,<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> he saw that Hugh was frowning at him in a cautionary
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I've already met your brother, the writer," his hostess continued.</p>
+
+<p>"My brother, James?" asked John in amazement. He could not envisage
+James in these surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I have not had the pleasure of meeting him <i>yet</i>. I was referring
+to the dramatist, who has dined with me several times."</p>
+
+<p>"But," John began, when another kick under the table silenced him.</p>
+
+<p>"Pass the salt, will you, George, old boy?" Hugh said loudly.</p>
+
+<p>John's soup was cold, but in the heat of his suppressed indignation he
+did not notice it. So George had been masquerading in this house as
+himself; no wonder he had not encouraged the idea of an interview with
+Hugh. Evidently a dishonest outrage had been perpetrated in his name,
+and though Hugh might kick him under the table, he should soon obtain
+his revenge by having Hugh kicked out of the house. John took as much
+pleasure in his dinner that evening as a sandbag might have taken in
+being stuffed with sand. He felt full when it was over, but it was a
+soulless affair; and when Mrs. Fenton, who had done nothing except look
+down her nose all through the meal, left the table, he turned furiously
+upon Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What does this gross impersonation mean?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Aubrey threw himself figuratively between the brothers, which only
+seemed to increase John's irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"We wanted to jolly the mater along," he explained. "No harm was
+intended, but Hughie was keen to prove his respectability; so, as you
+and he weren't on the most cordial terms, we introduced your brother,
+George, as yourself. It was a compliment, really, to your public
+character; but old George rather enjoyed dining here, and I'm bound to
+say he sold the mater some very decent port. In fact, you're drinking it
+now."<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a></p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose," said John, angrily, "that between you all you've
+perpetrated some discreditable fraud, what? I suppose you've been
+ordering shirts in my name as well as selling port, eh? I'll disown the
+bill. You understand me? I won't have you masquerading as a gentleman,
+Hugh, when you can't behave like one. It's obtaining money under false
+pretenses, and you can write to your mother till you're as blue in the
+face as the ink in your bottle&mdash;it won't help you. I can put up with
+laziness; I can tolerate stupidity; I can endure dissipation; but I'm
+damned if I'll stand being introduced as George. Port, indeed! Don't try
+to argue with me. You must take the consequences. Mr. Fenton, I'm sorry
+I allowed myself to be inveigled like this into your mother's house. I
+shall write to her when I get home, and I hope she will take steps to
+clear that impostor out. No, I won't have a cigar&mdash;though I've no doubt
+I shall presently receive the bill for them, unless I've also been
+passed off as a tobacconist's agent by George. As for him, I've done
+with him, too. I shall advertise in the <i>Times</i> that neither he nor Hugh
+has any business to order things in my name. I came here to-night in
+response to an urgent appeal; I find that I've been made a fool of; I
+find myself in a most undignified position. No, I will not have another
+glass of port. I don't know how much George exacted for it, but let me
+tell you that it isn't even good port: it's turbid and fiery."</p>
+
+<p>John rose from the table and was making for the door, when Hugh took
+hold of his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, old chap," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't attempt to soften me with pothouse endearments," said John,
+fiercely. "I will not be called 'old chap.'"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, old chap, I won't," said Hugh. "But before you go jumping
+into the street like a lighted cracker, please listen. Nobody has been
+ordering anything in your name. You're absolutely off the lines there.
+Why, I exhausted your credit years ago. And I don't see why you should
+grudge poor old George a few dinners."<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You rascal," John stammered. "You impudent rascal!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't annoy him, Hughie," Aubrey advised. "I can see his point."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you can, sir, can you?" John snapped. "You can understand, can you,
+how it affects me to be saddled with brothers like these and port like
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>John was so furious that he could not bring himself to mention George or
+Hugh by name: they merely represented maddening abstractions of
+relationship, and he longed for some phrase like "my son's friend" with
+which he might disown them forever.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't blame your brother George, Mr. Touchwood," urged Aubrey.
+"He's not involved in this latest affair. I'm sorry we told the mater
+that he was you, but the mater required jollying along, as I explained.
+She can't appreciate Hugh. He's too modern for her."</p>
+
+<p>"I sympathize with Mrs. Fenton."</p>
+
+<p>"You must forgive a ruse. It's just the kind of ruse I should think a
+playwright would appreciate. You know. Charley's Aunt and all that."</p>
+
+<p>John clenched his fist: "Don't you mutter to me about a sense of humor,"
+he said to Hugh, wrathfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't muttering," replied Hugh. "I merely observed that a little
+sense of humor wouldn't be a bad thing. I'm sorry that George has been
+dragged like a red herring across the business, because it's a much more
+serious matter than simply introducing George to Mrs. Fenton as you and
+selling her some port which personally I think is not at all bad, eh,
+Aubrey?"</p>
+
+<p>He poured himself out another glass to prove his conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"You may think all this a joke," John retorted. "But I don't. I consider
+it a gross exhibition of bad taste."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Granted. Let's leave it at that," sighed Hugh, wearily. "But
+you don't give a fellow much encouragement to own up when he really is
+in a tight corner. However, personally I've got past minding. If I'm
+sentenced<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> to penal servitude, it'll be your fault for not listening.
+Only don't say I disgraced the family name."</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh's right," Aubrey put in. "We really are in a deuce of a hole."</p>
+
+<p>"Disgrace the family name?" John repeated. "Allow me to tell you that
+when you hawk George round London as your brother, the playwright, I
+consider <i>that</i> is disgracing the family name."</p>
+
+<p>"So that if I'm arrested for forgery," Hugh asked, "you won't mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forgery?" John gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we had bad luck in the straight," he murmured, tossing off two
+more glasses of port. "Cleared every hurdle like a bird and ... however,
+it's no good grumbling. We just didn't pull it off."</p>
+
+<p>"No," sighed Aubrey. "We were beaten by a short head."</p>
+
+<p>John sat down unsteadily, filled up half a glass of Burgundy with
+sherry, and drank it straight off without realizing that George's port
+was even worse than he had supposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose name have you forged?" he brought himself to ask at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Stephen Crutchley's."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!" he groaned. "But this is horrible. And has he found out?
+Does he know who did it?"</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of John that he did not ask for how much his
+friend's name had been forged.</p>
+
+<p>"He has his suspicions," Hugh admitted. "And he's bound to know pretty
+soon. In fact, I think the only thing to do is for you to explain
+matters. After all, in a way it was a joke."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a kind of experimental joke," Aubrey agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"But it has proved to me how easy it is to cash a forged check," Hugh
+continued, hopefully. "And, of course, if you talk to Crutchley he'll be
+all right. He's not likely to be very severe on the brother of an old
+friend. That was one of the reasons we experimented on him&mdash;that, and
+also<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> partly because I found an old check book of his. He's awfully
+careless, you know, is Stephen&mdash;very much the high-brow architect and
+all that, though he doesn't forget to charge. In fact, so many people
+have had to pay for his name that it serves him right to find himself
+doing the same for once."</p>
+
+<p>"Does Mrs. Fenton know anything of this?" John asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no," Aubrey answered, quickly. "Well, women don't understand about
+money, do they? And the mater has less idea of the wicked world than
+most. My father was always a bit of a recluse, don't you see?"</p>
+
+<p>"Was he?" John said, sarcastically. "I should think his son will be a
+bit of a recluse, too, before he's done. But forgery! No, it's
+incredible&mdash;incredible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry, Johnnie," Hugh insisted. "Don't worry. I'm not worrying at
+all, now that you've come along. Nobody knows anything for certain yet.
+George doesn't know. Mama doesn't know. Mrs. Fenton doesn't know. And
+Stevie only guesses."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that he guesses?" John demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's part of the story, eh, Aubrey?" said Hugh, turning to his
+accomplice, who nodded sagely.</p>
+
+<p>"Which I suppose one ought to tell in full, eh, Aubrey?" he went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it would interest your brother&mdash;I mean&mdash;quite apart from his
+being your brother, it would interest him as a playwright," Aubrey
+agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Glasses round, then," called Hugh, cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a vacant armchair by the fireplace," Aubrey pointed out to
+John.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," said John, stiffly. "I don't suppose that the comfort of an
+armchair will alleviate my feelings. Begin, sir," he commanded Hugh.
+"Begin, and get it finished quickly, for heaven's sake, so that I can
+leave this house and think out my course of action in solitude."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what it is, Johnnie?" Hugh said, craning his neck and
+examining his brother with an air of suddenly aroused curiosity. "You're
+beginning to dramatize yourself.<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> I suppose it's inevitable, but I wish
+you wouldn't. It gives me the same kind of embarrassed feeling that I
+get when a woman starts reciting. You're not subjective. That's the
+curse of all romantic writers. You want to get an objective viewpoint.
+You're not the only person on in this scene. I'm on. Aubrey's on. Mrs.
+Fenton and Stevie Crutchley are waiting in the wings, as it were. And,
+for all I know, the police may be waiting there, too, by this time. Get
+an objective viewpoint, Johnnie. Subjectivity went out with Rousseau."</p>
+
+<p>"Confound your impudence," John spluttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's much better than talking about thinking out a course of
+action in solitude," Hugh approved. "But don't run away with the idea
+that I'm trying to annoy you. I'm not. I've every reason to encourage
+the romantic side of you, because finally it will be the romantic side
+of you that will shudder to behold your youngest brother in the dock. In
+fact, I'm going the limit on your romance. At the same time I don't like
+to see you laying it on too thick. I'll give you your fine feelings and
+all that. I'll grant you your natural mortification, etcetera, etcetera.
+But try to see my point of view as well as your own. When you're
+thinking out a course of action in solitude, you'll light a cigar with a
+good old paunch on it, and you'll put your legs up on the mantelpiece,
+unless you've grown old-maidish and afraid of scratching the furniture,
+and you'll pat your passbook, which is probably suffering from fatty
+degeneration. That's a good phrase, Aubrey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Devilish good," the accomplice allowed. "But, look here, Hugh,
+steady&mdash;the mater gets rather bored if we keep the servants out of the
+dining-room too long, and I think your brother is anxious to have the
+story. So fire ahead, there's a good fellow."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh looked hurt at the lack of appreciation which greeted the subtler
+shades of his discourse, but, observing that John looked still more hurt
+at being kept waiting, he made haste to begin without further reference
+to style.<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, Johnnie, I've always been unlucky."</p>
+
+<p>John made a gesture of impatience; but Hugh raised a sedative hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I know there's nothing that riles lucky people so much as when unlucky
+people claim the prerogatives of their bad luck. I'm perfectly willing
+to admit that I'm lazier than you. But remember that energy is a gift,
+not an attainment. And I was born tired. The first stunning blow I had
+was when the old man died. You remember he always regarded me as a bit
+of an infant prodigy? So I was from his point of view, for he was over
+sixty when he begot me, and he used to look at me just as some people
+look at the silver cups they've won for races. But when he died, all the
+advantages of being the youngest son died with him, and I realized that
+I was an encumbrance. I'm willing to grant that I was a nuisance, too,
+but ... however, it's no use raking up old scores.... I'm equally
+willing to admit that you've always treated me very decently and that
+I've always behaved very rottenly. I'll admit also that my taste in
+clothes was beyond my powers of gratification; that I liked wine and
+women&mdash;or to put a nicer point upon it&mdash;whisky and waitresses. I did.
+And what of it? You'll observe that I'm not going to try to justify
+myself. Have another glass of port? No? Right-o; well, I will. I repeat
+I'm not going to attempt to justify myself, even if I couldn't, which I
+can, but in vino veritas, which I think you'll admit is Latin. Latin, I
+said. Precisely. Where was I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, old boy, buck up," his friend prompted, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, sir," John said, trembling visibly with indignation. "Get on with
+your story while you can. I don't want to waste my time listening to the
+meanderings of a drunkard."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh's eyes were glazing over like a puddle in frost, but he knitted his
+brows and regarded his brother with intense concentration.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't try to take any literary advantage of me, Johnnie. You can dig
+out the longest word in the dictionary,<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> but I've got a longer.
+Metempsychosis! Hear that? I'm willing to admit that I don't like having
+to say it, but you find me another man who can say it at all after
+George's port. Metempsychosis! And it's not a disease. No, no, no, no,
+don't you run away with the idea that it's a disease. Not at all. It's a
+religion. And for three years I've been wasting valuable knowledge like
+that on an architect's office. Do you think Stevie wants to hear about
+metempsychosis&mdash;that's the third time I've cleared it&mdash;of course he
+doesn't. Stephen Crutchley is a Goth. What am I? I'm a Palladian. There
+you have it. Am I right, Aubrey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, old boy, only come to the point."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Aubrey, don't you be afraid. I'm nursing her along by
+the rails. You can lay a hundred pounds to a box of George's cigars bar
+one. And that one's me. Where was I? Ah, yes. Well, I'm not going to say
+a word against Stephen, Johnnie. He's a friend of yours. He's my boss.
+He's one of England's leading ecclesiastical architects. But that
+doesn't help me when I find myself in a Somersetshire village seven
+miles from the nearest station arguing with a deaf parson about the
+restoration of his moldy church. Does it? Of course not. It doesn't help
+me when I find myself sleeping in damp sheets and woken up at seven
+o'clock by a cross between a gardener and a charwoman for early service.
+Does it? Of course not. Architecture like everything else is a good job
+when you're waving the flag on top of the tower; but when you're digging
+the foundations it's rotten. Stevie and I have had our little
+differences, but when he's sober&mdash;I mean when I'm sober&mdash;he'll tell you
+that there's not one of his juniors he thinks better of than me. I'm
+against Gothic. I consider Gothic the muddle-headed expression of a
+muddle-headed period. But I've been loyal to Stevie, only...."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh paused solemnly, while his friend regarded him with nervous
+solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Only," Hugh repeated in a loud voice. "Metempsychosis," he murmured,
+and drinking two more glasses of<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> wine, he sat back in his chair and
+shook his head in mute despair of human speech.</p>
+
+<p>Aubrey took John aside.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid Hugh's too far gone to explain all the details to-night," he
+whispered. "But it's really very serious. You see he found an old check
+book of Mr. Crutchley's, and more from a joke than anything else he
+tried to see if it was difficult to cash a check. It wasn't. He
+succeeded. But he's suspected. I helped him indirectly, but of course I
+don't come into the business except as an accessory. Only, if you take
+my advice, you'll call on Mr. Crutchley as soon as you can, and I'm sure
+you'll be able to square things up. You'll know how to manage him; but
+Hugh has a way of exasperating him."</p>
+
+<p>All the bland, the almost infantine simplicity of Aubrey Fenton's
+demeanor did not avail to propitiate John's rage; and when the maid came
+in with a message from his hostess to ask if it would soon be convenient
+to allow the table to be cleared, he announced that he should not remain
+another minute in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"But can Hugh count on your support?" Aubrey persisted. He spoke like an
+election agent who is growing rapidly doubtful of his candidate's
+prospects.</p>
+
+<p>"He can count on nothing," said John, violently. "He can count on
+nothing at all. On absolutely nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>Anybody who had seen Hugh's condition at this moment would have agreed
+with John. His eyes had already lost even as much life as might have
+been discerned in the slow freezing of a puddle, and had now assumed the
+glassy fixity and perfect roundness of two bottle-stoppers.</p>
+
+<p>"He can count on nothing," John asseverated.</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Aubrey, tactfully. "I'll try and get that across to him.
+Must you really be going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Immediately."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll trot in and say ta-ta to the mater?"</p>
+
+<p>John had no wish ever again to meet this crystallized lady, but his
+politeness rose superior to his indignation, and he<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> followed the son of
+the house into the drawing-room. His last glimpse of Hugh was of a
+mechanical figure, the only gesture of which was awkwardly to rescue
+every glass in turn that the maid endeavored to include in her clearance
+of the table.</p>
+
+<p>"It's scandalous," muttered John. "It's&mdash;it's abominable! Mrs. Fenton,"
+he said with a courtly bow for her hospitality, "I regret that your son
+has encouraged my brother to impose himself upon your good-nature. I
+shall take steps to insure that he shall do so no longer. I beg your
+pardon, Mrs. Fenton, I apologize. Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I've always spoilt Aubrey," she said. "And he always had a mania for
+dangerous toys which he never could learn to work properly. Never!" she
+repeated, passionately.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the musty sugar in which she was inclosed cracked and
+allowed John a glimpse of the feminine humanity underneath; but in the
+same instant the crystallization was more complete than ever, and when
+John released her hand he nearly took out his handkerchief to wipe away
+the stickiness.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, what steps <i>are</i> you going to take to-morrow?" Aubrey asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," John growled. Inasmuch as he himself had no more idea of
+what he intended to do than Aubrey, the reply was a good one.</p>
+
+<p>Where Carlington Road flows into Hammersmith Road John waited for a
+passing taxi, apostrophizing meanwhile the befogged stars in the London
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not forget to-night. No, I certainly sha'n't. I doubt if any
+dramatist ever spent such another. A glimpse at all the animals of the
+globe, a lunch that would have made a jackal vomit, a search for two
+lost children, an interview with a fatuous brother, a loan of over
+thirty pounds, a winking landlady, a narrow escape from being bored to
+death by a Major, a dinner that gave me the sensation of being slowly
+buried alive, a glass of George's port, and for climax the news that my
+brother has committed a forgery.<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> How can I think about Joan of Arc? A
+few more days like this and I shall never be able to think or write
+again&mdash;however, please God, there'll always be the cinema."</p>
+
+<p>Whirring home to Hampstead John fell asleep, and when he had
+supplemented that amount of repose in the taxi by eight hours in his own
+bed, he woke next morning with his mind made up to square matters with
+Stephen Crutchley, to withdraw Hugh from architecture, to intern him
+until Christmas at Ambles, and in the New Year to transport him to
+British Honduras as a mahogany-planter. He had met on board the
+<i>Murmania</i> a mahogany-planter who was visiting England for the first
+time in thirteen years: the profession must be an enthralling one.</p>
+
+<p>It was only when John reached the offices of Stephen Crutchley in Staple
+Inn that he discovered it was Sunday, which meant another whole day's
+idleness and suspense, and he almost fell to wishing that he was in
+church again with Bertram and Viola. But there was a sweet sadness in
+this old paved court, where a few sparrows chirped their plaintive
+monotone from an overarching tree, the branches of which fretted a sky
+of pearly blue, and where several dreary men were sitting upon the
+benches regarding their frayed boots. John could not remain
+unsusceptible to the antique charm of the scene, and finding an
+unoccupied bench he rested there in the timid sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>"What a place to choose for a forgery," he murmured, reproachfully, and
+tried to change the direction of his thoughts by remembering that Dr.
+Johnson had lived here for a time. He had no sooner concentrated upon
+fancies of that great man than he began to wonder if he was not mistaken
+in supposing that he had lived here, and he looked round for some one
+who could inform him. The dreary men with frayed boots were only
+counting the slow minutes of divine service before the public-houses
+could open: they knew nothing of the lexicographer. But the subject of
+forgery was not to be driven away by memories of Dr. Johnson, because
+his friend, Dr. Dodd, suddenly jumped into<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> the train of thought, and it
+was impossible not to conjure up that poor and learned gentleman's last
+journey to Tyburn nor to reflect how the latticed dormers on the Holborn
+side of the Inn were the same now as then and had actually seen Dr. Dodd
+go jolting past. John had often thought how incomprehensible it was that
+scarcely a century ago people should have been hanged for such crimes as
+forgery; but not it seemed rather more comprehensible. Of course, he
+should not like to know that his brother was going to be hanged; but for
+the sake of his future it would be an excellent thing to revive capital
+punishment for minor crimes. He should like when all this dreadful
+business was settled to say to his brother, "Oh, by the way, Hugh, I
+hear they've just passed a bill making forgery a capital offense once
+more. I think you'll like mahogany-planting."</p>
+
+<p>But would the fear of death act as a deterrent upon such an one as Hugh,
+who after committing so dishonorable a crime had lacked even the grace
+to make his confession of it soberly? It was doubtful: Hugh was without
+shame. From boyhood his career had been undistinguished by a single
+decent action; but on the contrary it had been steadily marred by vice
+and folly from the time when he had stolen an unused set of British
+North Borneo stamps from the locker of his best friend at school to this
+monstrous climax. Forgery! Great heavens, had he ever yet envisaged Hugh
+listening abjectly (or worse impudently) to the strictures of a scornful
+judge? Had he yet imagined the headlines in the press? <i>Brother of
+distinguished dramatist sent to penal servitude. Judge's scathing
+comments.</i> Mr. Touchwood breaks down in court. <i>Miss Janet Bond's
+production indefinitely postponed.</i> Surely Stephen would not proceed to
+extreme measures, but for the sake of their lifelong sympathy spare his
+old friend this humiliation; yet even as John reached this conclusion
+the chink-chink of the sparrows in the plane-tree sounded upon the air
+like the chink-chink of the picks on Dartmoor. Hugh a convict! It might
+well befall thus, if his jaunty demeanor hardened Stephen's heart.<a
+name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> Suppose that Stephen should be seized
+with one of those moral crises that can only be relieved by making an
+example of somebody? Would it not be as well to go down at once to his
+place in the country and try to square matters, unembarrassed by Hugh's
+brazen impenitence? Or was it already too late? John could not bring
+himself to believe that his old friend would call in the police without
+warning him. Stephen had always had a generous disposition, and it might
+well be that rather than wound John's pride by the revelation of his
+brother's disgrace he had made up his mind to say nothing and to give
+Hugh another chance: that would be like Stephen. No, he should not
+intrude upon his week-end; though how he was going to pass the long
+Sunday unless he occupied himself with something more cheerful than his
+own thoughts he did not know. Should he visit James and Beatrice, and
+take them out to lunch with a Symphony Concert to follow? No, he should
+never be able to keep the secret of Hugh's crime, and James would
+inevitably wind up the discussion by making it seem as if it were
+entirely his own fault. Should he visit George and warn him that the
+less intercourse he had with Hugh the better, yes, and incidentally
+observe to George that he resented his impersonation of himself at Mrs.
+Fenton's? No, George's company would be as intolerable as his port. And
+the children? No, no, let them dress up with minds still untainted by
+their Uncle Hugh's shame; let them enact Robinson Crusoe and if they
+liked burn Halma House to the ground. What was unpremeditated arson
+compared with deliberate forgery? But if there was a genuine criminal
+streak in the Touchwoods, how was he ever again to feel secure of his
+relations' honor? To-morrow he might learn that James had murdered
+Beatrice because she had slept through the opening chapters of <i>Lord
+Ormont and his Aminta</i>. To-morrow he might learn that George was a
+defaulting bookmaker, that Hilda had embezzled the whole of Laurence's
+board, and that Harold was about to be prosecuted by the Society for
+Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Why, even his mother might<a
+name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> have taken to gin-drinking in the small
+hours of the morning!</p>
+
+<p>"God forgive me," said John. "I am losing my faith in humanity and my
+respect for my mother. Yet some imbeciles prate about the romance of
+crime."</p>
+
+<p>John felt that if he continued to sit here brooding upon his relations
+he should be in danger of taking some violent step such as joining the
+Salvation Army: he remembered how an actor in <i>The Fall of Babylon</i> had
+brooded upon his inability to say his lines with just the emphasis he as
+author had required, until on the night before the opening he had left
+the theater and become a Salvationist. One of the loafers in the court
+shuffled up to John and begged him for a match; when John complied he
+asked for something to use it on, and John was so much distressed by the
+faint likeness he bore to his eldest brother that he gave him a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Without me that is what they would all be by now, every one of them,
+James, George, and Hugh," he thought "But if I hadn't been lucky, so
+might I," he added, reprovingly, to himself, "though at any rate I
+should have tried to join a workhouse and not wasted my time cadging for
+matches in Staple Inn."</p>
+
+<p>John was not quite clear about workhouses; he had abandoned realistic
+writing before he dealt with workhouse life as it really is.</p>
+
+<p>"However, I can't sit here depressing myself all day; besides, this
+bench is damp. What fools those sparrows are to stay chirping in that
+tree when they might be hopping about in Hampshire&mdash;out of reach of
+Harold's air-gun of course&mdash;and what a fool I am! But it's no use for me
+to go home and work at Joan of Arc. The English archers will only be
+shooting broad arrows all the time. I'll walk slowly to the Garrick, I
+think, and have an early lunch."</p>
+
+<p>Perversely enough the club did not seem to contain one sympathetic
+acquaintance, let alone a friend, that Sunday; and after lunch John was
+reduced to looking at the portraits of famous dead players, who bored
+him nearly as much as<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> one or two of the live ones who were lounging in
+the smoking-room.</p>
+
+<p>"This is getting unendurable," he moaned, and there seemed nothing for
+it but to sally forth and walk the hollow-sounding city. From Long Acre
+he turned into St. Martin's Lane, shook off the temptation to bore
+himself still more hopelessly by a visit to the National Gallery, and
+reached Cockspur Street. Three or four Sabbath loiterers were staring at
+a window, and John saw that it was the office of the Cunard Line and
+that the attraction was a model of the <i>S.S. Murmania</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"What a fool I am!" John murmured much more emphatically than in Staple
+Inn. He was just going to call a taxi to drive him to Chelsea, when he
+experienced from yesterday a revulsion against taxis. Yesterday had been
+a nightmare of taxis, between driving to the Zoo and driving to the
+police station and driving home after that interview with the forger&mdash;by
+this time John had discarded Hugh as a relation&mdash;not to mention Mrs.
+Worfolk in a taxi, and the children in a taxi, and their luggage buzzing
+backward and forward between Earl's Court and Hampstead in a taxi. No,
+he should walk to Chelsea: a brisk walk with an objective would do him
+good. 83 Camera Square. It was indeed rather a tribute to his memory, he
+flattered himself, that he could remember her address without referring
+to her card. He should walk along the Embankment; it was only half-past
+two now.</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant walking by the river on that fine afternoon, and John
+felt as he strode along Grosvenor Road, his spirit rising with the eager
+tide, that after all there was nothing like the sea, nothing!</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as I've finished Joan of Arc, I shall take a sea-voyage. It's
+all very well for George to talk about sea-voyages, but let him do some
+work first. Even if I do send him for a sea-voyage, how will he spend
+his time? I know perfectly well. He'll feel seasick for the first week
+and play poker for the rest of the passage. No, no, after the Christmas
+holidays at Ambles he'll be as right as a trivet<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> without a sea-voyage.
+What is a trivet by the way? Now if I had a secretary, I should make a
+note of a query like that. As it is, I shall probably never know what a
+trivet is; but if I had a secretary, I should ask her to look it up in
+the dictionary when we got home. I dare say I've lost thousands of ideas
+by not having a secretary at hand. I shall have to advertise&mdash;or find
+out in some way about a secretary. Thank heaven, neither Hilda nor
+Beatrice nor Eleanor nor Edith knows shorthand. But even if Edith did
+know shorthand, she'd be eternally occupied with the dactylography&mdash;as I
+suppose <i>he'd</i> call it&mdash;of Laurence's apostolic successes&mdash;there's
+another note I might make. Of course, it's nothing wonderful as a piece
+of wit, but I might get an epigram worth keeping, say three times a
+week, if I had a secretary at my elbow. I don't believe that Stephen
+will make any difficulties about Hugh. Oh no, I don't think so. I was
+tired this morning after yesterday. This walk is making me see events in
+their right proportion. Rosification indeed! James brings out these
+things as if he were a second Sydney Smith; but in my opinion wit
+without humor is like marmalade without butter. And even if I do rosify
+things, well, what is it that Lady Teazle says? <i>I wish it were spring
+all the year round and that roses grew under our feet.</i> And it takes
+something to rosify such moral anemia as Hugh's. By the way I wonder
+just exactly whereabouts in Chelsea Camera Square is."</p>
+
+<p>Now if there was one thing that John hated, if there was one thing that
+dragged even his buoyant spirits into the dust, if there was one thing
+worse than having a forger for a blood-relation, it was to be compelled
+to ask his way anywhere in London within the four miles radius. He would
+not even now admit to himself more than that he did not know the <i>exact</i>
+whereabouts of Camera Square. Although he really had not the remotest
+idea beyond its location in the extensive borough of Chelsea where
+Camera Square was, he wasted half-an-hour in dancing a kind of Ladies'
+Chain with all the side-streets off King's Road and never catching a<a
+name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> glimpse of his destination. It was at
+last borne in upon him that if he wanted to call on Mrs. Hamilton at a
+respectable hour for afternoon tea he should simply have to ask his way.</p>
+
+<p>Now arose for John the problem of choosing the oracle. He walked on and
+on, half making up his mind every moment to accost somebody and when he
+was on the point of doing so perceiving in his expression a latent
+haughtiness that held him back until it was too late. Had it not been
+Sunday, he would have entered a shop and bought sufficiently expensive
+to bribe the shopman from looking astonished at his ignorance.
+Presently, however, he passed a tobacconist's, and having bought three
+of the best cigars he had, which were not very good, he asked casually
+as he was going out the direction of Camera Square. The shopman did not
+know. He came to another tobacconist's, bought three more cigars, and
+that shopman did not know either. Gradually with a sharp sense of
+impending disgrace John realized that he must ask a policeman. He turned
+aside from the many inviting policemen in the main road, where the
+contemptuous glances of wayfarers might presume his rusticity, and tried
+to find a policeman in a secluded by-street. This took another
+half-an-hour, and when John did accost this ponderous hermit of the
+force he accosted him in broken English.</p>
+
+<p>"Ees thees ze vay to Cahmehra Squah?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders
+in what he conceived to be the gesture of a Frenchman who had landed
+that morning from Calais.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cahmehra Squah?" John repeated.</p>
+
+<p>The policeman put his hand in his pocket, and John thought he was going
+to whistle for help; but it was really to get out a handkerchief to blow
+his nose and give him time to guess what John wanted to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Say it again, will yer?" the policeman requested.</p>
+
+<p>John repeated his Gallic rendering of Camera.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't seen it round here. Where do you say you dropped it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eet ees a place I vants."<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a></p>
+
+<p>What slow-witted oafs the English were, thought John with a
+compassionate sigh for the poor foreigners who must be lost in London
+every day. However, this policeman was so loutish that he felt he could
+risk an almost perfect pronunciation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Kemmerer Squer," said the policeman with a huge smile of
+comprehension. "Why, you're looking at it." He pointed along the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn," thought John. "I needn't have asked at all. Sank you.
+Good-evening," he said aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"The same to you and many of them, Napoleon," the policeman nodded.</p>
+
+<p>John hurried away, and soon he was walking along a narrow garden, very
+unlike a London garden, for it was full of frost-bitten herbaceous
+flowers and smelt of the country. Not a house on this side of the square
+resembled its neighbor; but Number 83 was the most charmingly odd of
+all, two stories high with a little Chinese balcony and jasmine over a
+queer pointed porch of wrought iron.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, Mrs. Hamilton is at home," said the maid.</p>
+
+<p>The last bars of something by Schumann or Chopin died away; in the
+comparative stillness that succeeded John could hear a canary singing,
+and the tinkle of tea-cups; there was also a smell of muffins
+and&mdash;mimosa, was it? Anyway it was very delicious, he thought, while he
+made his overcoat as small as possible, so as not to fill the tiny hall
+entirely.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Touchwood was the name?" the maid asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What an intelligent young woman," he thought. "How much more
+intelligent than that policeman. But women are more intelligent in small
+things."</p>
+
+<p>John felt very large as he bowed his head to enter the drawing-room.<a
+name="page_170" id="page_170"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span> <b>SUDDEN</b> apprehension of his bulk (though he was only comparatively
+massive) overcame John when he stood inside the tiny drawing-room of 83
+Camera Square; and it was not until the steam from the tea-pot had
+materialized into Miss Hamilton, who in a dress of filmy gray floated
+round him as a cloud swathes a mountain, that he felt at ease.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how charming of you to keep your word," her well-remembered voice,
+so soft and deep, was murmuring. "You don't know my mother, do you?
+Mother, this is Mr. Touchwood, who was so kind to Ida and me on the
+voyage back from America."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hamilton was one of those mothers that never destroy the prospects
+of their children by testifying outwardly to what their beauty may one
+day come: neither in face nor in expression nor in gesture nor in voice
+did she bear the least resemblance to her daughter. At first John was
+inclined to compare her to a diminutive clown; but presently he caught
+sight of some golden mandarins marching across a lacquer cupboard and
+decided that she resembled a mandarin; after which wherever he looked in
+the room he seemed to catch sight of her miniature&mdash;on the
+willow-pattern plates, on the mantelpiece in porcelain, and even on the
+red lacquer bridge that spanned the tea-caddy.</p>
+
+<p>"We've all heard of Mr. Touchwood," she said, picking up a small silver
+weapon in the shape of a pea-shooter and puffing out her already plump
+cheeks in a vain effort to extinguish the flame of the spirit-lamp. "And
+I'm devoted to the drama. Pouf! I think this is a very dull instrument,
+dear. What would England be without Shakespeare? Pouf! Pouf! One blows
+and blows and blows and blows till really<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a>&mdash;well, it has taught me never
+to regret that I did not learn the flute when there was a question of my
+having lessons. Pouf! Pouf!"</p>
+
+<p>John offered his services as extinguisher.</p>
+
+<p>"You have to blow very hard," she warned him; and he being determined at
+all costs to impress Miss Hamilton blew like a knight-errant at the gate
+of an enchanted castle. It was almost too vigorous a blast: besides
+extinguishing the flame, it blew several currants from the cake into
+Mrs. Hamilton's lap, which John in an access of good-will tried to blow
+off again less successfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Bravo," the old lady exclaimed, clapping her hands. "I'm glad to see
+that it can be done. But didn't you write <i>The Walls of Jericho</i>? Ah no,
+I'm thinking of Joshua and his trumpet."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The Fall of Babylon</i>, mother," Miss Hamilton put in with a smile, in
+the curves of which quivered a hint of scornfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I was not so far out. <i>The Fall of Babylon</i> to be sure. Oh, what a
+fall was there, my countrymen."</p>
+
+<p>She beamed at the author encouragingly, who beamed responsively back at
+her; presently she began to chuckle to herself, and John, hoping that in
+his wish to be pleasant to Miss Hamilton's mother he was not appearing
+to be imitating a hen, chuckled back.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you have a sense of humor," she exclaimed, suddenly assuming
+an intensely serious expression and throwing up her eyebrows like two
+skipping-ropes.</p>
+
+<p>John, who felt as if he was playing a game, copied her expression as
+well as he was able.</p>
+
+<p>"I live on it," she pursued. "And thrive moreover. A small income and an
+ample sense of humor. Yes, for thus one avoids extravagance oneself, but
+enjoys it in other people."</p>
+
+<p>"And how is Miss Merritt?" John inquired of Miss Hamilton, when he had
+bowed his appreciation of the witticism. But before she could reply, her
+mother rattled on:<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> "Miss Merritt will not take Doris to America again.
+Miss Merritt has written a book called <i>The Aphorisms of Aphrodite</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The old lady's remarkable eyebrows were darting about her forehead like
+forked lightning while she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"The Aphorisms of Aphrodite!" she repeated. "A collection of some of the
+most declassical observations that I have ever encountered." Like a
+diver's arms the eyebrows drew themselves together for a plunge into
+unfathomable moral depths.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear mother, lots of people found it very amusing," her daughter
+protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Merritt," the old lady asserted, "was meant for bookkeeping by
+double-entry, instead of which she had taken to book-writing by
+double-entente. The profits may be treble, but the method is base. How
+did she affect you, Mr. Touchwood?"</p>
+
+<p>"She frightened me," John confessed. "I thought her manner somewhat
+severe."</p>
+
+<p>"You hear that, Doris? Her ethical exterior frightened him."</p>
+
+<p>"You're both very unfair to Ida. I only wish I had half her talents."</p>
+
+<p>"Wrapped in a napkin," said the old lady, "you have your shorthand."</p>
+
+<p>John's heart leapt.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you know shorthand," he could not help ejaculating with manifest
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"I studied for a time. I think I had vague ideas once of a commercial
+career," she replied, indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"The suggestion being," Mrs. Hamilton put in, "that I discouraged her.
+But how is one to encourage shorthand? If she had learnt the deaf and
+dumb alphabet I might have put aside half-an-hour every day for
+conversation. But it is as hard to encourage shorthand as to encourage a
+person who is talking in his sleep."</p>
+
+<p>John fancied that beneath the indifference of the daughter<a
+name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> and the self-conscious humor of the
+mother he could detect cross-currents of mutual disapproval; he could
+have sworn that the daughter was beginning to be perpetually aware of
+her mother's presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Or is it due to my obsession that relations should never see too much
+of each other?" he asked himself. "Yet she knows shorthand&mdash;an
+extraordinary coincidence. What a delightful house you have," he said
+aloud with as much fervor as would excuse the momentary abstraction into
+which he had been cast.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband was a sinologue," Mrs. Hamilton announced.</p>
+
+<p>"Was he indeed?" said John, trying to focus the word.</p>
+
+<p>"And the study of Chinese is nearly as exclusive as shorthand," the old
+lady went on. "But we traveled a great deal in China when I was first
+married and being upon our honeymoon had but slight need of general
+conversation."</p>
+
+<p>No wonder she looked like a mandarin.</p>
+
+<p>"And to me their furniture was always more expressive than their
+language. Hence this house." Her black eyebrows soared like a condor to
+disappear in the clouds of her snowy hair. "But do not let us talk of
+China," she continued. "Let us rather talk of the drama. Or will you
+have another muffin?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I should prefer the muffin," John admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he noticed that Miss Hamilton was looking surreptitiously at
+her watch and glancing anxiously at the deepening twilight; she
+evidently had an appointment elsewhere, and he rose to make his
+farewells.</p>
+
+<p>"For I'm sure you're wanting to go out," he ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"Doris never cares to stay at home for very long," said her mother; and
+John was aware once again, this time unmistakably, of the cross-currents
+of mutual discontent.</p>
+
+<p>"I had promised to meet Ida in Sloane Square."</p>
+
+<p>"On the holy mount of Ida," the old lady quoted; John laughed out of
+politeness, though he was unable to see the point of the allusion; he
+might have concluded that after<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> all Mrs. Hamilton was really rather
+stupid, perhaps even vain and tiresome, had she not immediately
+afterward proposed that he should give Doris time to get ready and have
+the benefit of her company along King's Road.</p>
+
+<p>"For I assume you are both going in the same direction," she said,
+evoking with her eyebrows the suggestion of a signpost.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear mother, Mr. Touchwood doesn't want to be bored with escorting
+me," her daughter was protesting.</p>
+
+<p>John laughed at the idea of being bored; then he fancied that in such a
+small room his laughter might have sounded hysterical, and he raised the
+pitch of his voice to give the impression that he always laughed like
+that. In the end, after a short argument, Miss Hamilton agreed somewhat
+ungraciously to let John wait for her. When she was gone to get ready,
+her mother leaned over and tapped John's arm with a fan.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm getting extremely anxious about Doris," she confided; the eyebrows
+hovering in her forehead like a hawk about to strike gave her listener
+the impression that she was really going to say something this time.</p>
+
+<p>"Her health?" he began, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Her health is perfect. It is her independence which worries me. Hence
+this house! Her father's brother is only too willing to do anything for
+her, but she declines to be a poor relation. Now such an attitude is
+ridiculous, because she is a poor relation. To each overture from her
+uncle she replies with defiance. At one moment she drowns his remarks in
+a typewriter; at another she flourishes her shorthand in his face; and
+this summer she fled to America before he had finished what he was
+saying. Mr. Touchwood, I rely on you!" she exclaimed, thumping him on
+the shoulder with the fan.</p>
+
+<p>John felt himself to be a very infirm prop for the old lady's ambition,
+and wobbled in silence while she heaped upon him her aspirations.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a>"You are a man of the world. All the world's a stage! Prompt her, my
+dear Mr. Touchwood, prompt her. You must have had a great experience in
+prompting. I rely on you. Her uncle <i>must</i> be allowed to help her. For
+pray appreciate that Doris's independence merely benefits charitable
+institutions, and in my opinion there is a limit to anonymous
+benevolence. Perhaps you've heard of the Home for Epileptic Gentlewomen?
+They can have their fits in peace and comfort entirely because my
+daughter refuses to accept one penny from her uncle. To a mother, of
+course, such behavior is unaccountable. And what is so unjust is that
+she won't allow me to accept a penny either, but has even gone so far as
+to threaten to live with Miss Merritt if I do. Aphorisms of Aphrodite! I
+can assure you that there are times when I do not regret that I possess
+an ample sense of humor. If you were a mother, Mr. Touchwood...."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> an uncle," said John, quickly. He was not going to let Mrs.
+Hamilton monopolize all the privileges of kinship.</p>
+
+<p>"Then who more able to advise a niece? She will listen to you. Friends,
+Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. You must remember that she
+already admires you as a playwright. Insist that in future she must
+admire you from the stalls instead of from the pit&mdash;as now. At present
+she is pinched. Do not misunderstand me. I speak in metaphors. She is
+pinched by straitened circumstances just as the women of China are
+pinched by their shoes. She declines to wear a hobble-skirt; but decline
+or not, she hobbles through life. She cannot do otherwise, which is why
+we live here in Camera Square like two spoonfuls of tea in an old
+caddy!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you know, personally," John protested while the old lady was
+fanning back her lost breath, "personally, and I am now speaking as an
+uncle, personally I must confess that independence charms me."</p>
+
+<p>"Music hath charms," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Who will deny it? And
+independence with the indefinite article before it also hath charms; but
+independence with no article at all, independence, the abstract noun,
+though it may be a public<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> virtue, is a private vice. Vesuvius lends
+variety to the Bay of Naples; but a tufted mole on a woman's cheek
+affects the observer with abhorrence, like a woolly caterpillar lurking
+in the heart of a rose. Let us distinguish between the state and the
+individual. Do, my dear Mr. Touchwood, let us always preserve a
+distinction between wild nature and human nature."</p>
+
+<p>John was determined not to give way, and he once more firmly asserted
+his admiration for independence.</p>
+
+<p>"All the world's a stage," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Yes, and all the men and
+women merely players; yet life, Mr. Touchwood, is not a play. I have
+realized that since my husband died. The widow of a sinologue has much
+to realize. At first I hoped that Doris would marry. But she has never
+wanted to marry. Men proposed in shoals. But as I always said to them,
+'What is the use of proposing to my daughter? She will never marry.'"</p>
+
+<p>For the first time John began to pay a deep and respectful attention to
+the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Really I should have thought," he began; but he stopped himself
+abruptly, for he felt that it was not quite chivalrous for him to
+appraise Miss Hamilton's matrimonial chances. "No doubt Miss Hamilton is
+very critical," he substituted.</p>
+
+<p>"She would criticize anybody," the old lady exclaimed. "From the Creator
+of us all in general to her own mother in particular she would criticize
+anybody. Anybody that is, except Miss Merritt. Do not suppose, for
+instance, that she will not criticize you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I have no hope of escaping," John said.</p>
+
+<p>"But pay no attention and continue to advise her. Really, when I think
+that on account of her obstinacy a number of epileptic females are
+enjoying luxurious convulsions while I am compelled to alternate between
+muffins and scones every day of the week, though I never know which I
+like better, really I resent our unnecessary poverty. As I say to her,
+whether we accept her uncle's offer or not, we are always<a
+name="page_177" id="page_177"></a> poor relations; so we may as well be
+comfortably off poor relations."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you suppose that perhaps her uncle is all the fonder of her
+because of this independence?" John suggested. "I think I should be."</p>
+
+<p>"But what is the use of that?" Mrs. Hamilton demanded. "Nothing is so
+bad for people as stunted affection. My husband spent all his
+patrimony&mdash;he was a younger son&mdash;everything he had in fact upon his
+passion for Chinese&mdash;well, not quite everything, for he was able to
+leave me a small income, which I share with Doris. Pray remember that I
+have never denied her anything that I could afford. Although she has
+many times plotted with her friend Ida Merritt to earn her own living, I
+have never once encouraged her in such a step. The idea to me has always
+been painful. A sense of humor has carried <i>me</i> through life; but Doris,
+alas, is infected with gloom. Whether it is living in London or whether
+it is reading Nietzsche I don't know, but she is infested with gloom.
+Therefore when I heard of her meeting you I was glad; I was almost
+reconciled to the notion of that vulgar descent upon America. Pray do
+not imagine that I am trying to flatter: you should be used to public
+approbation by now. John Hamilton is her uncle's name, and he has a
+delightful estate near the Mull of Kintyre&mdash;Glencockic House&mdash;some of
+the rents of which provide carpets for the fits of epileptic gentlewomen
+and some the children of indigent tradesmen in Ayr with colonial
+opportunities. Yet his sister-in-law must choose every morning between
+muffins and scones."</p>
+
+<p>John tried unsuccessfully to change the conversation; he even went so
+far as to ask the old lady questions about her adventures in China,
+although it was one of the rules of his conduct never to expose himself
+unnecessarily to the reminiscences of travelers.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," she would reply, impatiently, "the bells in the temple
+gardens are delicious. Ding-dong! ding-dong! But, as I was saying, <a
+name="page_178" id="page_178"></a>unless Doris sees her way to be at any
+rate outwardly gracious ..." and so it went on until Doris herself,
+dressed in that misty green Harris tweed of the <i>Murmania</i>, came in to
+say that she was ready.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child," her mother protested. "The streets of London are empty
+on Sunday evening, but they are not a Highland moor. What queer notions
+of dress you do have, to be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Ida and I are going out to supper with some friends of hers in Norwood,
+and I want to keep warm in the train."</p>
+
+<p>"One of the aphorisms of Aphrodite, I suppose, to wear a
+Norfolk-jacket&mdash;or should I say a Norwood jacket?&mdash;on Sunday evening.
+You must excuse her, Mr. Touchwood."</p>
+
+<p>John was by this time thoroughly bored by the old lady's witticisms and
+delighted to leave her to fan herself in the firelight, while he and her
+daughter walked along toward King's Road.</p>
+
+<p>"No sign of a taxi," said John, whose mind was running on shorthand,
+though he was much too shy to raise the topic for a second time. "You
+don't mind going as far as Sloane Square by motor-bus?"</p>
+
+<p>A moment later they were climbing to the outside of a motor-bus; when
+John pulled the waterproof rug over their knees and felt the wind in his
+face while they swayed together and apart in the rapid motion, he could
+easily have fancied that they were once again upon the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>"I often think of our crossing," he said in what he hoped was an
+harmonious mixture of small talk and sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to turn eagerly round, but was unable to do so on account of
+having fastened the strap of the rug.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in Camera Square, wouldn't you?" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not happy there?" In order to cover his embarrassment at finding
+he had asked what she might consider an impertinent question John turned
+away to fasten the rug more tightly, which nearly kept him from turning
+around again at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let's talk about me," she begged, dismissing the<a
+name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> subject with a curt little laugh. "How
+fast they do drive on Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the streets are empty," he agreed. Good heavens, at this rate they
+would be at Sloane Square in five minutes, and he might just as well
+never have called on her. What did it matter if the streets were empty?
+They were not half as empty as this conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm working hard," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky you!"</p>
+
+<p>"At least when I say I'm working hard," he corrected himself, "I mean
+that I have been working hard. Just at present I'm rather worried by
+family matters."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor man, I sympathize with you."</p>
+
+<p>She might sympathize with him; but on this motor-bus her manner was so
+detached that nobody could have guessed it, John thought, and he had
+looked at her every time a street-lamp illuminated her expression.</p>
+
+<p>"I often think of our crossing," he repeated. "I'm sure it would be a
+great pity to let our friendship fade out into nothing. Won't you lunch
+with me one day?"</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Wednesday at Princes? Or no, better say the Carlton Grill."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks so much."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not easy to talk on a motor-bus, is it?" John suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it's like trying to talk to somebody whom you're seeing off in a
+train."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you'll enjoy your evening. You'll remember me to Miss Merritt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>Sloane Square opened ahead of them; but at any rate, John congratulated
+himself, he had managed to arrange a lunch for Wednesday and need no
+longer reproach himself for a complete deadlock.</p>
+
+<p>"I must hurry," she warned him when they had descended to the
+pavement.<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Wednesday at one o'clock then."</p>
+
+<p>He would have liked to detain her with elaborate instructions about the
+exact spot on the carpet where she would find him waiting for her on
+Wednesday; but she had shaken him lightly by the hand and crossed the
+road before he could decide between the entrance in Regent Street and
+the entrance in Pall Mall.</p>
+
+<p>"It is becoming every day more evident, Mrs. Worfolk," John told his
+housekeeper after supper that evening, "that I must begin to look about
+for a secretary."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," she agreed, cheerfully. "There's lots of deserving young
+fellows would be glad of the job, I'm shaw."</p>
+
+<p>John left it at that, acknowledged Mrs. Worfolk's wishes for his night's
+repose, poured himself out a whisky and soda, and settled himself down
+to read a gilded work at fifteen shillings net entitled <i>Fifteen Famous
+Forgers</i>. When he had read three shillings' worth, he decided that the
+only crime which possessed a literary interest for anybody outside the
+principals was murder, and went to bed early in order to prepare for the
+painful interview at Staple Inn next morning.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Crutchley, the celebrated architect, was some years older than
+John, old enough in fact to have been severely affected by the esthetic
+movement in his early twenties; he had a secret belief that was
+nourished both by his pre-eminence in Gothic design and by his wife's
+lilies and languors that he formed a link with the Pre-Raphaelites. His
+legs were excessively short, but short though they were one of them had
+managed to remain an inch shorter than the other, which in conjunction
+with a ponderous body made his gait something between a limp and a
+shamble. He had a long ragged beard which looked as if he had dropped
+egg or cigarette-ash on it according to whether the person who was
+deciding its color thought it was more gray or more yellow. His
+appearance was usually referred to by paragraph writers as leonine, and
+he much regretted that his beard was turning gray so soon, when what the
+same writers called his "tawny mane of hair" was still unwithered. He
+affected the Bohemian<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> costume of the 'eighties, that is to say the
+velvet jacket, the flowered silk waistcoat, and the unknotted tie of
+deep crimson or old gold kept in place by a prelate's ring; he lunched
+every day at the Arts Club, and since he was making at least £6000 a
+year, he did not bother to go back to his office in the afternoon. John
+had met him first soon after his father's death in 1890 somewhere in
+Northamptonshire where Crutchley was restoring a church&mdash;his first big
+job&mdash;and where John was editing temporarily a local paper. In those days
+John reacting from dog-biscuits was every bit as romantic as he was now;
+he and the young architect had often talked the sun up and spoken
+ecstatically of another medieval renaissance, of the nobility of
+handicrafts and of the glory of the guilds. Later on, when John in the
+reaction from journalism embarked upon realistic novels, Crutchley was
+inclined to quarrel with him as a renegade, and even went so far as to
+send him a volume of Browning's poems with <i>The Lost Leader</i> heavily
+marked in red pencil. Considering that Crutchley was making more money
+with his gargoyles than himself with his novels John resented the
+accusation of having deserted his friend for a handful of silver; and as
+for the ribbon which he was accused of putting in his coat, John thought
+that the architect was the last person to underline such an accusation,
+when himself for the advancement of his work had joined every
+ecclesiastical society from the English Church Union to the Alcuin Club.
+There was not a ritualistic parson in the land who wanted with or
+without a faculty to erect a rood or reredos but turned to Crutchley for
+his design, principally because his watch-chain jingled with religious
+labels; although to do him justice, even when he was making £6000 a year
+he continued to attend Choral Eucharists as regularly as ever. When John
+abandoned realistic novels and made a success as a romantic playwright
+his friend welcomed him back to the Gothic fold with emotion and
+enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I, John, are almost the only ones left," the architect had
+said, feelingly.<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Stephen, you mustn't talk as if I was William de Morgan.
+I'm not yet forty, and you're not yet forty-five," John had replied,
+slightly nettled by this ascription of them to a bygone period.</p>
+
+<p>Yet with all his absurdities and affectations Stephen was a fine fellow
+and a fine architect, and when soon after this he had agreed to take
+Hugh into his office John would have forgiven him if he had chosen to
+perambulate Chelsea in doublet and hose.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of Stephen as he had known him for twenty years John had no
+qualms when on Monday morning he ascended the winding stone steps that
+led up to his office in the oldest portion of Staple Inn; nor apparently
+had Hugh, who came in as jauntily as ever and greeted his brother with
+genial self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you'd blow in this morning. I betted Aubrey half-a-dollar
+that you'd blow in. He tells me you went off in rather a bad temper on
+Saturday night. But you were quite right, Johnnie; that port of George's
+is not good. You were quite right. I shall always respect your verdict
+on wine in future."</p>
+
+<p>"This is not the moment to talk about wine," said John, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid that owing to George and his confounded elderberry ink I
+didn't put my case quite as clearly as I ought to have done," Hugh went
+on, serenely. "But don't worry. As soon as you've settled with Stevie, I
+shall tell you all about it. I think you'll be thrilled. It's a pity
+you've moved into Wardour Street, or you might have made a good story
+out of it."</p>
+
+<p>One of the clerks came back with an invitation for John to follow him
+into Mr. Crutchley's own room, and he was glad to escape from his
+brother's airy impenitence.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful how Stevie acts up to the part, isn't it?" commented Hugh,
+when he saw John looking round him at the timbered rooms with their
+ancient furniture and medieval blazonries through which they were
+passing.<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I prefer to see Crutchley alone," said John, coldly. "No doubt he will
+send for you when your presence is required."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh nodded amiably and went over to his desk in one of the latticed
+oriel windows, the noise of the Holborn traffic surging in through which
+reminded the listener that these perfectly medieval rooms were in the
+heart of modern London.</p>
+
+<p>"I should rather like to live in chambers here myself," thought John. "I
+believe they would give me the very atmosphere I require for Joan of
+Arc; and I should be close to the theaters."</p>
+
+<p>This project appealed to him more than ever when he entered the
+architect's inmost sanctum, which containing nothing that did not belong
+to the best period of whatever it was, wrought iron or carved wood or
+embroidered stuff, impressed John's eye for a scenic effect. Nor was
+there too much of it: the room was austere, not even so full as a
+Carpaccio interior. Modernity here wore a figleaf; wax candles were
+burned instead of gas or electric light; and even the telephone was
+enshrined in a Florentine casket. When the oaken door covered with huge
+nails and floriated hinges was closed, John sat down upon what is called
+a Glastonbury chair and gazed at his friend who was seated upon a gilt
+throne under a canopy of faded azure that was embroidered with golden
+unicorns, wyverns, and other fabulous monsters in a pasture of silver
+fleurs-de-lys.</p>
+
+<p>"Have a cigar," said the Master, as he liked to be called, pushing
+across the refectory table that had come out of an old Flemish monastery
+a primitive box painted with scenes of saintly temptations, but lined
+with cedar wood and packed full of fat Corona Coronas.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems hardly appropriate to smoke cigars in this room," John
+observed. "Even a churchwarden-pipe would be an anachronism here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," Stephen assented, tossing back his hair with the authentic
+Vikingly gesture. "But cigars are the chief consolation we have for
+being compelled to exist in this modern<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a> world. I haven't seen you,
+John, since you returned from America. How's work?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Lucretia</i> went splendidly in New York. And I'm in the middle of <i>Joan
+of Arc</i> now."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad, I'm glad," the architect growled as fiercely as one of the
+great Victorians. "But for Heaven's sake get the coats right. Theatrical
+heraldry is shocking. And get the ecclesiastical details right.
+Theatrical ritual is worse. But I'm glad you're giving 'em Joan of Arc.
+Keep it up, keep it up. The modern drama wants disinfecting."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you wouldn't care to advise me about the costumes and
+processions and all that," John suggested, offering his friend a pinch
+of his romantic Sanitas.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will. Of course, I will. But I must have a free hand. An
+absolutely free hand, John. I won't have any confounded play-actor
+trying to tell me that it doesn't matter if a bishop in the fifteenth
+century does wear a sixteenth century miter, because it's more effective
+from the gallery. Eh? I know them. You know them. A free hand or you can
+burn Joan on an asbestos gasfire, and I won't help you."</p>
+
+<p>"Your help would be so much appreciated," John assured him, "that I can
+promise you an absolutely short hand."</p>
+
+<p>The architect stared at the dramatist.</p>
+
+<p>"What did I say? I mean free hand&mdash;extraordinary slip," John laughed a
+little awkwardly. "Yes, your name, Stephen, is just what we shall
+require to persuade the skeptical that it is worth while making another
+attempt with Joan of Arc. I can promise you some fine opportunities.
+I've got a particularly effective tableau to show the miserable
+condition of France before the play begins. The curtain will rise upon
+the rearguard of an army marching out of a city, heavy snow will fall,
+and above the silence you will hear the howling of the wolves following
+in the track of the troops. This is an historical fact. I may even
+introduce several wolves upon the stage. But I rather doubt if trained
+wolves are procurable, although at a pinch we could use large dogs&mdash;but
+don't let me run away with my own work like this.<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> I did not come here
+this morning to talk about Joan of Arc, but about my brother Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>John rose from his chair and walked nervously up and down the room,
+while Stephen Crutchley managed to exaggerate a slight roughness at the
+back of his throat into a violent fit of coughing.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you feel it as much as I do," John murmured, while the architect
+continued to express his overwrought feelings in bronchial spasms.</p>
+
+<p>"I would have spared you this," the architect managed to gasp at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you would," said John, warmly. "But since in what I hope was a
+genuine impulse of contrition not entirely dictated by motives of
+self-interest Hugh has confessed his crime to me, I am come here this
+morning confident that you will allow me to&mdash;in other words&mdash;what was
+the exact sum? I shall of course remove him from your tutelage this
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>John's eloquence was not spontaneous; he had rehearsed this speech on
+the way from Hampstead that morning, and he was agreeably surprised to
+find that he had been able owing to his friend's coughing-fit to
+reproduce nearly all of it. He had so often been robbed of a prepared
+oration by some unexpected turn of the conversation that he felt now
+much happier than he ought under the weight of a family scandal.</p>
+
+<p>"Your generosity...." he continued.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," interrupted the architect, "it is you who are generous."</p>
+
+<p>The two romantics gazed at one another with an expression of nobility
+that required no words to enhance it.</p>
+
+<p>"We can afford to be generous," said John, which was perfectly true,
+though the reference was to worth of character rather than to worth of
+capital.</p>
+
+<p>"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence," Crutchley murmured. "But I blame
+myself. I should not have left an old check book lying about. It was
+careless&mdash;it was, I<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a> do not hesitate to say so, criminally careless. But
+you know my attitude towards money. I am radically incapable of dealing
+with money."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you are," John assented with conviction. "So am I. Money with
+me is merely a means to an end."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly what it is with me," the architect declared. "Money in itself
+conveys nothing to me. What I always say to my clients is that if they
+want the best work they must pay for it. It's the work that counts, not
+the money."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely my own attitude," John agreed. "What people will not
+understand is that an artist charges a high price when he does not want
+to do the work. If people insist on his doing it, they must expect to
+pay."</p>
+
+<p>"And of course," the architect added, "we owe it to our fellows to
+sustain the dignity of our professions. Art in England has already been
+too much cheapened."</p>
+
+<p>"You've kept all your old enthusiasms," John told his friend. "It's
+splendid to find a man who is not spoilt by success. Eighty-one pounds
+you said? I've brought my check book."</p>
+
+<p>"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence, yes. It was like you, John, to
+come forward in this way. But I wish you could have been spared. You
+understand, don't you, that I intended to say nothing about it and to
+blame myself in silence for my carelessness? On the other hand, I could
+not treat your brother with my former confidence. This terrible business
+disturbed our whole relationship."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not going to enlarge on my feelings," said John as he handed the
+architect the stolen sum. "But you will understand them. I believe the
+shock has aged me. I seem to have lost some of my self-reliance. Only
+this morning I was thinking to myself that I must really get a private
+secretary."</p>
+
+<p>"You certainly should have one," the architect agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I must. The only thing is that since this dreadful escapade of
+Hugh's I feel that an unbusinesslike creature such as I am ought not to
+put himself in the hands of a<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> young man. What is your experience of
+women? From a business point of view, I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"I think that a woman would do your work much better than a man," said
+the architect, decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I. I'm very glad to have your advice though."</p>
+
+<p>After this John felt no more reluctant at parting with eighty-one pounds
+six and eightpence than he would have felt in paying a specialist two
+guineas for advising him to take a long rest when he wanted to take a
+long rest. His friend's aloofness from money had raised to a higher
+level what might easily have been a most unpleasant transaction: not
+even one of his heroes could have extricated himself from an involved
+situation more poetically and more sympathetically. It now only remained
+to dispose of the villain.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we have Hugh in?" John asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could keep him with me," the architect sighed. "But I don't
+think I have a right to consult my personal feelings. We must consider
+his behavior in itself."</p>
+
+<p>"In any case," said John, quickly, "I have made arrangements about his
+future; he is going to be a mahogany-planter in British Honduras."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I don't use mahogany much in my work, but if ever ..." the
+architect was beginning, when John waved aside his kindly intentions.</p>
+
+<p>"The impulse is generous, Stephen, but I should prefer that so far as
+you are concerned Hugh should always be as if he had never been. In
+fact, I'm bound to say frankly that I'm glad you do not use mahogany in
+your work. I'm glad that I've chosen a career for Hugh which will cut
+him completely off from what to me will always be the painful
+associations of architecture."</p>
+
+<p>While they were waiting for the sinner to come in, John tried to
+remember the name of the mahogany-planter whom he had met in the
+<i>Murmania</i>; but he could get no nearer to it than a vague notion that it
+might have been Raikes, and he decided to leave out for the present any
+allusion to British Honduras.<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a></p>
+
+<p>Hugh entered his chief's room without a blush: he could not have bowed
+his head, however sincere his repentance, because his collars would not
+permit the least abasement; though at least, his brother thought, he
+might have had the decency not to sit down until he was invited, and
+when he did sit down not to pull up his trousers in that aggressive way
+and expose those very defiant socks.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Crutchley rose from his throne and shambled over to the
+fireplace, leaning against the stone hood of which he took up an
+attitude that would have abashed anybody but Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Touchwood," he began, "no doubt you have already guessed why I have
+asked you to speak to me."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh nodded encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to enlarge upon the circumstances of your behavior,
+because your brother, my old friend, has come forward to shield you from
+the consequences. Nor do I propose to animadvert upon the forgery
+itself. However lightly you embarked upon it, I don't doubt that by now
+you have sufficiently realized its gravity. What tempted you to commit
+this crime I do not hope to guess; but I fear that such a device for
+obtaining money must have been inspired by debts, whether for cards or
+for horse-racing, or perhaps even for women I do not pretend to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Add waistcoats and whisky and you've got the motive," Hugh chirped. "I
+say, I think your trousers are scorching," he added on a note of anxious
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not propose to enlarge on any of these topics," said the
+architect, moving away from the fire and sniffing irritably the faint
+odor of overheated homespun. "What I do wish to enlarge upon is your
+brother's generosity in coming forward like this. Naturally I who have
+known him for twenty years expected nothing else, because he is a man of
+ideals, a writer of whom we are all proud, from whom we all expect great
+things and&mdash;however I am not going to enlarge upon his obvious
+qualities. What I do wish to say is that he and I have decided that
+after this business you must<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> leave me. I don't suppose that you
+expected to remain; nor, even if you could, do I suppose that you would
+wish to remain. Perhaps you are not enough in sympathy with my
+aspirations for the future of English architecture to regret our
+parting; but I hope that this lesson you have had will be the means of
+bringing you to an appreciation of what your brother has done for you
+and that in British Honduras you will behave in such a way as to justify
+his generosity. Touchwood, good-by! I did not expect when you came to me
+three years ago that our last farewell would be fraught&mdash;would be so
+unpleasant."</p>
+
+<p>John was probably much more profoundly moved by Crutchley's sermon than
+Hugh; indeed he was so much moved that he rose to supplement it with one
+of his own in which he said the same things about the architect that the
+architect had said about him, after which the two romantics looked at
+each other admiringly, while they waited for Hugh to reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I ought to say I'm very sorry and all that," Hugh managed to
+mutter at last. "Good-by, Mr. Crutchley, and jolly good luck. I'll just
+toddle through the office and say good-by to all the boys, John, and
+then I dare say you'll be ready for lunch."</p>
+
+<p>He swaggered out of the room; when the two friends were left together
+they turned aside with mutual sympathy from the topic of Hugh to discuss
+Joan of Arc and a new transept that Crutchley was designing. When the
+culprit put his head round the door and called out to John that he was
+ready, the two old friends shook hands affectionately and parted with an
+increased regard for each other and themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, what's all this about British Honduras?" Hugh asked
+indignantly when he and his brother had passed under the arched entry of
+Staple Inn and were walking along Holborn. "I see you're bent on
+gratifying your appetite for romance even in the choice of a colony.
+British Honduras! British humbug!"<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I prefer not do discuss anything except your immediate future," said
+John.</p>
+
+<p>"It's such an extraordinary place to hit on," Hugh grunted in a tone of
+irritated perplexity."</p>
+
+<p>"The immediate future," John repeated, sharply. "To-night you will go
+down to Hampshire and if you wish for any more help from me, you will
+remain there in the strictest seclusion until I have time to settle your
+ultimate future."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shan't at all mind a few weeks in Hampshire. What I'm grumbling
+at is British Honduras. I shall rather enjoy Hampshire in fact. Who's
+there at present?"</p>
+
+<p>John told him, and Hugh made a grimace.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to jolly them up a bit. However it's a good job that
+Laurence has lost his faith. I shall be spared his Chloral Eucharists,
+anyway. Where are we going to lunch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh!" exclaimed his outraged brother stopping short in the middle of
+the crowded pavement. "Have you no sense of shame at all? Are you
+utterly callous?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Johnnie, don't start in again on that. I know you had to
+take that line with Stevie, and you'll do me the justice of admitting
+that I backed you up; but when we're alone, do chuck all that. I'm very
+grateful to you for forking out&mdash;by the way, I hope you noticed the nice
+little touch in the sum? Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence. The six
+and eightpence was for my lawyer."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you adopt this sickeningly cynical attitude," John besought.
+"Forgery is not a joke."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this forgery was," Hugh contradicted. "You see, I got hold of
+Stevie's old check book and found he had quite a decent little account
+in Croydon. So I faked his signature&mdash;you know how to do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"You copy the signature upside down. Yes, that's the way. Then old
+Aubrey disguised himself with blue glasses and presented the check at
+the bank, just allowing himself<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> five minutes to catch the train back to
+town. I was waiting at the station in no end of a funk. But it was all
+right. The clerk blinked for a minute, but old Aubrey blinked back at
+him as cool as you please, and he shoveled out the gold. Aubrey came
+jingling on to the platform like a milk-can just as the train was
+starting."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to hear no more."</p>
+
+<p>"And then I found that Stevie was cocking his eye at this check book and
+scratching his head and looking at me and&mdash;well, he suspected me. The
+fact of the matter is that Stevie's as keen on his cash as anybody. I
+suppose this is a side account for the benefit of some little lady or
+other."</p>
+
+<p>"Silence," John commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"And then I lost my nerve, so that when Stevie started questioning me
+about his check book I must have looked embarrassed."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm surprised to hear that," John put in, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I dare say I could have bluffed it out, because I'd taken the
+precaution to cash the check through Aubrey whom Stevie knows nothing
+about. But I don't know. I lost my nerve. Well, thanks very much for
+stumping up, Johnnie; I'm only glad you got so much pleasure out of it
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean&mdash;pleasure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up&mdash;don't pretend you didn't enjoy yourself, you old Pharisee.
+Look here where <i>are</i> we going to lunch? I'm carrying a bag full of
+instruments, you know."</p>
+
+<p>John told Hugh that he declined to lunch with him in his present mood of
+bravado, and at the corner of Chancery Lane they parted.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind," John warned him, "if you wish for any help from me you are to
+remain for the present at Ambles."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear chap, I don't want to remain anywhere else; but I wish you
+could appreciate the way in which the dark and bloody deed was done, as
+one of your characters would say. You haven't uttered a word of
+congratulation. After all, it took some pluck, you know, and the
+signature was an absolutely perfect fake&mdash;perfect. The only thing that
+failed<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> was my nerve afterwards. But I suppose I should be steadier
+another time."</p>
+
+<p>John hurried away in a rage and walked up the Strand muttering:</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>was</i> the name of that mahogany-planter? <i>Was</i> it Raikes or wasn't
+it? I must find his card."</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he had posted the following letter that he recovered
+some of his wonted serenity.</p>
+
+<p class="r">36 C<small>HURCH</small> R<small>OW</small>,<br />
+Hampstead, N.W.,<br />
+<i>Nov. 28, 1910.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My dear Miss Hamilton</span>,&mdash;In case I am too shy to broach the subject at
+lunch on Wednesday I am writing to ask you beforehand if in your wildest
+dreams you have ever dreamt that you could be a private secretary. I
+have for a long time been wanting a secretary, and as you often spoke
+with interest of my work I am in hopes that the idea will not be
+distasteful to you. I should not have dared to ask you if you had not
+mentioned shorthand yesterday and if Mrs. Hamilton had not said
+something about your typewriting. This seems to indicate that at any
+rate you have considered the question of secretarial work. The fact of
+the matter is that in addition to my plays I am much worried by family
+affairs, so much so that I am kept from my own work and really require
+not merely mechanical assistance, but also advice on many subjects on
+which a woman is competent to advise.</p>
+
+<p>I gathered also from your mother's conversation that you yourself were
+sometimes harassed by family problems and I thought that perhaps you
+might welcome an excuse to get away from them for awhile.</p>
+
+<p>My notions of the salary that one ought to offer a private secretary are
+extremely vague. Possibly our friend Miss Merritt would negotiate the
+business side, which to me as an author is always very unpleasant. I
+should of course accept whatever Miss Merritt proposed without
+hesitation. My<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> idea was that you would work with me every morning at
+Hampstead. I have never yet attempted dictation myself, but I feel that
+I could do it after a little practice. Then I thought you could lunch
+with me, and that after lunch we could work on the materials&mdash;that is to
+say that I should give you a list of things I wanted to know, which you
+would search for either in my own library or at the British Museum. Does
+this strike you as too heavy a task? Perhaps Miss Merritt will advise
+you on this matter too.</p>
+
+<p>If Mrs. Hamilton is opposed to the idea, possibly I might call upon her
+and explain personally my point of view. In the meantime I am looking
+forward to our lunch and hoping very much that you will set my mind at
+rest by accepting the post. I think I told you I was working on a play
+with Joan of Arc as the central figure. It is interesting, because I am
+determined not to fall into the temptation of introducing a factitious
+love-interest, which in my opinion spoilt Schiller's version.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Yours sincerely,<br />
+J<small>OHN</small> T<small>OUCHWOOD</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span><b>HEN</b> after lunch on Wednesday afternoon John relinquished Miss Hamilton
+to the company of her friend Miss Merritt at Charing Cross Station, he
+was relinquishing a secretary from whom he had received an assurance
+that the very next morning she would be at his elbow, if he might so
+express himself. In his rosiest moments he had never expected so swift a
+fulfilment of his plan, and he felt duly grateful to Miss Merritt, to
+whose powers of persuasion he ascribed the acceptance in spite of Mrs.
+Hamilton's usually only too effective method of counteracting any kind
+of independent action on her daughter's part. On the promenade deck of
+the <i>Murmania</i> Miss Merritt had impressed John with her resolute
+character; now she seemed to him positively Napoleonic, and he was more
+in awe of her than ever, so much so indeed that he completely failed to
+convey his sense of obligation to her good offices and could only beam
+at her like a benevolent character in a Dickens novel. Finally he did
+manage to stammer out his desire that she would charge herself with the
+financial side of the agreement and was lost in silent wonder when she
+had no hesitation in suggesting terms based on the fact that Miss
+Hamilton had no previous experience as a secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Later on, if you're satisfied with her," she said, "you must increase
+her salary; but I will be no party to over-payment simply because she is
+personally sympathetic to you."</p>
+
+<p>How well that was put, John thought. Personally sympathetic! How
+accurately it described his attitude toward Miss Hamilton. He took leave
+of the young women and walked up Villiers Street, cheered by the
+pleasant conviction that the flood of domestic worries which had
+threatened to destroy his peace of mind and overwhelm his productiveness
+was at last definitely stayed.<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a></p>
+
+<p>"She's exactly what I require," he kept saying to himself, exultantly.
+"And I think I may claim without unduly flattering myself that the post
+I have offered her is exactly what she requires. From what that very
+nice girl Miss Merritt said, it is evidently a question of asserting
+herself now or never. With what a charming lack of self-consciousness
+she agreed to the salary and even suggested the hours of work herself.
+Oh, she's undoubtedly practical&mdash;very practical; but at the same time
+she has not got that almost painfully practical exterior of Miss
+Merritt, who must have broken in a large number of difficult employers
+to acquire that tight set of her mouth. Probably I shall be easy to
+manage, so working for me won't spoil her unbusinesslike appearance.
+To-morrow we are to discuss the choice of a typewriter; and by the way,
+I must arrange which room she is to use for typing. The noise of a
+machine at high speed would be as prejudicial to composition as Viola's
+step-dancing. Yes, I must arrange with Mrs. Worfolk about a room."</p>
+
+<p>John's faith in his good luck was confirmed by the amazing discovery
+that Mrs. Worfolk had known his intended secretary as a child.</p>
+
+<p>"Her old nurse in fact!" he exclaimed joyfully, for such a melodramatic
+coincidence did not offend John's romantic palate.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, not her nurse. I never was not what you might call a nurse
+proper. Well, I mean to say, though I was always fond of children I
+seemed to take more somehow to the house itself, and so I never got
+beyond being a nursemaid. After that I gave myself up to rising as high
+as a housemaid <i>can</i> rise until I married Mr. Worfolk. Perhaps you may
+remember me once passing the remark that I'd been in service with a
+racing family? Well, after I left them I took a situation as upper
+housemaid with a very nice family in the county of Unts, and who came up
+to London for the season to Grosvenor Gardens. Then I met Mr. Worfolk
+who was a carpenter and he made packing-cases for Mr. Hamilton who
+was<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> your young lady's pa. Oh, I remember him well. There was a slight
+argument between Mr. Worfolk and I&mdash;well, not argument, because ours was
+a very happy marriage, but a slight conversation as to whether he was to
+make cases for Chi-ner or Chi-nese knick-knacks, and Mr. Worfolk was
+wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"But were you in service with Mr. Hamilton? Did he live in
+Huntingdonshire?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, sir. You're getting very confused, if you'll pardon the
+obsivation. Very confused, you're getting. This Mr. Hamilton was a
+customer of Mr. Worfolk and through him coming to superintend his
+Chi-nese valuables being packed I got to know his little girl&mdash;your
+secretary as is to be. Oh, I remember her perfickly. Why, I mended a
+hole in her stocking once. Right above the garter it was, and she was so
+fond of our Tom. Oh, but he <i>was</i> a beautiful mouser. I've heard many
+people say they never saw a finer cat nowhere."</p>
+
+<p>"You have a splendid memory, Mrs. Worfolk."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. I have got a good memory. Why, when I was a tiny tot I can
+remember my poor grandpa being took sudden with the colic and rolling
+about on the kitchen hearth-rug, groaning, as you might say, in a agony
+of pain. Well, he died the same year as the Juke of Wellington, but
+though I was taken to the Juke's funeral by my poor mother, I've
+forgotten that. Well, one can't remember everything, and that's a fact;
+one little thing will stick and another little thing won't. Well, I mean
+to say, it's a good job anybody can't remember everything. I'm shaw
+there's enough trouble in the world as it is."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Worfolk startled the new secretary when she presented herself at 36
+Church Row next day by embracing her affectionately in the hall before
+she had explained the reason for such a demonstration. It soon
+transpired, however, that Miss Hamilton's memory was as good as Mrs.
+Worfolk's and that she had not forgotten those jolly visits to the
+carpenter long ago, nor even the big yellow Tomcat. As<a
+name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> for the master of the house, he raised
+his housekeeper's salary to show what importance he attached to a good
+memory.</p>
+
+<p>For a day or two John felt shy of assigning much work to his secretary;
+but she soon protested that, if she was only going to type thirty to
+fifty lines of blank verse every other morning, she should resign her
+post on the ground that it was an undignified sinecure.</p>
+
+<p>"What about dictating your letters? You made such a point of my knowing
+shorthand."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I did, didn't I?" John agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Dictation made him very nervous at first; but with a little practice he
+began to enjoy it, and ultimately it became something in the nature of a
+vice. He dictated immensely long letters to friends whose very existence
+he had forgotten for years, the result of which abrupt revivals of
+intercourse was a shower of appeals to lend money to these companions of
+his youth. Yet this result did not discourage him from the habit of
+dictating for dictation's sake, and every night before he turned over to
+go to sleep he used to poke about in the rubbish-heap of the past for
+more forgotten friends. As a set off to incommoding himself with a host
+of unnecessary correspondents he became meticulously businesslike, and
+after having neglected Miss Janet Bond for several weeks he began to
+write to her daily about the progress of the play, which notwithstanding
+his passion for dictation really was progressing at last. Indeed he
+worked up the manageress of the Parthenon to such a pitch of excitement
+that one morning she appeared suddenly at Church Row and made a dramatic
+entrance into the library when John, who had for the moment exhausted
+his list of friends, was dictating a letter to <i>The Times</i> about the
+condition of some trees on Hampstead Heath.</p>
+
+<p>"I've broken in upon your inspiration," boomed Miss Bond in tones that
+she usually reserved for her most intensely tragic moments.</p>
+
+<p>In vain did the author asseverate that he was delighted to<a
+name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> see her; she rushed away without another
+word; but that evening she wrote him an ecstatic letter from her
+dressing-room about what it had meant to her and what it always would
+mean to her to think of his working like that for her.</p>
+
+<p>"But we mustn't deride Janet Bond," said the author to his secretary,
+who was looking contemptuously at the actress's heavy caligraphy. "We
+must remember that she will create Joan of Arc."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's a pity, isn't it?" Miss Hamilton commented, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but won't you allow that she's a great actress?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will indeed," she murmured with an emphatic nod.</p>
+
+<p>Carried along upon his flood of correspondence John nevertheless managed
+to steer clear of his relations, and in his present frame of mind he was
+inclined to attribute his successful course like everything else that
+was prospering just now to the advent of Miss Hamilton. However, it was
+too much to expect that with his newly discovered talent he should
+resist dictating at any rate one epistolary sermon to his youngest
+brother, of whose arrival at Ambles he had been sharply notified by
+Hilda. This weighty address took up nearly a whole morning, and when it
+was finished John was disconcerted by Miss Hamilton's saying:</p>
+
+<p>"You don't really want me to type all this out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me that whatever he's done this won't
+make him repent. You don't mind my criticizing you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I asked you to," he reminded her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it seems to me a little false&mdash;a little, if I may say so,
+complacently wrathful. It's the sort of thing I seem to remember reading
+and laughing at in old-fashioned books. Of course, I'll type it out at
+once if you insist, but it's already after twelve o'clock, and we have
+to go over the material for the third act. I can't somehow fit in
+what<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a> you've just been dictating with what you were telling me yesterday
+about the scene between Gilles de Rais and Joan. I'm so afraid that
+you'll make Joan preach, and of course she mustn't preach, must she?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," conceded John, trying not to appear mortified. "If you
+think it isn't worth sending, I won't send it."</p>
+
+<p>He fancied that she would be moved by his sensitiveness to her judgment;
+but, without a tremor, she tore the pages out of her shorthand book and
+threw them into the waste-paper basket. John stared at the ruthless
+young woman in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you mean me to take you at your word?" she asked, severely.</p>
+
+<p>He was not altogether sure that he had, but he lacked the courage to
+tell her so and checked an impulse to rescue his stillborn sermon from
+the grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Though I don't quite like the idea of leaving my brother at Ambles with
+nothing to occupy his energies," John went on, meditatively, "I'm
+doubtful of the prudence of exposing him to the temptations of
+idleness."</p>
+
+<p>"If you want to give him something to do, why don't you intrust him with
+getting ready the house for your Christmas party? You are always
+worrying about its emptiness."</p>
+
+<p>"But isn't that putting in his way temptations of a more positive kind?"
+he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you set a limit to your expenditure. Can you trust his taste? He
+ought to be an adept at furnishings."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I think he'd do the actual furnishing very well. But won't it seem
+as if I am overlooking his abominable behavior too easily?"</p>
+
+<p>With a great effort John kept his eyes averted from the waste-paper
+basket.</p>
+
+<p>"You must either do that or refuse to have anything more to do with
+him," Miss Hamilton declared. "You can't expect him to be the mirror of
+your moral superiority for the rest of his life."<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You seem to take quite an interest in him," said John, a little
+resentfully.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he added, hurriedly. "I'll authorize him to prepare the
+house for Christmas. He must fight his own battles with my sister,
+Hilda. At any rate, it will annoy her."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton shook her head in mock reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"Act Three. Scene One," the dramatist announced in the voice of a mystic
+who has at last shaken himself free from earthly clogs and is about to
+achieve levitation. It was consoling to perceive that his secretary's
+expression changed in accord with his own, and John decided that she
+really was a most attractive young woman and not so unsympathetic as he
+had been upon the verge of thinking. Moreover, she was right. The
+important thing at present, the only thing, in fact, was the progress of
+the play, and it was for this very purpose that he had secured her
+collaboration&mdash;well, perhaps collaboration was too strong a word&mdash;but,
+indeed, so completely had she identified herself with his work that
+really he could almost call it collaboration. He ought not to tax his
+invention at this critical point with such a minor problem as the
+preparation of Ambles for a family reunion. Relations must go to the
+deuce in their own way, at any rate until the rough draft of the third
+act was finished, which, under present favorable conditions, might
+easily happen before Christmas. His secretary was always careful not to
+worry him with her own domestic bothers, though he knew by the way she
+had once or twice referred to her mother that she was having her own
+hard fight at home. He had once proposed calling upon the old lady; but
+Doris had quickly squashed the suggestion. John liked to think about
+Mrs. Hamilton, because through some obscure process of logic it gave him
+an excuse to think about her daughter as Doris. In other connections he
+thought of her formally as Miss Hamilton, and often told himself how
+lucky it was that so charming and accomplished a young woman should<a
+name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> be so obviously indifferent to&mdash;well, not
+exactly to himself, but surely he might allege to anything except
+himself as a romantic playwright.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the play itself marched on with apparent smoothness, until
+one morning John dictated the following letter to his star:</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Miss Bond</span>,&mdash;Much against my will, I have come to the conclusion
+that without a human love interest a play about Joan of Arc is
+impossible. You will be surprised by my abrupt change of front, and you
+will smile to yourself when you remember how earnestly I argued against
+your suggestion that I might ultimately be compelled to introduce a
+human love interest. The fact of the matter is that now I have arrived
+at the third act I find patriotism too abstract an emotion for the
+stage. As you know, my idea was to make Joan so much positively
+enamoured of her country that the ordinary love interest would be
+superseded. I shall continue to keep Joan herself heart free; but I do
+think that it would be effective to have at any rate two people in love
+with her. My notion is to introduce a devoted young peasant who will
+follow her from her native village, first to the court at Chinon, and so
+on right through the play until the last fatal scene in the market place
+at Rouen. I'm sure such a simple lover could be made very moving, and
+the contrast would be valuable; moreover, it strikes me as a perfectly
+natural situation. Further, I propose that Gilles de Rais should not
+only be in love with her, but that he should actually declare his love,
+and that she should for a brief moment be tempted to return it, finally
+spurning him as a temptation of the Devil, and thereby reducing him to
+such a state of despair that he is led into the horrible practices for
+which he was finally condemned to death. Let me know your opinion soon,
+because I am at this moment working on the third act.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Yours very sincerely,<br />
+J<small>OHN</small> T<small>OUCHWOOD</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a></p>
+
+<p>To which Miss Bond replied by telegram:</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Complete confidence in you, and think suggestion magnificent, there
+should be exit speech of renunciation for Joan to bring down curtain of
+third act.</p>
+
+<p class="r"><span class="smcap">Janet Bond.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"You agree with these suggestions?" John asked his secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Like Miss Bond, I have complete confidence in you," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her earnestly to see if she was laughing at him, and put
+down his pen.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that in some ways you yourself remind me of Joan?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a habit of John's, who had a brain like a fly's eye, to perceive
+historical resemblances that were denied to an ordinary vision.
+Generally he discovered these reincarnations of the past in his own
+personality. While he was writing <i>The Fall of Babylon</i> he actually
+fretted himself for a time over a fancied similarity between his
+character and Nebuchadnezzar's, and sometimes used to wonder if he was
+putting too much of himself into his portrayal of that dim potentate;
+and during his composition of <i>Lucretia</i> he was so profoundly convinced
+that Cæsar Borgia was simply John Touchwood over again in a more
+passionate period and a more picturesque costume that, as the critics
+pointed out, he presented the world with an aspect of him that would
+never have been recognized by Machiavelli. Yet, even when Harold was
+being most unpleasant, or when Viola and Bertram were deafening his
+household, John could not bring himself to believe that he and Gilles de
+Rais, who was proved to have tortured over three hundred children to
+death, had many similar traits; nor was he willing to admit more than a
+most superficial likeness to the feeble Dauphin Charles. In fact, at one
+time he was so much discouraged by his inability to adumbrate himself in
+any of his personages that he began to regret his choice of Joan of Arc
+and to wish that<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> he had persevered in his intention to write a play
+about Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom, allowing for the sundering years,
+he felt he had more in common than with any other historical figure.
+Therefore he was relieved to discover this resemblance between his
+heroine and his secretary, in whom he was beginning to take nearly as
+much interest as in himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean outwardly?" asked Miss Hamilton, looking at an engraving of
+the bust from the church of St. Maurice, Orleans. "If so, I hope her
+complexion wasn't really as scaly as that."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I mean in character."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose a private secretary ought not to say 'what nonsense' to her
+employer, but really what else can I say? You might as well compare Ida
+Merritt to Joan of Arc; in fact, she really is rather like my conception
+of her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry you find the comparison so far-fetched," John said, huffily.
+"It wasn't intended to be uncomplimentary."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you decided to introduce those wolves in the first act, because I
+think I ought to begin making inquiries about suitable dogs?"</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Hamilton rushed away from the personal like this, John used to
+regret that he had changed their relationship from one of friendship to
+one of business. Although he admired practicalness, he realized that it
+was possible to be too practical, and he sighed sometimes for the tone
+that his unknown admirers took when they wrote to him about his work.
+Only that morning he had received a letter from one of these, which he
+had tossed across the table for his secretary's perusal before he
+dictated a graceful reply.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="r">H<small>ILLCREST</small>,<br />
+Highfield Road,<br />
+Hornsey, N.,<br />
+<i>Dec. 14, 1910</i>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>D<small>EAR</small> S<small>IR</small>:&mdash;I have never written to an author before, but I cannot help
+writing to ask you <i>when</i> you are going to<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> give us another play. I
+cannot tell you how much I enjoy your plays&mdash;they take me into another
+world. Please do not imagine that I am an enthusiastic schoolgirl. I am
+the mother of four dear little children, and my husband and I both act
+in a dramatic club at Hornsey. We are very anxious to perform one of
+your plays, but the committee is afraid of the expense. I suppose it
+would be asking too much of you to lend us some of the costumes of <i>The
+Fall of Babylon</i>. I think it is your greatest work up till now, and I
+simply live in all those wonderful old cities now and read everything I
+can find about them. I was brought up very strictly when I was young and
+grew to hate the Bible&mdash;please do not be shocked at this&mdash;but since I
+saw <i>The Fall of Babylon</i> I have taken to reading it again. I went nine
+times&mdash;twice in the gallery, three times in the pit, twice in the upper
+circle and twice in the dress circle, once in the fifth row at the side
+and once right in the middle of the front row! I cut out the enclosed
+photo of you from <i>The Tatler</i>, and, would it be asking too much to sign
+your name? Hoping for the pleasure of a reply, I remain,</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your sincere admirer,<br />
+(<span class="smcap">Mrs.</span>) E<small>NID</small> F<small>OSTER</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"What extraordinary lunatics there are in this world," Miss Hamilton had
+commented. "Have you noticed the one constant factor in these letters?
+All the women begin by saying that it is the first time they have ever
+written to an author; of course, they would say the same thing to a man
+who kissed them. The men, however, try to convey that they're in the
+habit of writing to authors. I think there's a moral to be extracted
+from that observation."</p>
+
+<p>Now, John had not yet attained&mdash;and perhaps it was improbable that he
+ever would attain&mdash;those cold summits of art out of reach alike of the
+still, sad music and the hurdy-gurdies of humanity, so that these
+letters from unknown men and women, were they never so foolish,
+titillated his vanity, which he called "appealing to his
+imagination."<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a></p>
+
+<p>"One must try to put oneself in the writer's place," he had urged,
+reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Um&mdash;yes, but I can't help thinking of Mrs. Enid Foster living in those
+wonderful old cities. Her household will crash like Babylon if she isn't
+careful, and her family will be reduced to eating grass like
+Nebuchadnezzar, if the green-grocer's book is neglected any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't allow the suburbs to be touched by poetry?"</p>
+
+<p>John had tried to convey in his tone that Miss Hamilton in criticizing
+the enthusiasm of Mrs. Foster was depreciating his own work. But she had
+seemed quite unconscious of having rather offended him and had taken
+down his answer without excusing herself. Now when in a spirit that was
+truly forgiving he had actually compared her to his beloved heroine, she
+had scoffed at him as if he was a kind of Mrs. Foster himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You're very matter-of-fact," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that a rather desirable quality in a secretary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I think you might have waited to hear why you reminded me of
+Joan of Arc before you began talking about those confounded wolves,
+which, by the way, I have decided to cut out."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't cut out a good effect just because you're annoyed with me," she
+advised.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, there are other reasons," said John, loftily. "It is possible
+that in an opening tableau the audience may not appreciate that they are
+wolves, and if they think they're only a lot of stray dogs, the effect
+will go for nothing. It was merely a passing idea, and I have discarded
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton left him to go and type out the morning's correspondence,
+and John settled down to a speech by the Maid on the subject of
+perpetual celibacy: he wrote a very good one.</p>
+
+<p>"She may laugh at me," said the author to himself, "but she <i>is</i> like
+Joan&mdash;extraordinarily like. Why, I can hear her making this very
+speech."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton might sometimes profane John's poetic<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> sanctuaries and
+sometimes pull his leg when he was on tiptoe for a flight like Mr.
+Keats' sweetpeas, but she made existence much more pleasant for him, and
+he had already reached the stage of wondering how he had ever managed to
+get along without her. He even went so far in his passion for historical
+parallels as to compare his situation before she came to the realm of
+France before Joan of Arc took it in hand. He knew in his heart that
+these weeks before Christmas were unnaturally calm; he had no hope of
+prolonging this halcyon time much further; but while it lasted he would
+enjoy it to the full. Any one who had overheard John announcing to his
+reflection in the glass an unbridled hedonism for the immediate future
+might have been pardoned for supposing that he was about to amuse
+himself in a very desperate fashion. As a matter of fact, the averred
+intention was due to nothing more exciting than the prospect of a long
+walk over the Heath with Miss Hamilton to discuss an outline of the
+fourth act, which John knew would gradually be filled in with his plans
+for writing other plays and finally be colored by a conversation, or,
+anyhow, a monologue about himself as a human being without reference to
+himself as an author.</p>
+
+<p>"What is so delightful about Miss Hamilton," he assured that credulous
+and complaisant reflection, "is the way one can talk to her without
+there being the least danger of her supposing that one has any ulterior
+object in view. Notwithstanding all the rich externals of the past, I'm
+bound to confess that the relations between men and women are far more
+natural nowadays. I suppose it was the bicycle that began female
+emancipation; had bicycles been invented in the time of Joan of Arc she
+would scarcely have had to face so much ecclesiastical criticism of her
+behavior."</p>
+
+<p>The walk was a success; amongst other things, John discovered that if he
+had had a sister like Miss Hamilton, most of his family troubles would
+never have arisen. He shook his head sadly at the thought that once upon
+a time he had tried to imagine a Miss Hamilton in Edith, and in a burst
+of<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> self-revelation, like the brief appearance of two or three acres of
+definitely blue sky overhead, he assured his secretary that her coming
+had made a difference to his whole life.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course you get through much more in the day now," she agreed.</p>
+
+<p>John would have liked a less practical response, but he made the best of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got so much wrapped up in the play," he said, "that I'm wondering
+now if I shall be able to tear myself away from London for Christmas. I
+dread the idea of a complete break&mdash;especially with the most interesting
+portion just coming along. I think I must ask you to take your holiday
+later in the year, if you don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>He had got it out, and if he could have patted himself on the back
+without appearing ridiculous in a public thoroughfare he would have done
+so. His manner might have sounded brusque, but John was sure that the
+least suggestion of any other attitude except that of an employer
+compelled against his will to seem inconsiderate would have been fatal.</p>
+
+<p>"That would mean leaving my mother alone," said Miss Hamilton,
+doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>John looked sympathetic, but firm, when he agreed with her.</p>
+
+<p>"She would understand that literary work takes no account of the church
+calendar," he pointed out. "After all, what is Christmas?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unfortunately, my mother is already very much offended with me for
+working with you at all. Oh, well, bother relations!" she exclaimed,
+vehemently. "I'm going to be selfish in future. All right, if you
+insist, I must obey&mdash;or lose my job, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might have to engage a locum tenens. You see, now that I've got into
+the habit of dictating my letters and relying upon somebody else to keep
+my references in order and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," she interrupted. "I quite see that it would put you to great
+inconvenience if I cried off. All the same, I can't help being worried
+by the notion of leaving mother<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> alone on Christmas Day itself. Why
+shouldn't I join you on the day after?"</p>
+
+<p>"The very thing," John decided. "I will leave London on Christmas Eve,
+and you shall come down on Boxing Day. But I should travel in the
+morning, if I were you. It's apt to be unpleasant, traveling in the
+evening on a Bank Holiday. Hullo, here we are! This walk has given me a
+tremendous appetite, and I do feel that we've made a splendid start with
+the fourth act, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fourth act?" repeated his secretary. "It seems to me that most of
+the time you were talking about the position of women in modern life."</p>
+
+<p>John laughed gayly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I see you haven't even yet absolutely grasped my method of work. I
+was thinking all the while of Joan's speech to her accusers. I can
+assure you that all my remarks were entirely relevant to what I had in
+my head. That's the way I get my atmosphere. I told you that you
+reminded me of her, but you wouldn't believe me. In doublet and hose you
+would be Joan."</p>
+
+<p>"Should I? I think I should look more like Dick Whittington in a touring
+pantomime. My legs are too thin for tights."</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, I wonder if Janet Bond has good legs?" said John,
+pensively.</p>
+
+<p>It was charming to be able to talk about women's legs like this without
+there being the slightest suggestion that they had any; yet, somehow the
+least promising topics were rehabilitated by the company of Miss
+Hamilton, and most of them, even the oldest, acquired a new and
+absorbing interest. John had registered a vow on the first day his
+secretary came that he would watch carefully for the least signs of
+rosifying her and he had renewed this vow every morning before his
+glass; but it was sometimes difficult not to attribute to her all sorts
+of mysterious fascinations, as on those occasions when he would have
+kept her working later than usual in the afternoon and when she would
+have been persuaded to stay for<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> tea, for which she made a point of
+getting home to please her mother, who gave it a grand importance. John
+was convinced that even James would forgive him for thinking that in all
+England there was not a more competent, a more charming, a more&mdash;he used
+to pull himself up guiltily at about the third comparative and stifle
+his fancies in the particularly delicious cake that Mrs. Worfolk always
+seemed to provide on the days when his secretary stayed to tea.</p>
+
+<p>It was on one of these rosified afternoons, full of candlelight and
+firelight and the warmed scent of hyacinths that Miss Hamilton rallied
+John about his exaggerated dread of his relations.</p>
+
+<p>"For I've been working with you now for nearly three weeks, and you've
+not been bothered by them once," she declared.</p>
+
+<p>"My name! My name!" he cried. "Touchwood?"</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to think it's nothing but an affectation," she persisted.
+"<i>You're</i> not pestered by charitable uncles who want to boast of what
+they've done for their poor brother's only daughter. <i>You're</i> not made
+to feel that you've wrecked your mother's old age by earning your own
+living."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they have been quiet recently," he admitted. "But there was such a
+terrible outbreak of Family Influenza just before you came that some
+sort of prostration for a time was inevitable. I hope you don't expect
+my brother, Hugh, to commit a forgery every week. Besides, that
+excellent suggestion of yours about preparing Ambles for Christmas has
+kept him busy, and probably all the rest of them down there too. But
+it's odd you should raise the subject, because I was going to propose
+your having supper here some Sunday soon and inviting my eldest brother
+and his wife to meet you."</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow is the last Sunday before Christmas. The Sunday after is
+Christmas Day."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it really? Then I must dictate an invitation for to-morrow, and I
+must begin to see about presents on Monday. By Jove, how time has
+flown!"<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a></p>
+
+<p>"After all, what is Christmas?" she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you must expect children to be excited about it," John murmured. "I
+don't like to disappoint <i>them</i>. But I'd no idea Christmas was on top of
+us like this. You'll help me with my shopping next week? I hope to
+goodness Eleanor won't come and bother me. She'll be getting back to
+town to-morrow. It's really extraordinary, the way the time has passed."</p>
+
+<p>John dictated an urgent invitation to James and Beatrice to sup with
+them the following evening, and since it was too late to let them know
+by post, he decided to see Miss Hamilton as far as the tube and leave
+the note in person at Hill Road.</p>
+
+<p>James arrived for supper in a most truculent mood, and this being
+aggravated by his brother's burgundy, of which he drank a good deal,
+referring to it all the while as poison, much to John's annoyance,
+embroiled him half way through supper in an argument with Miss Hamilton
+on the subject of feminine intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"Women are not intelligent," he shouted. "The glimmering intelligence
+they sometimes appear to exhibit is only one of their numerous sexual
+allurements. A woman thinks with her nerves, reasons with her emotions,
+and speculates with her sensations."</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish," said Miss Hamilton, emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Jimmie dear," his wife put in, "you'll only have indigestion if
+you get excited while you're eatin'."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have indigestion anyway," growled her husband. "My liver will
+be like dough to-morrow after this burgundy. I ought to drink a light
+moselle."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can have moselle," John began.</p>
+
+<p>"I loathe moselle. I'd as soon drink syrup of squills," James bellowed.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, you shall have syrup of squills next time."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Johnnie," Beatrice interposed with a wide reproachful smile.
+"Jimmie's only joking. He doesn't really like syrup of squills."<a
+name="page_211" id="page_211"></a></p>
+
+<p>"For heaven's sake, don't try to analyze my tastes," said James to his
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>John threw a glance at Miss Hamilton, which was meant to express "What
+did I tell you?" But she was blind to his signal and only intent upon
+attacking James on behalf of her sex.</p>
+
+<p>"Women have not the same kind of intelligence as men," she began,
+"because it is denied to them by their physical constitution. But they
+have, I insist, a supplementary intelligence without which the great
+masculine minds would be as ineffective as convulsions of nature. Women
+work like the coral polyps...."</p>
+
+<p>"Bravo!" John cried. "A capital comparison!"</p>
+
+<p>"An absurd comparison!" James contradicted. "A ludicrous comparison!
+Woman is purely individualistic. The moment she begins to take up with
+communal effort, she tends to become sterile."</p>
+
+<p>"Do get on with your supper, dear," urged Beatrice, who had only
+understood the last word and was anxious not "to be made to feel small,"
+as she would have put it, in front of an unmarried woman.</p>
+
+<p>John perceived her mortification and jumped through the argument as a
+clown through a paper hoop.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember I'm expecting you both at Ambles on Christmas Eve," he said,
+boisterously. "We're going to have a real old-fashioned Christmas
+party."</p>
+
+<p>James forgot all about women in his indignation; but before he could
+express his opinion Beatrice held up another paper hoop for the
+distraction of the audience.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm simply longin' for the country," she declared. "Christmas with a
+lot of children is the nicest thing I know."</p>
+
+<p>John went through the hoop with aplomb and refused to be unseated by his
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>"James will enjoy it more than any of us," he chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" shouted the critic. "I'd sooner be wrecked on<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> a desert island
+with nothing to read but a sixpenny edition of the Christmas Carol.
+Ugh!"</p>
+
+<p>John looked at Miss Hamilton again, and this time his appeal was not
+unheeded; she said no more about women and let James rail on at
+sentimental festivities, which, by the time he had finished with them,
+looked as irreparable as the remains of the tipsy-cake. There seemed no
+reason amid the universal collapse of tradition to conserve the habit of
+letting the ladies retire after dinner. As there was no drawing-room in
+his bachelor household, it would have been more comfortable to smoke
+upstairs in the library; but James returned to Fielding after
+demolishing Dickens and protested against being made to hurry over his
+port; so his host had to watch Beatrice escort Miss Hamilton from the
+dining-room with considerable resentment at what he thought was her
+unjustifiably protective manner.</p>
+
+<p>"As my secretary," he felt, "Miss Hamilton is more at home in my house
+than Beatrice is. I suppose, though, that like everything else I have my
+relations are going to take possession of her now."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you pick up your lady-help?" James asked, when he and his
+brother were left alone with the wine.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're alluding to Miss Hamilton," John said, sharply, "I met her on
+board the <i>Murmania</i>, crossing the Atlantic."</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard any good come of traveling acquaintances. She has a good
+complexion; I suppose she took your eye by not being seasick. Beware of
+women with good complexions who aren't seasick, Johnnie. They always
+flirt."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you supposed to be warning me against my secretary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any woman who finds herself at a man's elbow is dangerous. Nurses, of
+course, are the most notoriously dangerous&mdash;but a secretary who isn't
+seasick is nearly as bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks very much for your brotherly concern," said John, sarcastically.
+"You will be relieved to hear that the relationship between Miss
+Hamilton and myself is a purely practical one, and likely to remain
+so."<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Platonism was never practical," James answered with a snort. "It was
+the most impractical system ever imagined."</p>
+
+<p>"Fortunately Miss Hamilton is sufficiently interested in her work and in
+mine not to bother her head about the philosophy of the affections."</p>
+
+<p>James was irritating when he was criticizing contemporary literature;
+but his views of modern life were infuriating.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not accusing your young woman&mdash;how old is she, by the way? About
+twenty-nine, I should guess. A damned dangerous age, Johnnie. However,
+as I say, I'm not accusing her of designs upon you. But a man who writes
+the kind of plays that you do is capable of any extravagance, and you're
+much too old by now to be thinking about marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't happen to be thinking about marriage," John retorted. "But I
+refuse to accept your dictum about my age. I consider that the effects
+of age have been very much exaggerated by the young. You cannot call a
+man of forty-two old."</p>
+
+<p>"You look much more than forty-two. However, one can't write plays like
+yours without exposing oneself to a good deal of emotional wear and
+tear. No, no, you're making a great mistake in introducing a woman into
+the house. Believe me, Johnnie, I'm speaking for your good. If I hadn't
+married, I might have preserved my illusions about women and compounded
+just as profitable a dose of dramatic nux vomica as yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by a dose of dramatic nux vomica?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's my name for the sort of plays you write, which unduly accelerate
+the action of the heart and make a sane person retch. However, don't
+take my remarks in ill part. I was simply commenting on the danger of
+letting a good-looking young woman make herself indispensable."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you allow her good looks," John said, witheringly. "Any one
+who was listening to our conversation would get the impression that she
+was as ugly and voracious as a harpy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. She's quite good-looking. Very nice ankles."<a
+name="page_214" id="page_214"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I haven't noticed her ankles," John said, austerely.</p>
+
+<p>"You will, though," his brother replied with an encouraging laugh. "By
+the way, what's that rascal, Hugh, been doing? I hear you've replanted
+him in the bosom of the family. Isn't Hugh rather too real for one of
+your Christmas parties?"</p>
+
+<p>John, after some hesitation, had decided not to tell any of the others
+the details of Hugh's misdemeanor; he had even denied himself the
+pleasure of holding him up to George as a warning; hence the renewal of
+his interest in Hugh had struck the family as a mere piece of
+sentimentality.</p>
+
+<p>"Crutchley didn't seem to believe he'd ever make much of architecture,"
+he explained to James. "And I'm thinking of helping him to establish
+himself in British Honduras."</p>
+
+<p>"Bah! For less than he'll cost you in British Honduras you could
+establish me as the editor of a new critical weekly," James grunted.</p>
+
+<p>"There is still time for Hugh to make something of his life," John
+replied. He had not had the slightest intention of trying to score off
+his eldest brother by this remark, and he was shocked to see what a
+spasm of ill will twisted up his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose your young woman is responsible for this sudden solicitude
+for Hugh's career? I suppose it's she who has persuaded you that he has
+possibilities? You take care, Johnnie. You can't manipulate the villain
+in life as you can on the stage."</p>
+
+<p>Now, Miss Hamilton, though she had not met him, had shown just enough
+interest in Hugh to give these remarks a sting; and John must have been
+obviously taken aback, for the critic at once recovered his good humor
+and proposed joining the ladies upstairs. Beatrice was sitting by the
+fire; her husband's absence had allowed her to begin the digestion of an
+unusually good dinner in peace, and the smoothness of her countenance
+made her look more than ever like a cabinet photograph of the early
+'nineties. Miss Hamilton, on the<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> other hand, seemed bored, and very
+soon she declared that she must go home lest her mother should be
+anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you have a mother?" James observed in such a tone that John thought
+it was the most offensive remark of the many he had heard him make that
+evening. He hoped that Miss Hamilton would not abandon him after this
+first encounter with his relations, and he tried to ascertain her
+impressions while she was putting on her things in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you've had a very dull evening," he murmured,
+apologetically. "I hope my sister-in-law wasn't more tiresome than
+usual. What did she talk about?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was warning me&mdash;no, I won't be malicious&mdash;she was explaining to me
+the difficulties of an author's wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, poor thing; I'm afraid my brother must be very trying to live
+with. I hope you were sympathetic?"</p>
+
+<p>"So sympathetic," Miss Hamilton replied, with a mocking glance, "that I
+told her I was never likely to make the experiment. Good night, Mr.
+Touchwood. To-morrow as usual."</p>
+
+<p>She hurried down the steps and was gone before he could utter a word.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think she need have said that," he murmured to himself on his
+way back to the library. "I've no doubt Beatrice was very trying; but I
+really don't think she need have said that to me. It wasn't worth
+repeating such a stupid remark. That's the way things acquire an undue
+importance."</p>
+
+<p>With John's entrance the conversation returned to Miss Hamilton; but,
+though it was nearly all implied criticism of his new secretary, he had
+no desire to change the topic. She was much more interesting than the
+weekly bills at Hill Road, and he listened without contradiction to his
+brother's qualms about her experience and his sister-in-law's regrets
+for her lack of it.</p>
+
+<p>"However," said John to his reflection when he was undressing, "they've
+got to make the best of her, even if they<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> all think the worse. And the
+beauty of it is that they can't occupy her as they can occupy a house. I
+must see about getting Hugh off to the Colonies soon. If I don't find
+out about British Honduras, he can always go to Canada or Australia. It
+isn't good for him to hang about in England."<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">W</span><b>HETHER</b> it was due to the Christmas card look of his new house or merely
+to a desire to flaunt a romantic hospitality in the face of his eldest
+brother, it is certain that John had never before in his life gone so
+benevolently mad as during the week that preceded Christmas in the year
+1910. Mindful of that afternoon in the town of Galton when he had tried
+to procure for Harold and Frida gifts of such American appearance as
+would excuse his negligence, he was determined not to expose himself for
+a second time to juvenile criticism, and in the selection of toys he
+pandered to every idiosyncrasy he had so far observed in his nephews and
+nieces. Thus, for Bertram he bought a large stamp album, several sheets
+of tropical stamps, a toy theater, representatives of every species in
+the great genus marbles, a set of expensive and realistic masks, and a
+model fireman's outfit. For Viola he filled a trunk with remnants of
+embroideries and all kinds of stuffs, placing on top two pairs of ebony
+castanets and the most professional tambourine he could find; and, in
+order that nature might not be utterly subordinated to art, he bought
+her a very large doll, rather older in appearance than Viola herself; in
+fact, almost marriageable. In the hope of obliterating the
+disappointment of those china animals, he chose for Frida a completely
+furnished dolls' house with garage and stables attached, so grand a
+house, indeed, that by knocking all the rooms into one, she could with
+slight inconvenience have lived in it herself; this residence he
+populated with gentleman-dolls, lady-dolls, servant-dolls, nurse-dolls,
+baby-dolls, horses, carriages, and motors; nor did he omit to provide a
+fishmonger's shop for the vicinity. For Harold he bought a butterfly
+collector's equipment, a vacuum pistol, a set of climbing-irons, a
+microscope, and at the last<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> moment a juvenile diver's equipment with
+air pumps and all accessories, which was warranted perfectly safe,
+though the wicked uncle wondered if it really was.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want a mere toy for the bathroom," he explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so, sir," the shopman assented, with a bow. "This is guaranteed
+for any ordinary village pond or small stream."</p>
+
+<p>For his grown-up relations John bought the kind of presents that one
+always does buy for grown-up relations, the kind of presents that look
+very ornamental on the counter, seem very useful when the shopman
+explains what they are for, puzzle the recipient and the donor when the
+shopman is no longer there, and lie about the house on small tables for
+the rest of the year. In the general odor of Russia leather that clung
+to his benefactions John hoped that Miss Hamilton would not consider too
+remarkable the attaché case that he intended to give her, nor amid the
+universal dazzle of silver object to the few little luxuries of the
+writing-desk with which he had enhanced it. Then there were the presents
+for the servants to choose, and he counted much on Miss Hamilton's
+enabling him to introduce into these an utilitarian note that for two or
+three seasons had been missing from his donations, which to an outsider
+might have seemed more like lures of the flesh than sober testimonials
+to service. He also counted upon her to persuade Mrs. Worfolk to
+accompany Maud down to Ambles: Elsa was to be left in Church Row with
+permission to invite to dinner the policeman to whom she was betrothed
+and various friends and relations of the two families.</p>
+
+<p>When the presents were settled John proceeded to lay in a store of
+eatables and drinkables, in the course of which enterprise he was
+continually saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I've forgotten for the moment what I want next, but meanwhile you'd
+better give me another box of Elvas plums."</p>
+
+<p>"Another drum? Yes, sir," the shopman would reply, licking his pencil in
+a way that was at once obsequious and pedantic, though it was not
+intended to suggest more than perfect efficiency.<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a></p>
+
+<p>When the hall and the adjacent rooms at 36 Church Row had been turned
+into rolling dunes of brown paper, John rushed about London in a last
+frenzy of unbridled acquisitiveness to secure plenty of amusement for
+the children. To this end he obtained a few well-known and well-tried
+favorites like the kinetoscope and the magic lantern, and a number of
+experimental diversions which would have required a trained engineer or
+renowned scientist to demonstrate successfully. Finally he bargained for
+the wardrobe of a Santa Claus whose dignified perambulations round the
+Christmas Bazaar of a noted emporium had attracted his fancy on account
+of the number of children who followed him everywhere, laughing and
+screaming with delight. It was not until he had completed the purchase
+that he discovered it was not the exterior of the Santa Claus which had
+charmed his little satellites, but the free distribution of bags of
+coagulated jujubes.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect I'd better get the Christmas tree in the country," said John,
+waist-deep in the still rising drift of parcels. "I dare say the Galton
+shops keep those silver and magenta globes you hang on Christmas trees,
+and I ought to patronize the local tradesmen."</p>
+
+<p>"If you have any local shopping to do, I'm sure you would be wise to go
+down to-day," Miss Hamilton suggested, firmly. "Besides, Mrs. Worfolk
+won't want to arrive at the last minute."</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, I shan't, Miss," said the housekeeper. "Well, I mean to
+say, I don't think we ever shall arrive, not if we wait much longer. We
+shall require a performing elephant to carry all these parcels, as it
+is."</p>
+
+<p>"My idea was to go down in the last train on Christmas Eve," John
+argued. "I like the old-fashioned style, don't you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, old-fashioned's the word," Mrs. Worfolk exclaimed. "Why, who's to
+get the house ready if we all go trooping down on Christmas Eve? And if
+I go, sir, you must come with me. You know how quick Mrs. Curtis always
+is to<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a> snap any one up. If I had my own way, I wouldn't go within a
+thousand miles of the country; that's a sure thing."</p>
+
+<p>John began to be afraid that his housekeeper was going back on her word,
+and he surrendered to the notion of leaving town that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, what is this parcel like a long drain-pipe?" he asked in a final
+effort to detain Miss Hamilton, who was preparing to make her farewells
+and leave him to his packing.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it would take some finding out," Mrs. Worfolk interposed. "I've
+never seen so many shapes and sizes of parcels in all my life."</p>
+
+<p>"They must have made a mistake," said John. "I don't remember buying
+anything so tubular as this."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled away some of the paper wrapping to see what was inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, of course! They're two or three boxes of Elvas plums I ordered. But
+please don't go, Miss Hamilton," he protested. "I am relying upon you to
+get the tickets to Waterloo."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of a strenuous scene at the station, in the course of which
+John's attempts to propitiate Mrs. Worfolk led to one of the porters
+referring to her as his mother, they managed to catch the five o'clock
+train to Wrottesford. After earnestly assuring his secretary that he
+should be perfectly ready to begin work again on Joan of Arc the day
+after her arrival and begging her on no account to let herself be
+deterred from traveling on the morning of Boxing Day, John sank back
+into the pleasant dreams that haunt a warm first-class smoking
+compartment when it's raining hard outside in the darkness of a December
+night.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have a green Christmas this year," observed one of his fellow
+travelers.</p>
+
+<p>"Very green," John assented with enthusiasm, only realizing as he spoke
+that the superlative must sound absurd to any one who was unaware of his
+thoughts and hiding his embarrassment in the <i>Westminster Gazette</i>,
+which in the circumstances was the best newspaper he could have
+chosen.<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a></p>
+
+<p>John was surprised and depressed when the train arrived at Wrottesford
+to find that the member of the Ambles party who had elected to meet him
+was Hilda; and there was a long argument on the platform who should
+drive in the dogcart and who should drive in the fly. John did not want
+to ride on the back seat of the dogcart, which he would have to do
+unless he drove himself, a prospect that did not attract him when he saw
+how impatiently the mare was dancing about through the extreme lateness
+of the train. Hilda objected to driving with his housekeeper in the fly,
+and in the end John was compelled to let Maud and Mrs. Worfolk occupy
+the dogcart, while he and Hilda toiled along the wet lanes in the fly.
+It was decided to leave the greater portion of the luggage to be fetched
+in the morning, but even so it was after eight o'clock before they got
+away from the station, and John, when he found himself immured with
+Hilda in the musty interior of the hired vehicle was inclined to
+prophesy a blue Christmas this year. To begin with, Hilda would try to
+explain the system she had pursued in allotting the various bedrooms to
+accommodate the large party that was expected at Ambles. It was bad
+enough so long as she confined herself to a verbal exposition, but when
+she produced a map of the house, evidently made by Hugh on an idle
+evening, and to illuminate her dispositions struck away most of John's
+matches, it became exasperating. His brain was already fatigued by the
+puzzle of fitting into two vehicles four pieces, one of which might not
+move to the square next two of the remaining pieces, and another of
+which could not move backward.</p>
+
+<p>"I leave it entirely to you," he declared, introducing at last into the
+intellectual torment of chess some of the happy irresponsibleness of
+bridge. "You mustn't set me these chess problems in a jolting fly before
+dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Chess!" Hilda sniffed with a shiver. "Draughts would be a better name."</p>
+
+<p>She did not often make jokes, and before John had recovered sufficiently
+from his surprise to congratulate her with a<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> hearty laugh, she was off
+again upon her querulous and rambling narration of the family news.</p>
+
+<p>"If everything <i>had</i> been left to me, I might have managed, but Hugh's
+interference, apparently authorized by you, upset all my poor little
+arrangements. I need hardly say that Mama was so delighted to have her
+favorite at home with her that she has done everything since his arrival
+to encourage his self-importance. It's Hughie this and Hughie that,
+until I get quite sick of the sound of his name. And he's very unkind to
+poor little Harold. Apart from being very coarse and sarcastic in front
+of him, he is sometimes quite brutal. Only this morning he shot him in
+the upper part of the leg with a pellet from the poor little man's own
+air-gun."</p>
+
+<p>John did laugh this time, and shouted "Merry Christmas!" to a passing
+wagon.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say it sounds very funny to you. But it made Harold cry."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Hilda, it's just as well he should learn the potentialities
+of his own instrument. He'll sympathize with the birds now."</p>
+
+<p>"Birds," she scoffed. "Fancy comparing Harold with a bird!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is rather unfair," John agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"However, you won't be so ready to take Hugh's part when you see what
+he's been doing at Ambles."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what has he been doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never mind. I'd rather you judged for yourself," said Hilda,
+darkly. "Of course, I don't know what Hugh has been up to in London that
+you've had to send him down to Hampshire. I always used to hear you vow
+that you would have nothing more to do with him. But I know that
+successful people are allowed to change their minds more often than the
+rest of us. I know success justifies everything. And it isn't as if Hugh
+was grateful for your kindness. I can assure you that he criticizes
+everything you do. Any stranger who heard him talking about your plays
+would<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a> think that they were a kind of disgrace to the family. As for
+Laurence, he encourages him, not because he likes him, but because Hugh
+fills him up with stories about the stage. Though I think that a
+clergyman who has got into such a muddle with his bishops would do
+better not to make himself so conspicuous. The whole neighborhood is
+talking about him."</p>
+
+<p>"What is Laurence's latest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, stalking about in a black cloak, with his hair hanging down over
+his collar, stopping people in quiet lanes and reciting Shakespeare to
+them. It's not surprising that half the county is talking about his
+behavior and saying that he was turned out of Newton Candover for being
+drunk when the bishop took a confirmation, and <i>some</i> even say that he
+kept a ballet girl at the vicarage. But do you think that Edith objects?
+Oh, no! All that Laurence does must be right, because it's Laurence. She
+prays for him to get back his belief in the Church of England, though
+who's going to offer him another living I'm sure I don't know, so she
+might just as well spare her knees. And when she's not praying for him,
+she's spoiling him. She actually came out of her room the other morning
+with her finger up to her lips, because Laurence wasn't to be disturbed
+at that moment. I need hardly tell you I paid no attention and went on
+saying what I had to say to Huggins about the disgraceful way he's let
+the pears get so sleepy."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity you didn't succeed in waking them up instead of Laurence,"
+John chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all very well for you to laugh, John, but if you could see the way
+that Edith is bringing up Frida! She's turning her into a regular little
+molly-coddle. I'm sure poor Harold does his best to put some life into
+the child, but she shrinks and twitches whenever he comes near her. I
+told Edith that it wasn't to be wondered at if Harold did tease her
+sometimes. She encourages him to tease her by her affectations. I used
+to think that Frida was quite a nice little girl when I only saw her
+occasionally, but she doesn't improve on acquaintance.<a
+name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> However, I blame her mother more than I
+do her. Why, Edith doesn't even make the child take her cod-liver oil
+regularly, whereas Harold drinks his up like a little Trojan."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," said John, soothingly. "I'm sure we shall all feel more
+cheerful after Christmas. And now, if you don't mind, I'm afraid I must
+keep quiet for the rest of the drive. I've got a scene to think about."</p>
+
+<p>The author turned up the collar of his coat and retired into the further
+corner while Hilda chewed her veil in ruminative indignation until the
+mellow voice of Laurence, who had taken up a statuesque pose of welcome
+by the gate, broke the dank silence of the fly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, John, my dear fellow, we are delighted to see you. The rain has
+stopped."</p>
+
+<p>If Laurence had still been on good terms with his Creator, John might
+have thought from his manner that he had personally arranged this break
+in the weather.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Harold there?" asked Hilda, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Here I am, mother; I've just caught a Buff-tip, and it won't go into my
+poison-bottle."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is a Buff-tip?" inquired Laurence in a tone of patronizing
+ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's a pretty common moth."</p>
+
+<p>"Harold, darling, don't bother about moths or butterflies to-night. Come
+and say how d'ye do to dear Uncle John."</p>
+
+<p>"I've dropped the cork of my poison-bottle. Look out, Frida, bother you,
+I say, you'll tread on it."</p>
+
+<p>The combined scents of cyanide of potassium and hot metal from Harold's
+bull's-eye lantern were heavy upon the moist air; when the cork was
+found, Harold lost control over the lantern which he flashed into
+everybody's face in turn, so that John, rendered as helpless as a
+Buff-tip, walked head foremost into a sopping bush by the side of the
+path. However, the various accidents of arrival all escaped being
+serious, and the thought of dinner shortened the affectionate greetings.
+Remembering how Hugh had paid out Harold with<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> his own air-gun, John
+greeted his youngest brother more cordially than he could ever have
+supposed it was possible to greet him again.</p>
+
+<p>By general consent, the owner of the house was allowed to be tired that
+evening, and all discussion of the Christmas preparations was postponed
+until the next day. Harold made a surreptitious attempt to break into
+the most promising parcel he could find, but he was ill rewarded by the
+inside, which happened to be a patent carpet sweeper.</p>
+
+<p>Before old Mrs. Touchwood went to bed, she took John aside and
+whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"They're all against Hughie. But I've tried to make the poor boy feel
+that he's at home, and dear Georgie will be coming very soon, which will
+make it pleasanter for Hugh, and I've thought of a nice way to manage
+Jimmie."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you worry yourself needlessly over Hugh, Mama; I can assure you
+he's perfectly capable of looking after himself."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," the old lady sighed. "All my patience came out beautifully
+this evening. So I hope Hughie will be all right. He seemed to think you
+were a little annoyed with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he tell you why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly, but I understand it was something to do with money. You
+mustn't be too strict with Hugh about money, John. You must always
+remember that he hasn't got all the money he wants, and you must make
+allowances accordingly. Ah, dear, peace on earth, good-will towards men!
+But I don't complain. I'm very happy here with my patience, and I dare
+say something can be done to get rid of the bees that have made a nest
+in the wall just under my bedroom window. They're asleep now, but when
+they begin to buzz with the warm weather Huggins must try and induce
+them to move somewhere else. Good-night, my dear boy."</p>
+
+<p>Next morning when John leaned out of his window to inhale the Hampshire
+air and contemplate his domain he was<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> shocked to perceive upon the lawn
+below a large quadrangular excavation in which two workmen were actually
+digging.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi! What are you doing?" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>The workmen stared at John, stared at one another, stared at their
+spades, and went on with their digging.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi! What the devil are you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>The workmen paid no attention; but the voice of Harold came trickling
+round the corner of the house with a gurgle of self-satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> didn't do it, Uncle John. I began geology last week, but I haven't
+dug up <i>anything</i>. Mother wouldn't let me. It was Uncle Hugh and Uncle
+Laurence. Mother knew you'd be angry when you saw what a mess the garden
+was in. It does look untidy, doesn't it? Huggins said he should complain
+to you, first thing. He says he'd just as soon put brown sugar on the
+paths as <i>that</i> gravel. Did you know that Ambles is built on a gravel
+subsoil, Uncle John? Aren't you glad, because my geology book says that
+a gravel subsoil is the healthiest...."</p>
+
+<p>John removed himself abruptly out of earshot.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that pernicious mess on the front lawn?" he demanded of Hugh
+half-an-hour later at breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you noticed it, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Noticed it? I should think I did notice it. I understand that you're
+responsible."</p>
+
+<p>"Not entirely," Laurence interposed, gently. "Hugh and I must accept a
+joint responsibility. The truth is that for some time now I've felt that
+my work has been terribly at the mercy of little household noises, and
+Hugh recommended me to build myself an outside study. He has made a very
+clever design, and has kindly undertaken to supervise its erection. As
+you have seen, they are already well on with the foundations. The design
+which I shall show you after breakfast is in keeping with the house, and
+of course you will have the advantage of what I call my little Gazebo
+when I leave Ambles. Have I told you that I'm considering a<a
+name="page_227" id="page_227"></a> brief experience of the realities of the
+stage? After all, why not? Shakespeare was an actor."</p>
+
+<p>If John had been eating anything more solid than a lightly boiled egg at
+the moment he must have choked.</p>
+
+<p>"You can call it your little Gazebo as much as you like, but it's
+nothing but a confounded summerhouse," he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Johnnie," said Hugh, soothingly. "You'll like it when it's
+finished. This isn't one of Stevie's Gothic contortions. I admit that to
+get the full architectural effect there should be a couple of them. You
+see, I've followed the design of the famous dovecotes at...."</p>
+
+<p>"Dovecoats be damned," John exploded. "I instructed you to prepare the
+house for Christmas; I didn't ask you to build me a new one."</p>
+
+<p>"Laurence felt that he was in the way indoors," Edith explained,
+timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"The impression was rather forced upon me," said Laurence with a glance
+at Hilda, who throughout the dispute had been sitting virtuously silent;
+nor did she open her thin lips now.</p>
+
+<p>"He was going to pay for his hermitage out of the money he ought to have
+made from writing <i>Lamp-posts</i>," Edith went on in a muddled exposition
+of her husband's motives. "He wasn't thinking of himself at all. But of
+course if you object to his building this Gas&mdash;oh, I am so bad at proper
+names&mdash;he'll understand. Won't you, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shall understand," Laurence admitted with an expression of
+painfully achieved comprehension. "Though I may fail to see the
+necessity for such strong language."</p>
+
+<p>Frida wiggled in the coils of an endless whisper from which her mother
+extricated her at last by murmuring:</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, darling, Uncle John is a little vexed about something."</p>
+
+<p>Hilda and her son still sat in mute self-righteousness; and Grandmama,
+who always had her breakfast in bed, was not present to defend Hugh.<a
+name="page_228" id="page_228"></a></p>
+
+<p>"If it had been anywhere except on the lawn right in front of my room,"
+John began more mildly.</p>
+
+<p>"We tried to combine suitability of site with facility of access,"
+Laurence condescended to explain. "But pray do not say another word," he
+added, waving his fingers like magic wands to induce John's silence.
+"The idea of my little Gazebo does not appeal to you. That is enough. I
+do not grudge the money already spent upon the foundations. Further
+discussion will irritate us all, and I for one have no wish to disturb
+the harmony of the season." Then exchanging his tone of polite martyrdom
+for the suave jocularity of a vicar, he continued: "And when are we to
+expect our Yuletide guests? I hear that the greater portion of your
+luggage is still in the care of the station-master at Wrottesford. If I
+can do anything to aid in the transport of what rumor says is our
+Christmas commissariat, do not hesitate to call upon my services. I am
+giving the Muse a holiday and am ready for anything. Harold, pass the
+marmalade, please."</p>
+
+<p>John felt incapable of further argument with Laurence and Hugh in
+combination, and having gained his point, he let the subject of the
+Gazebo drop. He was glad that Miss Hamilton was not here; he felt that
+she might have been rather contemptuous of what he tried to believe was
+"good-nature," but recognized in his heart as "meekness," even
+"feebleness."</p>
+
+<p>"When are Cousin Bertram and Cousin Viola coming?" Harold asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Wow-wow-wow!" Hugh imitated, and he was probably expressing the general
+opinion of Harold's re-entry into the breakfast-table conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"For goodness' sake, boy, don't talk about them as if they were elderly
+colonial connections," John commanded with the resurgent valor that
+Harold always inspired. "Bertram and Viola are coming to-morrow. By the
+way, Hilda, is there any accommodation for a monkey? I don't know for
+certain, but Bertram talked vaguely of bringing a monkey<a
+name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> down. Possibly a small annex could be
+attached to the chickenhouse."</p>
+
+<p>"A monkey?" Edith exclaimed in alarm. "Oh, I hope it won't attack dear
+Frida."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall shoot him, if he does," Harold boasted. "I shot a mole last
+week."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you didn't, you young liar," Hugh contradicted. "It was killed by
+the trap."</p>
+
+<p>"Harold is always a very truthful little boy," said his mother, glaring.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he? I hadn't noticed it," Hugh retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Far be it from me to indulge in odious comparisons," Laurence
+interposed, grandly. "But I cannot help being a trifle&mdash;ah&mdash;tickled by
+so much consideration's being exhibited on account of the temporary
+lodging of a monkey and so much animus&mdash;however, don't let us rake up a
+disagreeable topic."</p>
+
+<p>John thought it was a pity that his brother-in-law had not felt the same
+about raking up the lawn when after breakfast he was telling Huggins to
+fill in the hole and hearing that it was unlikely to lose the scar for a
+long time.</p>
+
+<p>"You could have knocked me down with a feather, sir, when they started
+in hacking away at a lovely piece of turf like that."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I could," John agreed, warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"But what's done can't be undone, and the best way to mend a bad job
+would be to make a bed for ornamental annuals. Yes, sir, a nice bed in
+the shape of a star&mdash;or a shell."</p>
+
+<p>"No thanks, Huggins, I should prefer grass again, even if for a year or
+two the lawn does look as if it had been recently vaccinated."</p>
+
+<p>John's Christmas enthusiasm had been thoroughly damped by the atmosphere
+of Ambles and he regretted that he had let himself be persuaded into
+coming down two days earlier than he had intended. It had been Mrs.
+Worfolk's fault, and when his housekeeper approached him with a
+complaint<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> about the way things were being managed in the kitchen John
+told her rather sharply that she must make the best of the present
+arrangements, exercise as much tact as possible, and remember that
+Christmas was a season when discontent was out of fashion. Then he
+retreated to the twenty-acre field to lose a few golf-balls. Alas, he
+had forgotten that Laurence had proclaimed himself to be in a holiday
+humor and was bored to find that this was so expansive as to include an
+ambition to see if golf was as difficult as people said.</p>
+
+<p>"You can try a stroke if you really want to," John offered, grudgingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that the theory of striking involves the correct
+application of the hands to the club," said the novice. "I set much
+store by the old adage that well begun is half done."</p>
+
+<p>"The main thing is to hit the ball."</p>
+
+<p>"I've no doubt whatever about being able to hit the ball; but if I
+decide to adopt golf as a recreation from my dramatic work I wish to
+acquire a good style at the outset," Laurence intoned, picking up the
+club as solemnly as if he was going to baptize it. "What is your advice
+about the forefinger of my left hand? It feels to me somewhat
+ubiquitous. I assume that there is some inhibition upon excessive
+fidgeting."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep your eye on the ball," John gruffly advised him. "And don't shift
+your position."</p>
+
+<p>"One, two, three," murmured Laurence, raising the club above his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Fore!" John shouted to a rash member of the household who was crossing
+the line of fire.</p>
+
+<p>A lump of turf was propelled a few feet in the direction of the
+admonished figure, and the ball was hammered down into the soft earth.</p>
+
+<p>"You distracted me by counting four," Laurence protested. "My intention
+was to strike at three. However, if at first you don't succeed...."</p>
+
+<p>But John could stand no more of it and escaped to Galton,<a
+name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> where he bought a bushel of lustrous
+ornaments for the Christmas tree that was even now being felled by
+Huggins in a coppice remote from Harold's myopic explorations. Then for
+two days the household worked feverishly and unitedly in a prevalent
+odor of allspice; the children were decoyed from the house while the
+presents were mysteriously conveyed to the drawing-room, which had been
+consecrated to the forthcoming revelry; Harold, after nearly involving
+himself in a scandal by hiding himself under the kitchen-table during
+one of the servant's meals in order to verify the cubic contents of
+their several stockings, was finally successful in contracting with Mrs.
+Worfolk for the loan of one of hers; Frida whispered as ceaselessly as a
+grove of poplars; everybody's fingers were tattooed by holly-pricks; and
+the introduction of so much decorative vegetation into the house brought
+with it a train of somnambulant insects.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday afternoon the remaining guests arrived, and when John heard
+Bertram and Viola shouting merrily up and down the corridors he
+recognized the authentic note of Christmas gayety at last. James was
+much less disagreeable than he had expected, and did not even freeze
+Beatrice when she gushed about the loveliness of the holly and reminded
+everybody that she was countrified herself; Hilda and Eleanor were
+brought together by their common dread of Hugh's apparent return to
+favor; George exuded a gross reproduction of the host's good-will and
+wandered about the room reading jokes from the Christmas numbers to
+those who would listen to him; Laurence kissed all the ladies under the
+mistletoe, bending down to them from his majesty as patronizingly as in
+the days of his faith he used to communicate the poor of the parish;
+Edith clapped her hands every time that Laurence brought off a kiss and
+talked in a heart-felt tremolo about the Christmas-tides of her
+girlhood; Frida conceived an adoration for Viola; Hugh egged on Bertram
+to tease, threaten, and contradict Harold on every occasion; Grandmama
+in a new butter-colored gown glowed in the lamplight, and purred over
+her fertility, as if on the day<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> she had accepted Robert Touchwood's
+hand nearly half a century ago she had foreseen this gathering and had
+never grumbled when she found she was going to have another baby.</p>
+
+<p>"Snapdragon will be ready at ten," John proclaimed, "and then to bed, so
+that we're all fit for Christmas Day."</p>
+
+<p>He was anxious to get the household out of the way, because he had
+formed a project to dress himself up that night as Santa Claus and, as
+he put it to himself, stimulate the children's fancy in case they should
+be awake when their stockings were being filled.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck ten; Mrs. Worfolk gave portentous utterance to the
+information that the snapdragon was burning beautiful; there was a rush
+for the pantry where the ceremony was to take place. Laurence picked out
+his raisins as triumphantly as if he were snatching souls from a
+discredited Romish purgatory. Harold notwithstanding his bad sight
+seemed to be doing well until Bertram temporarily disabled him by
+snatching a glowing raisin from the fiercest flame and ramming it down
+his neck. But the one who ate most of all, more even than Harold, was
+George, whose fat fingers would scoop up half-a-dozen raisins at a go,
+were they never so hot, until gradually the blue flames flickered less
+alertly and finally went out altogether in a pungency of burnt brandy.</p>
+
+<p>"Half-past ten," John, who was longing to dress himself up, cried
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>His efforts to urge the family up to bed were rather interfered with by
+Laurence, who detained Eleanor with numerous questions about going on
+the stage with a view to correcting a few technical deficiencies in his
+dramatic craftsmanship.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm anxious to establish by personal experience the exact length of the
+interval required to change one's costume, and also the distance from
+one's green-room to the&mdash;ah&mdash;wings. I do not aim high. I should be
+perfectly satisfied with such minor parts as Rosencrantz or Metellus
+Cimber. Perhaps,<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> Eleanor, you will introduce me to some of your
+theatrical friends after the holidays? There is a reduced day return up
+to town every Thursday. We might lunch together at one of those little
+Bohemian restaurants where rumor says that an excellent lunch is to be
+had for one and sixpence."</p>
+
+<p>Eleanor promised she would do all she could, because John evidently
+wanted her to go to bed, and he was the uncle of her children.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Eleanor. I hope that as a catechumen I shall do honor to
+you. By the way, you will be interested in the part of Pontius Pilate's
+wife in my play. In fact I'm hoping that you will&mdash;ah&mdash;interpret it
+ultimately."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever think of writing a play about Polonius's wife?" James
+growled on his way upstairs. "Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>When the grown-ups were safely in their rooms, John could not understand
+why the children were allowed to linger in the passage, gossiping and
+bragging; they would never go to sleep at this rate.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got two cocoons of a Crimson-underwing," Harold was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"Poof!" Viola scoffed. "What are they. Bertram touched the nose of a
+kangaroo last time we went to the Zoo."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I prodded a crocodile with V's umbrella," added Bertram,
+acknowledging her testimonial by awarding his sister a kind of share in
+the exploit.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I was bitten by a squirrel once," related Harold in an attempt to
+keep his end up. "And that was in its nest, not in a cage."</p>
+
+<p>"A squirrel!" Viola sneered. "Why, the tallest giraffe licked Bertram's
+fingers with his tongue, and they stayed wet for hours afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so could I, if I went to the Zoo," Harold maintained with a sob
+at the back of his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you couldn't," Bertram contradicted. "Because your fingers are too
+smelly."<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Much too smelly!" Viola corroborated.</p>
+
+<p>Various mothers emerged at this point and put a stop to the contest; the
+hallowed and gracious silence of Christmas night descended upon Ambles,
+and John went on tiptoe up to his bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"The beard, I suppose, is the most important item," he said to himself,
+when he had unpacked his costume.</p>
+
+<p>It was a noble beard, and when John had fixed it to his cheeks with a
+profusion of spirit-gum, he made up his mind that it became him so well
+that he would grow one of his own, which whitening with the flight of
+time would in another thirty years make him look what he hoped to
+be&mdash;the doyen of romantic playwrights. The scarlet robe of Santa Claus
+with its trimming of bells, icicles, and holly and its ruching of snow
+had been made in a single piece without buttons, so that when John put
+it over his head the beard caught in the folds and part of it was
+thinned out by an icicle. In trying to disentangle himself John managed
+to get one sleeve stuck to his cheek much more firmly than the beard had
+ever been. Nor were his struggles to free himself made easier by the
+bells, which tinkled with every movement and made him afraid that
+somebody would knock at the door soon and ask if he had rung. Finally he
+got the robe in place, plucked several bits of sleeve from his cheek,
+renovated the beard, gathered together the apples, oranges, sweets, and
+small toys he had collected for the stockings, looked at his watch,
+decided that it was at least an hour too early to begin, and lay down
+upon his bed, where notwithstanding the ticking of his beard he fell
+asleep. When he woke, it was after one o'clock; the house was absolutely
+still. He walked cautiously to the little room occupied by Frida, turned
+the handle, and felt his way breathlessly along the bed to where the
+stocking should be hung. Unfortunately, the bed had somehow got twisted
+round or else his beard had destroyed his sense of direction, for while
+he was groping for the stocking he dropped an orange on Frida's face,
+who woke with a loud scream.<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Hush, my little dear," John growled in what he supposed to be the
+correct depth for the character. "It's only Santa Claus."</p>
+
+<p>"Go away, go away," shrieked the horrified child.</p>
+
+<p>John tried to strike a match to reassure her, and at the cost of a
+shower of apples on the floor, which sounded like bombs in the tense
+darkness, he managed to illuminate his appearance for an instant. The
+effect on Frida was appalling; she screamed a thousand times louder than
+before and fled from the room. John ran after her to stop her before she
+woke up everybody else and spoilt his fantasy; but he was hampered by
+the costume and Frida gained the sanctuary of her parents' bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"I only hope the little idiot will frighten them more than I frightened
+her," muttered John, hurrying as fast as he could back to his own room.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly from the hall below he heard a sound of sleigh-bells that put
+to shame the miserable little tinkle that attended his own progress;
+above the bells rose peals of hearty laughter, and above the laughter
+Hugh's voice could be heard shouting:</p>
+
+<p>"Wake up! Wake up! Good people all! Here's Santa Claus! Santa Claus!
+Wake up!"</p>
+
+<p>Just as John reached his own room, Hugh appeared at the head of the
+stairs brandishing a lighted torch, while close behind him dragging
+Harold's toboggan loaded with toys was a really superb Santa Claus.</p>
+
+<p>John locked his door and undressed himself savagely, tearing off his
+beard in handfuls and flinging all the properties into a corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, whoever it is," he said, "he'll get the credit of driving Frida
+mad. That's one thing. But who is it? I suppose it's Laurence showing us
+how well he can act."</p>
+
+<p>But it was Aubrey Fenton whom Hugh had invited down to Ambles for
+Christmas and smuggled into the house like this to sweeten the
+unpleasant surprise. What annoyed John most was that he himself had
+never thought of using the<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> toboggan; but the new Santa Claus was an
+undoubted success with the children, and Frida's sanity was soon
+restored by chocolates. The mystery of the apples and oranges strewn
+about her bedroom remained a mystery, though Hilda tried to hint that
+her niece had abstracted them from the sideboard.</p>
+
+<p>John was able to obtain as much sympathy as he wanted from the rest of
+the family over Hugh's importation of his friend. In fact they were so
+eager to express their disapproval of such calm self-assurance, not to
+mention the objectionable way in which he had woken everybody up in the
+middle of the night, that John's own indignation gradually melted away
+in the heat of their malice. As for Grandmama, she shut herself up in
+her bedroom on Christmas morning and threatened not to appear all day,
+so deep was her hatred of that young Fenton who was the author of all
+Hugh's little weaknesses&mdash;not even when she could shift the blame could
+she bring herself to call her son's vices and crimes by any stronger
+name. Aubrey, who lacked Hugh's serene insolence, wanted to go back to
+London and was so much abashed in his host's presence and so
+appreciative of what he had done in the affair of the check that John's
+compassion was aroused and he made the intruder welcome. His hospitality
+was rewarded, because it turned out that Aubrey's lifelong passion for
+mechanical toys saved the situation for many of John's purchases, nearly
+all of which he managed to set in motion; nor could it be laid to his
+account that one of the drawing-room fireworks behaved like an
+out-of-door firework, because while Aubrey was lighting it at the right
+end Harold was lighting it simultaneously at the other.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, the presentation of the Christmas gifts passed off
+satisfactorily. The only definite display of jealousy occurred over the
+diver's equipment given to Harold, which was more than Bertram
+notwithstanding his own fireman's outfit could suppress.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll swop with you, if you like," he began mildly enough.<a
+name="page_237" id="page_237"></a></p>
+
+<p>But Harold clutched the diver's mask to his breast and shrank from the
+proposal.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'd rather be a fireman," Bertram persisted. "Anybody can be
+a diver, can't they, V?"</p>
+
+<p>Viola left her doll in a state of semi-nudity and advanced to her
+brother's support.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd look much nicer as a fireman, Harold," she said, coaxingly. "I
+wish I could be a fireman."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can if you like," he answered, sullenly, looking round with a
+hunted expression for his mother, who unluckily for her son was in
+another part of the house arguing with Mrs. Worfolk about the sauce for
+the plum-pudding.</p>
+
+<p>"But wouldn't you rather wear a pretty brass helmet?" Viola went on.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I wouldn't," said Harold, desperately wrapping himself in the
+rubber tubes that was so temptingly conspicuous a portion of his
+equipment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you little idiot," Viola burst out, impatiently. "What's the good
+of your dressing up as a diver? In those goggles you always look like a
+diver."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't, do I, Frida?" Harold implored.</p>
+
+<p>Now Frida was happy with her dolls'-house; she had no reason to be loyal
+to Harold, who had always treated her shamefully; but the spirit of the
+squaw rose in her breast and she felt bound to defend the wigwam against
+outside criticism. Therefore she assured Harold that in ordinary life he
+did not look in the least like a diver.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Bertram announced, throwing aside the last pretense of
+respecting property, "V and I want that diver's dress, because we often
+act <i>Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can act <i>Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea</i> too."</p>
+
+<p>"No you can't because you haven't read it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have."</p>
+
+<p>"What a bung!" exclaimed Bertram. "You've only read<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> <i>A Journey to the
+Center of the Earth</i> and <i>Round the World in Eighty Days</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered Frida's attitude. "Look here, if you take the
+fireman's uniform you can set fire to Frida's house."</p>
+
+<p>Frida yelled her refusal.</p>
+
+<p>"And put it out, you little idiot," Bertram added.</p>
+
+<p>"And put it out," Viola echoed.</p>
+
+<p>Frida rushed to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, mother, don't let them burn my dolls'-house! Mother, you won't,
+will you? Bertram wants to burn it."</p>
+
+<p>"Naughty Bertram!" said Edith. "But he's only teasing you, darling."</p>
+
+<p>"Good lummy, what a sneak," Bertram commented, bitterly, to his sister.</p>
+
+<p>Viola eyed her cousin with the scorn of an Antigon.</p>
+
+<p>"Beastly," she murmured. "Come on, Bertram, you don't want the diver's
+dress!"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather not. And anyway it won't work."</p>
+
+<p>"It will. It will," cried Harold, passionately. "I'm going to practice
+in a water-butt the first fine day we have."</p>
+
+<p>It happened that John was unable to feel himself happily above these
+childish jealousies, because at that moment he was himself smarting with
+resentment at his mother's handing over to James all that she still
+retained of family heirlooms. His eldest brother already had the
+portraits, and now he was to have what was left of the silver, which
+would look utterly out of place in Hill Road. If John had been as young
+as Bertram, he would have spoken his mind pretty freely on the subject
+of giving James the silver and himself a checkered woolen kettle-holder.
+It was really too disproportionate, and he did mildly protest to the old
+lady that she might have left a few things at Ambles.</p>
+
+<p>"But Jimmie is the eldest, and I expect him to take poor Hugh's part.
+The poor boy will want somebody when I'm gone, and Jimmie is the
+eldest."<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a></p>
+
+<p>"He may be the eldest, but I'm the one who has to look after Hugh&mdash;and
+very often James for that matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah well, you're the lucky one, but Jimmie is the eldest and Hugh is the
+baby."</p>
+
+<p>"But James hasn't any children."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor have you, my dear boy."</p>
+
+<p>"But I might have," said John.</p>
+
+<p>If this sort of thing went on much longer, he would, too&mdash;dozens of
+children.</p>
+
+<p>"Bertram," John called out. "Come here, my boy, and listen to me. When I
+go back to London, you shall have a diving-suit too if I can find
+another."</p>
+
+<p>Eleanor tossed her head back like a victorious game-cock; she would have
+crowed, if she could.</p>
+
+<p>"Dinner is ready," announced Hilda fresh from a triumph over Mrs.
+Worfolk about the sauce and happily ignorant of the dreadful relegation
+of her son. After an unusually large meal even for Christmas the company
+lay about the drawing-room like exhausted Roman debauchees, while the
+pink and green paper caps out of the crackers one by one fluttered from
+their brows to the carpet. Snores and the occasional violent whizz of an
+overwound toy were all that broke the stillness. At tea-time everybody
+woke up, and Bertram was allowed to put on his fireman's uniform in
+order to extinguish a bonfire that Huggins had hoped would burn slowly
+over the holidays. After a comparatively light supper games were played;
+drawing-room fireworks were let off; Laurence blacked his nose in the
+magic lantern; and George walking ponderously across the room to fetch
+himself a cigar was struck on the ear by a projectile from the vacuum
+pistol, the red mark of which was visible for some time even on his
+florid countenance. Then, when the children became too quarrelsome to be
+any longer tolerated out of bed, a bowl of punch was brought in and Auld
+Lang Syne was sung. After which everybody agreed that it had been a very
+merry Christmas, and Grandmama was led weeping up to bed.<a
+name="page_240" id="page_240"></a></p>
+
+<p>The next morning about midday John announced that he was driving to
+Wrottesford for the purpose of meeting Miss Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"For though it is holiday time, I must do a certain amount of work," he
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Hamilton?" said Grandmama. "And who may Miss Hamilton be?"</p>
+
+<p>Hilda, Edith, Eleanor, and Beatrice all looked very solemn and
+mysterious; James chuckled; Hugh brightened visibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose we mustn't mind a stranger's coming to spoil our happy
+party," Hilda sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, this will be your new secretary of whom rumor has already spoken,"
+said Laurence. "Possibly she will give me some advice on the subject of
+the typing of manuscripts."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Hamilton will be very busy while she is staying here," said John,
+curtly.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody looked at everybody else, and there was an awkward pause,
+which was relieved by Harold's saying that he would show her where he
+thought a goldfinch would make a nest in spring.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear little man," murmured his mother with a sigh for his childish
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall <i>I</i> drive in to meet her?" Hugh suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," said John, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, Johnnie," James guffawed. "You stick to the reins
+yourself."<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">J</span><b>OHN</b> did not consider himself a first-class whip: if he had been offered
+the choice between swimming to meet his love like Leander, climbing into
+her father's orchard like Romeo, and driving to meet her with a
+dog-cart, he would certainly, had the engagement shown signs of being a
+long one, have chosen any mode of trysting except the last. This
+morning, however, he was not as usual oppressed by a sense of imperfect
+sympathy between himself and the mare; he did not think she was going to
+have hysterics when she blew her nose, nor fancy that she was on the
+verge of bolting when she tossed her chestnut mane; the absence of
+William the groom seemed a matter for congratulation rather than for
+regret; he felt as reckless as Phaeton, as urgent as Jehu, and the mare
+knew it. Generally, when her master held the reins, she would try to
+walk up steep banks or emulate in her capricious greed the lofty
+browsings of the giraffe; this morning at a steady swinging trot she
+kept to the middle of the road, passed two motor-cars without trying to
+box the landscape, and did not even shy at the new hat of the vicar's
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>Later on, however, when John was safe in the station-yard and saw the
+familiar way in which Miss Hamilton patted the mare he decided not to
+take any risk on the return journey and in spite of his brother's
+parting gibe to hand over the reins to his secretary; nor was the
+symbolism of the action distasteful. How charming she looked in that
+mauve frieze! How well the color was harmonizing with the purple
+hedgerows! How naturally she seemed to haunt the woodland scene!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, this exquisite country," she sighed. "Fancy staying in London when
+you can write here!"<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It does seem absurd," the lucky author agreed. "But the house is very
+full at present. We shall be rather exposed to interruptions until the
+party breaks up."</p>
+
+<p>He gave her an account of the Christmas festival, to which she seemed
+able to listen comfortably and appreciatively in spite of the fact that
+she was driving. This impressed John very much.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope your mother wasn't angry at your leaving town," he said,
+tentatively. "I thought of telegraphing an invitation to her; but there
+really isn't room for another person."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't say that she was gracious about my desertion of her.
+Indeed, she's beginning to put pressure on me to give up my post. Quite
+indirectly, of course, but one feels the effect just the same. Who
+knows? I may succumb."</p>
+
+<p>John nearly fell out of the dog-cart.</p>
+
+<p>"Give up your post?" he gasped. "But, my dear Miss Hamilton, the
+dog-roses won't be in bloom for some months."</p>
+
+<p>"What have dog-roses got to do with my post?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed a little foolishly.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean the play won't be finished for some months. Did I say dog-roses?
+I must have been thinking of the dog-cart. You drive with such admirable
+unconcern. Still, you ought to see these hedgerows in summer. Now the
+time I like for a walk is about eight o'clock on a June evening. The
+honeysuckle smells so delicious about eight o'clock. There's no doubt it
+is ridiculous to live in London. I hope you made it quite clear to your
+mother you had no intention of leaving me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ida Merritt did most of the arguing."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she? What a very intelligent girl she is, by the way. I confess I
+took a great fancy to her."</p>
+
+<p>"You told mother once that she frightened you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but I'm always frightened by people when I meet them first. Though
+curiously enough I was never frightened of you. Some people have told me
+that <i>I</i> am frightening at first. You didn't find that did you?"<a
+name="page_243" id="page_243"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No, I certainly did not. And I can't imagine anybody else's doing so
+either."</p>
+
+<p>Although John rather plumed himself upon the alarm he was credited with
+inspiring at first sight, he did not argue the point, because he really
+never had had the least desire to frighten his secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"And your relations don't seem to find you very frightening," she
+murmured. "Good gracious, what an assemblage!"</p>
+
+<p>The dog-cart had just drawn clear of the beechwood, and the whole of the
+Ambles party could be seen vigilantly grouped by the gate to receive
+them, which John thought was a lapse of taste on the part of his guests.
+Nor was he mollified by the way in which after the introductions were
+made Hugh took it upon himself to conduct Miss Hamilton indoors, while
+he was left shouting for William the groom. If it was anybody's business
+except his own to escort her into the house, it was Hilda's.</p>
+
+<p>"What a very extraordinary thing," said John, fretfully, "that the
+<i>only</i> person who's wanted is not here. Where is that confounded boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm here," cried Bertram, responding to the epithet instinctively.</p>
+
+<p>"Not you. Not you. I wanted William to take the mare."</p>
+
+<p>When lunch was over John found that notwithstanding his secretary's
+arrival he was less eager to begin work again upon his play than he had
+supposed.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I must be feeling rather worn out by Christmas," he told her.
+"I wonder if a walk wouldn't do you good after the journey."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that's a capital notion," exclaimed Hugh, who was standing close by
+and overheard the suggestion. "We might tramp up to the top of Shalstead
+Down."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," Harold chimed in. "I've never been there yet. Mother said it
+was too far for me; but it isn't, is it, Uncle John?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother was right. It's at least three miles too far," said John,
+firmly. "Oh, by the way, Hugh, I've been<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> thinking over your scheme for
+that summerhouse or whatever you call it, and I'm not sure that I don't
+rather like the idea after all. You might put it in hand this afternoon.
+You'd better keep Laurence with you. I want him to have it in the way he
+likes it, although of course I shall undertake the expense. Where's
+Bertram? Ah, there you are. Bertram, why don't you and Viola take Harold
+down to the river and practice diving? I dare say Mr. Fenton will
+superintend the necessary supply of air and reduce the chances of a
+fatal accident."</p>
+
+<p>"But the water's much too cold," Hilda protested in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, there's always something to amuse one by a river without
+actually going into the water," John said. "You like rivers, don't you,
+Fenton? I'm afraid we can't offer you a very large one, but it wiggles
+most picturesquely."</p>
+
+<p>Aubrey Fenton, who was still feeling twinges of embarrassment on account
+of his uninvited stay at Ambles, was prepared to like anything his host
+put forward for his appreciation, and he spoke with as much enthusiasm
+of a promenade along the banks of the small Hampshire stream as if he
+were going to view the Ganges for the first time. John, having disposed
+of him, looked around for other possible candidates for a walk.</p>
+
+<p>"You look like hard work, James," he said, approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a bundle of trash here for review," the critic growled.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. I was going to propose a stroll up Shalstead Down. Never
+mind. You'll have to walk into your victims instead." And, by gad, he
+would walk into them too, John thought, after that dinner yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>Beatrice and Eleanor were not about; old Mrs. Touchwood was unlikely at
+her age to venture up the third highest elevation in Hampshire; Hilda
+was occupied with household duties; Edith had a headache. Only George
+now remained unoccupied, and John was sure he might safely risk an
+invitation to him; he looked incapable of walking two yards.<a
+name="page_245" id="page_245"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you wouldn't care for a constitutional, George?" he inquired,
+heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"A constitutional?" George repeated, gaping like a chub at a large
+cherry. "No, no, no, no. I always knit after lunch. Besides I never walk
+in the country. It ruins one's boots."</p>
+
+<p>George always used to polish his own boots with as much passionate care
+as he would have devoted to the coloring of a meerschaum pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if nobody wants to climb Shalstead Down," said John beaming
+happily, "what do you say, Miss Hamilton?"</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later they had crossed the twenty-acre field and were
+among the chalk-flecked billows of the rising downs.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a terrible fraud," she laughed. "You've always led me to believe
+that you were completely at the mercy of your relations. Instead of
+which, you order them about and arrange their afternoon and really bully
+them into doing all sorts of things they never had any intention of
+doing, or any wish to do, what's more."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I seemed to be rather successful with my strategy to-day," John
+admitted. "But they were stupefied by their Christmas dinner. None of
+them was really anxious for a walk, and I didn't want to drag them out
+unwillingly."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it's all very well to explain it away like that, but don't ever ask
+me to sympathize with you again. I believe you're a replica of my poor
+mother. Her tyranny is deeply rooted in consideration for others. Why do
+you suppose she is always trying to make me give up working for you? For
+her sake? Oh, dear no! For mine."</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>you</i> don't forge my name and expect her to pay me back. <i>You</i>
+don't arrive suddenly and deposit children upon her doorstep."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say I don't, but for my mother Ida Merritt represents all the
+excesses of your relations combined in one person. I'm convinced that if
+you and she were to compare notes you would find that you were both
+suffering from acute<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a> ingratitude and thoroughly enjoying it. But come,
+come, this is not a serious conversation. What about the fourth act?"</p>
+
+<p>"The fourth act of what?" he asked, vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>"The fourth act of Joan of Arc."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Joan of Arc. I think I must give her a rest. I don't seem at all in
+the mood for writing at present. The truth is that I find Joan rather
+lacking in humanity and I'm beginning to think I made a mistake in
+choosing such an abnormal creature for the central figure of a play."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what have I come down to Hampshire for?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's very jolly down here, isn't it?" John retorted in an
+offended voice. "And anyway you can't expect me to burst into blank
+verse the moment you arrive, like a canary that's been uncovered by the
+housemaid. It would be an affectation to pretend I feel poetical this
+afternoon. I feel like a jolly good tramp before tea. I can't stand
+writers who always want to be literary. I have the temperament of a
+country squire, and if I had more money and fewer relations I should
+hardly write at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Which would be a great pity," said his secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it?" John replied in the voice of one who has found an unexpected
+grievance and is determined to make the most of it. "I doubt if it
+would. What is my work, after all? I don't deceive myself. There was
+more in my six novels than in anything I've written since. I'm a failure
+to myself. In the eyes of the public I may be a success, but in the
+depths of my own heart&mdash;" he finished the sentence in a long sigh, all
+the longer because he was a little out of breath with climbing.</p>
+
+<p>"But you were so cheerful a few minutes ago. I'm sure that country
+squires are not the prey to such swift changes of mood. I think you must
+be a poet really."</p>
+
+<p>"A poet!" he exclaimed, bitterly, with what he fancied was the kind of
+laugh that is called hollow. "Do I look like a poet?"<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a></p>
+
+<p>"If you're going to talk in that childish way I sha'n't say any more,"
+she warned him, severely. "Oh, there goes a hare!"</p>
+
+<p>"Two hares," said John, trying to create an impression that in spite of
+the weight of his despondency he would for her sake affect a
+light-hearted interest in the common incidents of a country walk.</p>
+
+<p>"And look at the peewits," she said. "What a fuss they make about
+nothing, don't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you are comparing me to a peewit now?" John reproachfully
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a moment ago you compared yourself to an uncovered canary; so if
+I've exceeded the bounds of free speech marked out for a secretary, you
+must forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Miss Hamilton," he assured her, "I beg you to believe that you
+are at liberty to compare me to anything you like."</p>
+
+<p>Having surrendered his personality for the exercise of her wit John felt
+more cheerful. The rest of the walk seemed to offer with its wide
+prospects of country asleep in the winter sunlight a wider prospect of
+life itself; even Joan of Arc became once again a human figure.</p>
+
+<p>It was to be feared that John's manipulation of his guests after lunch
+might have had the effect of uniting them against the new favorite; and
+so it had. When he and Miss Hamilton got back to the house for tea the
+family was obviously upon the defensive, so obviously indeed that it
+gave the impression of a sculptor's group in which each figure was
+contributing his posture to the whole. There was not as yet the least
+hint of attack, but John would almost have preferred an offensive action
+to this martyred withdrawal from the world in which it was suggested
+that he and Miss Hamilton were living by themselves. It happened that a
+neighbor, a colorless man with a disobedient and bushy dog, called upon
+the Touchwoods that afternoon, and John could not help being aware that
+to the eyes of his relations he and his secretary appeared equally
+intrusive and disturbing; the<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> manner in which Hilda offered Miss
+Hamilton tea scarcely differed from the manner in which she propitiated
+the dog with a bun; and it would have been rash to assert that she was
+more afraid of the dog's biting Harold than of the secretary's doing so.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry Miss Hamilton, darling. She's tired after her long walk.
+Besides, she isn't used to little boys. And don't make Mr. Wenlow's dog
+eat sugar if it doesn't want to."</p>
+
+<p>Eleanor would ordinarily have urged Bertram to prove that he could
+achieve what was denied to his cousin. Yet now in the face of a common
+enemy she made overtures to Hilda by simultaneously calling off her
+children from the intruders.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'd known that animals were so welcomed down here," James grumbled,
+"I should have brought Beyle with us."</p>
+
+<p>It was not a polite remark; but the disobedient dog in an effusion of
+cordiality had just licked the back of James' neck, and he was not
+nearly so rude as he would have been about a human being who had
+surprised him, speaking figuratively, in the same way.</p>
+
+<p>"Lie down, Rover," whispered the colorless neighbor with so rich a blush
+that until it subsided the epithet ceased to be appropriate.</p>
+
+<p>Rover unexpectedly paid attention to the command, but chose Grandmama's
+lap for his resting place, which made Viola laugh so ecstatically that
+Frida felt bound to imitate her, with the result that a geyser of tea
+spurted from her mouth and descended upon her father's leg. Laurence
+rose and led his daughter from the room, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Little girls who choke in drawing-rooms must learn to choke outside."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid she has adenoids, poor child," said Eleanor, kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what that word means," Harold bragged with gloating
+knowledge.<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Shut up!" cried Bertram. "You know everything, glass-eyes. But you
+don't know there are two worms in your tea-cup."</p>
+
+<p>"There aren't," Harold contradicted.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, drink it up and see. I put them there myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Eleanor!" expostulated the horrified mother. "<i>Do</i> you allow Bertram to
+behave like this?"</p>
+
+<p>She hurriedly poured away the contents of Harold's cup, which proved
+that the worms were only an invention of his cousin. Yet the joke was
+successful in its way, because there was no more tea, and therefore
+Harold had to go without a third cup. Edith, whose agitation had been
+intense while her husband was brooding in the passage over Frida's
+chokes, could stay still no longer, but went out to assist with tugs and
+taps of consolation. The colorless visitor departed with his disobedient
+dog, and soon a thin pipe was heard in vain whistles upon the twilight
+like the lisp of reeds along the dreary margin of a December stream.</p>
+
+<p>John welcomed this recrudescence of maternal competition, which seemed
+likely to imperil the alliance, and he was grateful to Bertram and Viola
+for their provocation of it. But he had scarcely congratulated himself,
+when Hugh came in and at once laid himself out to be agreeable to Miss
+Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>"You've put the summerhouse in hand?" John asked, fussily, in order to
+make it perfectly clear to his brother that he was not the owner of
+Ambles.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear man, it's Boxing Day. Besides, I know you only wanted to get
+rid of me this afternoon. By the way, Aubrey's going back to town
+to-night. Can he have the dog-cart?"</p>
+
+<p>John looked round at the unbidden guest with a protest on his lips; he
+had planned to keep Aubrey as a diversion for Hugh, and had taken quite
+a fancy to him. Aubrey however, had to be at the office next day, and
+John was distressed to lose the cheerful young man's company,
+although<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> it had been embarrassing when Grandmama had shuddered every
+time he opened his mouth. Another disadvantage of his departure was the
+direction of the old lady's imagination toward an imminent marriage
+between Hugh and Miss Hamilton, which was extremely galling to John,
+especially as the rest of the family was united in suggesting a similar
+conjunction between her and himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to say a word against her, Johnnie," Grandmama began to
+mutter one evening about a week later when every game of patience had
+failed in turn through congestion of the hearts. "I'm not going to say
+she isn't a lady, and perhaps she doesn't mean to make eyes at Hughie."</p>
+
+<p>John would have liked to tell his mother that she was on the verge of
+senile decay; but the dim old fetish of parental respect blinked at him
+from the jungle of the past, and in a vain search for a way of stopping
+her without being rude he let her ramble on.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, she has very nice eyes, and I can quite understand Hughie's
+taking an interest in her. I don't grudge the dear boy his youth. We all
+get old in time, and its natural that with us old fogies round him he
+<i>should</i> be a little interested in Miss Hamilton. All the same, it
+wouldn't be a prudent match. I dare say she thinks I shall have
+something to leave Hugh, but I told her only yesterday that I should
+leave little or nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mama, I can assure you that my secretary&mdash;my secretary," John
+repeated with as much pomposity as might impress the old lady, "is not
+at all dazzled by the glamour of your wealth or James' wealth or
+George's wealth or anybody's wealth for that matter."</p>
+
+<p>He might have said that the donkey's ears were the only recognizable
+feature of Midas in the Touchwood family had there been the least chance
+of his mother's understanding the classical allusion.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean to hint that she's <i>only</i> after Hugh's money. I've no
+doubt at all that she's excessively in love with him."<a
+name="page_251" id="page_251"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Really?" John exclaimed with such a scornfully ironical intonation that
+his mother asked anxiously if he had a sore throat.</p>
+
+<p>"You might take a little honey and borax, my dear boy," she advised, and
+immediately continued her estimate of the emotional situation. "Yes, as
+I say, excessively in love! But there can't be many young women who
+resist Hugh. Why, even as a boy he had his little love affairs. Dear me,
+how poor papa used to laugh about them. 'He's going to break a lot of
+hearts,' poor papa used to say."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about hearts," John commented, gruffly. "But he's broken
+everything else, including himself. However, I can assure you, Mama,
+that Miss Hamilton's heart is not made of pie-crust, and that she is
+more than capable of looking after herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you agree with me that she has a selfish disposition. I <i>am</i> glad
+you agree with me. I didn't trust her from the beginning; but I thought
+you seemed so wrapped up in her cleverness&mdash;though when I was young
+women didn't think it necessary to be clever&mdash;that you were quite blind
+to her selfishness. But I <i>am</i> glad you agree with me. There's nobody
+who has more sympathy for true love than I have. But though I always
+said that love makes the world go round, I've never been partial to
+vulgar flirtations. Indeed, if it had to be, I'd rather they got engaged
+properly, even if it did mean a long engagement&mdash;but leading poor Hughie
+on like this&mdash;well, I must speak plainly, Johnnie, for, after all, I am
+your mother, though I know it's the fashion now to think that children
+know more than their parents, and, in my opinion, you ought to put your
+foot down. There! I've said what I've been wanting to say for a week,
+and if you jump down my throat, well, then you must, and that's all
+there is to it."</p>
+
+<p>Now, although John thought his mother fondly stupid and was perfectly
+convinced when he asked himself the question that Miss Hamilton was as
+remote from admiring Hugh as he was himself, he was nevertheless unable
+to resist observing<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a> Hugh henceforth with a little of the jealousy that
+most men of forty-two feel for juniors of twenty-seven. He was not
+prepared to acknowledge that his opinion of Miss Hamilton was colored by
+any personal emotion beyond the unqualified respect he gave to her
+practical qualities, and he was sure that the only reason for anxiety
+about possible developments between her and Hugh was the loss to himself
+of her valuable services.</p>
+
+<p>"I've reached an age," he told his reflection, whose crow's-feet were
+seeming more conspicuous than usual in the clear wintry weather, "when a
+man becomes selfish in small matters. Let me be frank with myself. Let
+me admit that I do dislike the idea of an entanglement with Hugh,
+because I <i>have</i> found in Miss Hamilton a perfect secretary whom I
+should be extremely sorry to lose. Is that surprising? No, it is quite
+natural. Curious! I noticed to-day that Hugh's hair is getting very thin
+on top. Mine, however, shows no sign of baldness, though fair men nearly
+always go bald before dark men. But I'm inclined to fancy that few
+observers would give me fifteen years more than Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>If John had really been conscious of a rival in his youngest brother, he
+might have derived much encouragement from the attitude of all the other
+members of the family, none of whom seemed to think that Hugh had a look
+in. But, since he firmly declined to admit his secretary's potentiality
+for anything except efficient clerical work, he was only irritated by
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to marry Miss Hamilton?" Harold actually wanted to know
+one evening. He had recently been snubbed for asking the company what
+was the difference between gestation and digestion, and was determined
+to produce a conundrum that could not be evaded by telling him that he
+would not understand the answer. John's solution was to look at his
+watch and say it was time for him and Bertram to be in bed, hoping that
+Bertram would take it out of his cousin for calling attention to their
+existence. One of Bertram's first measures at Ambles had been to
+muffle,<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> impede, disorganize and finally destroy the striking of the
+drawing-room clock. When this had been accomplished he could count every
+night on a few precious minutes snatched from the annihilation of bed
+during which he sat mute as a mummy in a kind of cataleptic ecstasy. The
+betrayer of this profound peace sullenly gathered up the rubbish with
+which he was wont to litter the room every night, and John saw Bertram's
+eye flash like a Corsican sharpening the knife of revenge. But whatever
+was in store for Harold lacked savor when John heard from the group of
+mothers, aunts, sisters, and sisters-in-law the two words "Children
+know" dying away in a sibilance of affirmative sighs.</p>
+
+<p>After that it was small consolation to hear a scuffle outside in the
+hall followed by the crash of Harold's dispersed collections and a wail
+of protest. For the sake of a childish quarrel Hilda and Eleanor were
+not going to break up the alliance to which they were now definitely
+committed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so nice for poor Harold to have Bertram to play with him,"
+volunteered one mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and it's nice for Bertram too, because Harold's such a little
+worker," the other agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Even George's opaque eyes glimmered with an illusion of life when he
+heard his wife praise her nephew; she had not surprised him so
+completely since on a wet afternoon, thirteen years ago, she accepted
+his hand. It was even obvious to Edith that she must begin to think
+about taking sides; and, having exhausted her intelligence by this
+discovery, she had not enough wit left to see that now was her
+opportunity to trade upon John's sentimental affection for herself, but
+proceeded to sacrifice her own daughter to the success of the hostile
+alliance.</p>
+
+<p>"I think perhaps it's good for Frida to be teased sometimes," she
+ventured.</p>
+
+<p>As for Beatrice, she was not going to draw attention to her
+childlessness by giving one more woman the chance of feeling superior to
+herself, and her thwarted maternity was placed at the disposal of the
+three mothers. Indeed it was she who<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> led the first foray, in which she
+was herself severely wounded, as will be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Among the unnecessary vexations and unsatisfactory pleasures which the
+human side of John inflicted upon the well-known dramatist, John
+Touchwood, was the collection of press-cuttings about himself and his
+work; one of Miss Hamilton's least congenial tasks was to preserve in a
+scrap-book these tributes to egoism.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't really want me to stick in this paragraph from <i>High Life</i>?"
+she would protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Which one is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, this ridiculous announcement that you've decided to live on the
+upper slopes of the Andes for the next few months in order to gather
+material for a tragedy about the Incas."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. It's rather amusing, I think," John would insist,
+apologetically. Then, rather lamely, he would add, "You see, I
+subscribe."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton, with a sigh, would dip her brush in the paste.</p>
+
+<p>"I can understand your keeping the notices of your productions, which I
+suppose have a certain value, but this sort of childish gossip...."</p>
+
+<p>"Gossip keeps my name before the public."</p>
+
+<p>Then he would fancy that he caught a faint murmur about "lack of
+dignity," and once even he thought she whispered something about "lack
+of humor."</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, in view of the importance he seemed to attach to the most
+irrelevant paragraph, Miss Hamilton could not be blamed for drawing his
+attention to a long article in one of those critical quarterlies or
+monthlies that are read in club smoking-rooms in the same spirit of
+desperation in which at railway stations belated travelers read
+time-tables. This article was entitled <i>What Is Wrong With Our Drama?</i>
+and was signed with some obscurely allusive pseudonym.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I am involved in the general condemnation?" said John, with
+an attempt at a debonair indifference.<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a></p>
+
+<p>Had he been alone he might have refrained from a descent into
+particulars, but having laid so much stress upon the salvage of
+worthless flotsam, he could not in Miss Hamilton's presence ignore this
+large wreck.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Let us pause now to contemplate the roundest and the rosiest of our
+romantic cherubs.</i> Ha-ha! I suppose the fellow thinks that will irritate
+me. As a matter of fact, I think it's rather funny, don't you? Rather
+clever, I mean. Eh? <i>But, after all, should we take Mr. Touchwood
+seriously? He is only an exuberant schoolboy prancing about with a
+pudding-dish on his head and shouting 'Let's pretend I'm a
+Knight-at-Arms' to a large and susceptible public. Let us say to Mr.
+Touchwood in the words of an earlier romantic who was the fount and
+origin of all this Gothic stucco:</i></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="poetry">
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;"><i>'O what can ail thee, Knight-at-Arms,</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;"><i>So staggered by the critics' tone?</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;"><i>The pit and gallery are full,</i></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 0em;"><i>And the play has gone.'</i></span></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>"I don't mind what he says about <i>me</i>," John assured his secretary. "But
+I do resent his parodying Keats. Yes, I do strongly resent that. I
+wonder who wrote it. I call it rather personal for anonymous criticism."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I stick it in the book?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," the wounded lion uttered with a roar of disdain. At least
+that was the way John fancied he said "certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really want to know who wrote this article?" she asked,
+seriously, a minute or two later.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't James?" the victim exclaimed in a flash of comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all I can tell you is that two or three days ago your brother
+received a copy of the review and a letter from the editorial offices. I
+was sorting out your letters and noticed the address on the outside.
+Afterwards at breakfast he opened it and took out a check."<a
+name="page_256" id="page_256"></a></p>
+
+<p>"James would call me a rosy cherub," John muttered. "Moreover, I did
+tell him about Bertram and the pudding-dish when he was playing at
+Perseus. And&mdash;no, James doesn't admire Keats."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor man," said Miss Hamilton, charitably.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose one ought to be sorry for him rather than angry," John
+agreed, snatching at the implied consolation. "All the same, I think I
+ought to speak to him about his behavior. Of course, he's quite at
+liberty to despise my work, but I don't think he should take advantage
+of our relationship to introduce a note of personal&mdash;well, really, I
+don't think he has any right to call me a round and rosy cherub in
+print. After all, the public doesn't know what a damned failure James
+himself is. I shouldn't so mind if it really was a big pot calling the
+kettle black. I could retaliate then. But as it is I can do nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Except stick it in your press-cutting book," suggested Miss Hamilton,
+with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"And then my mother goes and presents him with all the silver! No, I
+will not overlook this lapse of taste; I shall speak to him about it
+this morning. But suppose he asks me how I found out?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must tell him."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm your secretary, aren't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, Miss Hamilton, you know, you really are...."</p>
+
+<p>John stopped. He wanted to tell her what a balm her generosity was to
+his wound; but he felt that she would prefer him to be practical.</p>
+
+<p>It was like the critic to welcome with composure the accusation of what
+John called his duplicity, or rather of what he called duplicity in the
+privacy of his own thoughts: to James he began by referring to it as
+exaggerated frankness.</p>
+
+<p>"I said nothing more than I've said a hundred times to your face," his
+brother pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>"That may be, but you didn't borrow money from me on<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a> the strength of
+what you said. You told me you had an article on Alfred de Vigny
+appearing shortly. You didn't tell me that you were raising the money as
+a post obit on my reputation."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Johnnie, if you're going to abuse me in metaphors, be just at
+any rate. Your reputation was a corpse before I dissected it."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then," cried John, hotly, "have it your own way and admit
+that you're a body-snatcher."</p>
+
+<p>"However," James continued, with a laugh that was for him almost
+apologetic, "though I hate excuses, I must point out that the money I
+borrowed from you was genuinely on account of Alfred de Vigny and that
+this was an unexpected windfall. And to show I bear you no ill will,
+which is more than can be said for most borrowers, here's the check I
+received. I'm bound to say you deserve it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want the money."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet in a way you earned it yourself," the critic chuckled. "But let me
+be quite clear. Is this a family quarrel? I don't want to quarrel with
+you personally. I hate your work. I think it false, pretentious and
+demoralizing. But I like you very much. Do, my dear fellow, let us
+contract my good taste in literature and bad taste in manners with your
+bad taste in literature and good taste in manners. Like two pugilists,
+let's shake hands and walk out of the ring arm-in-arm. Even if I hit you
+below the belt, you must blame your curves, Johnnie. You're so plump and
+rosy that...."</p>
+
+<p>"That word is becoming an obsession with you. You seem to think it
+annoys me, but it doesn't annoy me at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it is a family quarrel. Come, your young lady has opened her
+campaign well. I congratulate her. By the way, when am I to congratulate
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"This," said John, rising with grave dignity, "is going too far."</p>
+
+<p>He left his brother, armed himself with a brassey, proceeded to the
+twenty-acre field, and made the longest drive<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a> of his experience. At
+lunch James announced that he and Beatrice must be getting back to town
+that afternoon, a resolution in which his host acquiesced without even a
+conventional murmur of protest. Perhaps it was this attitude of John's
+that stung Beatrice into a challenge, or perhaps she had been egged on
+by the mothers who, with their children's future to consider, were not
+anxious to declare open war upon the rich uncle. At any rate, in her
+commonest voice she said:</p>
+
+<p>"It's plain that Jimmie and I are not wanted here any longer."</p>
+
+<p>The mothers looked down at their plates with what they hoped was a
+strictly neutral expression. Yet it was impossible not to feel that they
+were triumphantly digging one another in the ribs with ghostly fingers,
+such an atmosphere of suppressed elation was discernible above the
+modest attention they paid to the food before them. Nobody made an
+effort to cover the awkwardness created by the remark, and John was
+faced with the alternative of contradicting it or acknowledging its
+truth; he was certainly not going to be allowed to ignore it in a burst
+of general conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"I think that is rather a foolish remark, Beatrice," was his comment.</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders so emphatically that her stays creaked in the
+horrid silence that enveloped the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we can't all be as clever as Miss Hamilton, and most of us
+wouldn't like to be, what's more."</p>
+
+<p>"The dog-cart will be round at three," John replied, coldly.</p>
+
+<p>His sister-in-law, bursting into tears, rushed from the room. James
+guffawed and helped himself to potatoes. The various mothers reproved
+their children for breaches of table manners. George looked nervously at
+his wife as if she was on the point of following the example of
+Beatrice. Grandmama, who was daily receding further and further into the
+past, put on her spectacles and told John, reproachfully, that he ought
+not to tease little Beatrice. Hugh engaged Miss Hamilton in a
+conversation about Bernard Shaw.<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> John, forgetting he had already dipped
+twice in mustard the morsel of beef upon his fork, dipped it again, so
+that his eyes presently filled with tears, to which the observant Harold
+called everybody's attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make personal remarks, darling," his mother whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what Johnnie said to me this morning," James chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>When the dog-cart drove off with James and Beatrice at three o'clock to
+catch the 3:45 train up to town, John retired to his study in full
+expectation that when the mare came back she would at once turn round
+for the purpose of driving Miss Hamilton to catch the 5:30 train up to
+town: no young woman in her position would forgive that vulgar scene at
+lunch. But when he reached his desk he found his secretary hard at work
+upon the collection of material for the play as if nothing had happened.
+In the presence of such well-bred indifference the recollection of
+Beatrice's behavior abashed him more than ever, and, feeling that any
+kind of even indirect apology from him would be distasteful to Miss
+Hamilton, he tried to concentrate upon the grouping of the trial scene
+with an equal show of indifference to the mean events of family life. He
+was so far successful that the afternoon passed away without any
+allusion to Beatrice, and when the gong sounded for tea his equanimity
+was in order again.</p>
+
+<p>After tea, however, Eleanor managed to get hold of John for what she
+called a little chat about the future, but which he detected with the
+mind's nose as an unpleasant rehash of the morning's pasticcio. He
+always dreaded this sister-in-law when she opened with zoological
+endearments, and his spirits sank to hear her exclaim boisterously:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, look here, you poor wounded old lion, I'm going to talk to you
+seriously about Beatrice."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing more to be said," John assured her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't be an old bear. You've already made one poor aunt cry; don't
+upset me too."<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a></p>
+
+<p>Anybody less likely to be prostrated by grief than Eleanor at that
+moment John could not have imagined. She seemed to him the incarnation
+of a sinister self-assurance.</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish," he snapped. "In any case, yours would only be stage tears,
+you old crocodile&mdash;if I may copy your manner of speech."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't he in a nasty, horrid, cross mood?" she demanded, with an
+affected glance at an imaginary audience. "No, but seriously, John! I do
+want to give you a little advice. I suppose it's tactless of me to talk
+about advising the great man, but don't bite my head off."</p>
+
+<p>"In what capacity?" the great man asked. "You've forgotten to specify
+the precise carnivore that will perform the operation."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, aren't we sarcastic this afternoon?" she asked, opening wide
+her eyes. "However, you're not going to frighten me, because I'm
+determined to have it out with you, even if you order the dog-cart
+before dinner. Johnnie, is it fair to let a complete stranger make
+mischief among relations?"</p>
+
+<p>John played the break in Eleanor's voice with beautiful ease.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not have Miss Hamilton's name dragged into these sordid family
+squabbles," he asseverated.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to say a word against Miss Hamilton. I think she's a
+charming young woman&mdash;a little too charming perhaps for you, you
+susceptible old goose."</p>
+
+<p>"For goodness sake," John begged, "stick to the jungle and leave the
+farmyard alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you're not going to rag me out of what I'm going to say. You know
+that I'm a real Bohemian who doesn't pay attention to the stupid little
+conventionalities that, for instance, Hilda or Edith might consider.
+Therefore I'm sure you won't misunderstand me when I warn you about
+people talking. Of course, you and I are accustomed to the freedom of
+the profession, and as far as I'm concerned you might engage half a
+dozen handsome lady secretaries without<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> my even noticing it. But the
+others don't understand. They think it's funny."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens, what are you trying to suggest?" John demanded.</p>
+
+<p>He could manage the break, but this full pitch made him slog wildly.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i>'m not trying to suggest anything. I'm simply telling you what other
+people may think. You see, after all, Hilda and Edith couldn't help
+noticing that you did allow Miss Hamilton to make mischief between you
+and your brother. I dare say James was in the wrong; but is it a part of
+a secretary's duties to manage her employer? And James <i>is</i> your
+brother. The natural deduction for conventional people like Hilda and
+Edith was that&mdash;now, don't be annoyed at what I'm going to say, but I
+always speak out&mdash;I'm famous for my frankness. Well, to put it frankly,
+they think that Miss Hamilton can twist you round her little finger.
+Then, of course, they ask themselves why, and for conventional people
+like Hilda and Edith there's only one explanation. Of course, I told
+them it was all nonsense and that you were as innocent as an old lamb. I
+dare say you don't mind people talking. That's your business, but I
+shouldn't have been a good pal if I hadn't warned you that people will
+talk, if they aren't talking already."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got the mind of an usher," said John. "I can't say worse than
+that of anybody. Wasn't it you who suggested a French governess should
+be given the freedom of Church Row and who laughed at me for being an
+old beaver or some other prudish animal because I objected? If I can be
+trusted with a French governess, I can surely be trusted with a
+confidential secretary. Besides, we're surrounded by an absolute
+<i>chevaux de frise</i> of chaperons, for I suppose that Hilda and Edith may
+fairly be considered efficient chaperons, even if you are still too
+youthfully Bohemian for the post."</p>
+
+<p>Eleanor's age was the only vulnerable spot in her self-confidence, and
+John took advantage of it to bring her little chat to a bitter end.<a
+name="page_262" id="page_262"></a></p>
+
+<p>"My dear Johnnie," she said, tartly, "I'm not talking about the present.
+I'm warning you about the future. However, you're evidently not in the
+mood to listen to anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not," he assented, warmly. "I'm as deaf as an old adder."</p>
+
+<p>The next day John, together with Mrs. Worfolk and Maud, left for
+Hampstead, and his secretary traveled with him up to town.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," his housekeeper was overheard observing to Elsa in the hall of 36
+Church Row, "dog-cart is a good name for an unnatural conveyance, but
+give me a good old London cab for human beings. Turn again, Whittington,
+they say, and they're right. They may call London noisy if they like,
+but it's as quiet as a mouse when you put it alongside of all that
+baaring and mooing and cockadoodledoing in the country. Well, I mean to
+say, Elsa, I'm getting too old for the country. And the master's getting
+too old for the country, in my opinion. I'm in hopes he'll settle down
+now, and not go wearing himself out any more with the country. Believe
+me or not as you will, Elsa, when I tell you that the pore fellow had to
+play at ball like any little kid to keep himself amused."</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy that, Mrs. Worfolk," Elsa murmured with a gentle intake of
+astonished breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it used to make me feel all over melancholy to see him. All by
+himself in a great field. Pore fellow. He's lonely, that's what it is,
+however...."</p>
+
+<p>At this point the conversation born upon whispers and tut-tut passed out
+of John's hearing toward the basement.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose my own servants will start gossiping next," he grumbled to
+himself. "Luckily I've learnt to despise gossip. Hullo, here's another
+bundle of press-cuttings.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>It is rumored that John Touchwood's version of Joan of Arc which he is
+writing for that noble tragedienne, Miss Janet Bond, will exhibit the
+Maid of Orleans in a new and piquant light. The distinguished dramatist
+has just returned from France where he has been obtaining some
+startling<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> scenic effects for what is confidently expected will be the
+playwright's most successful production. We are sorry to hear that Miss
+Bond has been suffering from a sharp attack of 'flu, but a visit to Dr.
+Brighton has&mdash;</i>"</p>
+
+<p>These and many similar paragraphs were all pasted into the album by his
+secretary the next morning, and John was quite annoyed when she referred
+to them as worthless gossip.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know what gossip is," he said, thinking of Eleanor. "I ignore
+real gossip."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton smiled to herself.<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">A</span><b>FTER</b> the Christmas party at Ambles John managed to secure a
+tranquillity that, however brief and deceptive he felt it was like to
+be, nevertheless encouraged him sufficiently to make considerable
+progress with the play while it lasted. Perhaps Eleanor's warning had
+sunk deeper than she might have supposed from the apparent result of
+that little chat with her brother-in-law about his future; at any rate,
+he was so firmly determined not to give the most evil mind the least
+opportunity for malicious exaggeration that in self-defense he devoted
+to Joan of Arc a more exclusive attention than he had hitherto devoted
+to any of his dramatic personages. Moreover, in his anxiety to prove how
+abominably unjust the insinuations of his family were, he imparted to
+his heroine some of his own temporary remoteness from the ordinary
+follies and failings of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>"We are too much obsessed by sex nowadays," he announced at the club one
+afternoon, and was tempted to expatiate upon his romantic shibboleth to
+several worn out old gentlemen who had assented to this proposition.
+"After all," he argued, "life is not all sex. I've lately been
+enormously struck by that in the course of my work. Take Joan of Arc for
+instance. Do we find any sex obsession in her? None. But is she less
+psychologically interesting on that account? No. Sex is the particular
+bane of modern writers. Frankly, I cannot read a novel nowadays. I
+suppose I'm old-fashioned, but I'd rather be called old-fashioned than
+asked to appreciate one of these young modern writers. I suppose there's
+no man more willing than myself to march with the times, but I like the
+high roads of literature, not the muddy lanes...."</p>
+
+<p>"The John Longs and John Lanes that have no turnings," a club wag put
+in.<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Look at Stevenson," the dramatist continued, without paying any
+attention to the stupid interruption. "When Stevenson wrote a love scene
+he used to blush."</p>
+
+<p>"So would any one who had written love scenes as bad as his," sniggered
+a young man, who seemed oblivious of his very recent election to the
+club.</p>
+
+<p>The old members looked at him severely, not because he had sneered at
+Stevenson, but because, without being spoken to, he had volunteered a
+remark in the club smoking-room at least five years too soon.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a young brother who thinks like you," said John, with friendly
+condescension.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know him," the young man casually replied.</p>
+
+<p>John was taken aback; it struck him as monstrous that a friend of Hugh's
+should have secured election to <i>his</i> club. The sanctity of the retreat
+had been violated, and he could not understand what the world was coming
+to.</p>
+
+<p>"How is Hugh?" the young man went on, without apparently being the least
+conscious of any difference between the two brothers. "Down at your
+place in Hampshire, isn't he? Lucky chap; though they tell me you
+haven't got many pheasants."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't preserve?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I do not preserve." John would have liked to add "except the
+decencies of intercourse between old and young in a club smoking-room";
+but he refrained.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you're right," said the young man. "These are tough times for
+landed proprietors. Well, give my love to Hugh when you see him," he
+added, and turning on his heel disappeared into the haze of a more
+remote portion of the smoking-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that youth?" John demanded.</p>
+
+<p>The old members shook their heads helplessly, and one of the waiters was
+called up to be interrogated.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Winnington-Carr, I believe, sir," he informed them.</p>
+
+<p>"How long has he been a member?"<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a></p>
+
+<p>"About a week, I believe, sir."</p>
+
+<p>John looked daggers of exclamation at the other members.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have perambulators waiting in the lobby before we know where
+we are," he said, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody agreed that these ill-considered elections were a scandal to a
+famous club, and John, relinquishing the obsession of sex as a topic,
+took up the obsession of youth, which he most convincingly proved to be
+the curse of modern life.</p>
+
+<p>It was probably Mr. Winnington-Carr's election that brought home to John
+the necessity of occupying himself immediately with his brother's
+future; at this rate he should find Hugh himself a member of his club
+before he knew where he was.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm worrying about my young brother," he told Miss Hamilton next day,
+and looked at her sharply to watch the effect of this remark.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, has he been misbehaving himself again?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not exactly misbehaving; but a friend of his has just been elected
+to my club, and I don't think it's good for Hugh to be hanging about in
+idleness. I do wish I could find the address of that man Raikes from
+British Honduras."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it likely to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was a visiting-card. It might be anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"If it was a visiting-card, the most likely place to find it is in one
+of your waistcoat-pockets."</p>
+
+<p>John regarded his secretary with the admiration that such a practical
+suggestion justified, and rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Maud, please bring down all my waistcoats," he told his valeting
+parlor-maid, who presently appeared in the library bowed down by a heap
+of clothes as a laborer is bowed down by a truss of hay.</p>
+
+<p>In the twenty-seventh waistcoat that was examined the card was found:</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="r">Mr. Sydney Ricketts.<br />
+14 Lyonesse Road, Belize,<br />
+Balam, S.W., British Honduras.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I thought his name was Raikes," John muttered, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind. A rose by any other name...." Miss Hamilton began.</p>
+
+<p>John might almost have been said to interrupt what she was going to say
+with an angry glare; but she only laughed merrily at his fierce
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I beg your pardon&mdash;I'd forgotten your objection to roses."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ricketts, who was fortunately still in London, accepted John's
+invitation to come and see him at Church Row on business. He was a
+lantern-jawed man with a tremendous capacity for cocktails, a sinewy
+neck, and a sentimental affection for his native suburb. At the same
+time, he would not hear a word against British Honduras.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon our regatta at Belize is the prettiest little regatta in the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>"But the future of logwood and mahogany?" John insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Great," the visitor assured him. "Why don't <i>you</i> come out to us? You'd
+lose a lot of weight if you worked for a few months up the Zucara river.
+Here's a photograph of some of our boys loading logwood."</p>
+
+<p>"They look very hot," said John, politely.</p>
+
+<p>"They are very hot," said Mr. Ricketts. "You can't expect to grow
+logwood in Iceland."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not. I understand that."</p>
+
+<p>In the end it was decided that John should invest £2000 in the logwood
+and mahogany business and that sometime in February Hugh should be ready
+to sail with Mr. Ricketts to Central America.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he'll want to learn something about the conditions of the
+trade at first. Yes, I reckon your brother will stay in Belize at
+first," said the planter, scratching his throat so significantly that
+John made haste to fill up his glass, thinking to himself that, if the
+cocktails at the Belize Yacht Club were as good as Mr. Ricketts boasted,
+Hugh would<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> be unlikely ever to see much more of mahogany than he saw of
+it at present cut and rounded and polished to the shape of a solid
+dining-room table. However, the more attractive Belize, the less
+attractive England.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you told me this was your first visit home in fifteen years?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. Fifteen years in B.H."</p>
+
+<p>"B.H.?" repeated the new speculator, nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"British Honduras."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I beg your pardon. The initials associated themselves in my mind
+for the moment with another place. B.H. you call it. Very appropriate I
+should think. I suppose you found many changes in Balham on your
+return?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't have known it again," said Mr. Ricketts. "For one thing they'd
+changed all the lamp-posts along our road. That's the kind of thing to
+teach a man he's growing old."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Hugh wouldn't recognize Hampstead after fifteen years, John
+thought, gleefully; he might even pass his nearest relations in the
+street without a salute when like a Rip van Winkle of the tropics he
+returned to his native country after fifteen years.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose the usual outfit for hot climates will be necessary?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ricketts nodded; and John began to envisage himself equipping Hugh
+from the Army and Navy Stores.</p>
+
+<p>"I always think there is something extraordinarily romantic about a
+tropical outfit," he ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"It's extraordinarily expensive," said Mr. Ricketts. "But everything's
+going up. And mahogany's going up when I get back to B.H., or my name
+isn't Sydney Ricketts."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing you particularly recommend?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, they'll tell you everything you want at the Stores and a bit over,
+except&mdash;oh, yes, by the way, don't let him forget his shaker."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that some special kind of porous overcoat?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ricketts laughed delightedly.<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, if that isn't the best thing I've heard since I was home. Porous
+overcoat! No, no, a shaker is for mixing drinks."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" John grunted. "From what I know of my brother, he won't require
+any special instrument for doing that. Good-by, Mr. Ricketts; my
+solicitor will write to you about the business side. Good-by."</p>
+
+<p>When John went back to his work he was humming.</p>
+
+<p>"Satisfactory?" his secretary inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Extremely satisfactory. I think Hugh is very lucky. Ricketts assures me
+that in another fifteen years&mdash;that is about the time Hugh will be
+wanting to visit England again&mdash;there is no reason why he shouldn't be
+making at least £500 a year. Besides, he won't be lonely, because I
+shall send Harold out to British Honduras in another five years. It must
+be a fascinating place if you're fond of natural history, B.H.&mdash;as the
+denizens apparently call it among themselves," he added, pensively.</p>
+
+<p>It could not be claimed that Hugh was enraptured by the prospect of
+leaving England in February, and John who was really looking forward to
+the job of getting together his outfit was disappointed by his brother's
+lack of enthusiasm. He simply could not understand anybody's failure to
+be thrilled by snake-proof blankets and fever-proof filters, by
+medicine-chests and pith helmets and double-fly tents and all the
+paraphernalia of adventure in foreign parts. Finally he delivered an
+ultimatum to Hugh, which was accepted albeit with ill grace, and
+hardening his heart against the crossed letters of protest that arrived
+daily from his mother and burying himself in an Army and Navy Stores'
+catalogue, he was able to intrench himself in the opinion that he was
+doing the best that could be done for the scapegrace. The worst of
+putting Hugh on his feet again was the resentment such a brotherly
+action aroused among his other relations. After the quarrel with James
+he had hardly expected to hear from him for a long time; but no sooner
+had the news about British Honduras gone the round of the family than<a
+name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> his eldest brother wrote to ask him for a
+loan of £1000 to invest in a projected critical weekly of which he was
+to be the editor. James added that John could hardly grudge him as much
+as that for log-rolling at home when he was prepared to spend double
+that amount on Hugh to roll logs abroad.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say I feel inclined to help James after that article about my
+work," John observed to Miss Hamilton. "Besides, I hate critical
+weeklies."</p>
+
+<p>It happened that the post next morning brought a large check from his
+agent for royalties on various dramas that in various theaters all over
+the world were playing to big business; confronted by that bright-hued
+token of prosperity he could not bring himself to sit down and pen a
+flat refusal to his brother's demand. Instead of doing that he merely
+delayed for a few hours the birth of a new critical weekly by making an
+appointment to talk the matter over, and it was only a fleeting pleasure
+that he obtained from adding a postscript begging James not to bring his
+dog with him when he called at Church Row.</p>
+
+<p>"For if that wretched animal goes snorting round the room all the time
+we're talking," he assured his secretary, "I shall agree to anything in
+order to get rid of it. I shall find all my available capital invested
+in critical weeklies just to save the carpet from being eaten."</p>
+
+<p>James seemed to have entirely forgotten that his brother had any reason
+to feel sore with him; he also seemed entirely unconscious of there
+being the least likelihood of his refusing to finance the new venture.
+John remembering how angry James had been when on a former occasion he
+had reminded him that Hugh's career was still before him, was careful to
+avoid the least suggestion of throwing cold water upon the scheme.
+Therefore in the circumstances James' unusual optimism, which lent his
+sallow cheeks some of the playwright's roses, was not surprising, and
+before the conversation had lasted many minutes John had half promised a
+thousand pounds. Having done this, he did try to retrieve<a
+name="page_271" id="page_271"></a> the situation by advising James to invest
+it in railway-stock and argued strongly against the necessity of another
+journal.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to call this further unnecessary burden upon our
+powers of assimilation?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> thought <i>The New Broom</i> would be a good title."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I was positive you'd call it The New-Something-or-other. Why not
+The New Way to pay Old Scores? I'll back you to do that, even if you
+can't pay your old debts. However, listen to me. I'll lend the money to
+you personally. But I will not invest it in the paper. For security&mdash;or
+perhaps compensation would be a better word&mdash;you shall hand over to me
+the family portraits and the family silver."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather it was a business proposition," James objected.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, a new critical weekly can never be a business
+proposition. How many people read your books?"</p>
+
+<p>"About a dozen," James calculated.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why should more people read your paper? No, you can have the
+money, but it must be regarded as a personal loan, and I must have the
+portraits and the silver."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why you should have them."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why you should start a new critical weekly."</p>
+
+<p>John could not help enjoying the power that his brother's ambition had
+put in his hands and he insisted firmly upon the surrender of the
+heritage.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Jacob, I suppose I must sell my birthright for a mess of
+pottage."</p>
+
+<p>"A printer's pie would describe it better," said John.</p>
+
+<p>"Though why you want a few bad pictures and a dozen or so forks and
+spoons, I can't conceive."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you want them?" John countered.</p>
+
+<p>"Because they're mine."</p>
+
+<p>"And the money is mine."</p>
+
+<p>James went away with a check for a thousand pounds in his pocket; but he
+went away less cheerful than he arrived. John, on the other hand, was
+much impressed by the manner in which he had dealt with his eldest
+brother; it was worth<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> while losing a thousand pounds to have been able
+to demonstrate clearly to James once for all that his taste in
+literature was at the mercy of the romanticism he so utterly despised.
+And while he felt that he had displayed a nice dignity in forcing James
+to surrender the portraits and the silver, he was also pleasantly aware
+of an equally nice magnanimity in being willing to overlook that
+insulting article. But Miss Hamilton was at his elbow to correct the
+slightest tendency to be too well pleased with himself.</p>
+
+<p>"After all I couldn't disappoint poor old James," he said, fishing for
+an encomium and dangling his own good heart as the bait. His secretary,
+however, ignored the tempting morsel and swam away into the deeps of
+romantic drama where his munificence seemed less showy somehow.</p>
+
+<p>"You know best what you <i>want</i> to do," she said, curtly. "And now, have
+you decided upon this soliloquy for Joan in her dungeon?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you feel about it?"</p>
+
+<p>She held forth upon the advantages of a quiet front scene before the
+trial, and the author took her advice. He wished that she were as
+willing to discant upon his treatment of James, but he consoled himself
+for her lack of interest by supposing that she was diffident about
+giving the least color to any suggestion that she might be influencing
+him to her own advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh came up to town in order to go more fully into the question of his
+future, and John regarding Miss Hamilton's attitude towards him tried to
+feel perfectly sure that she was going out of her way to be pleasant to
+Hugh solely with an idea of accentuating the strictly professional side
+of her association with himself. If this were not the case, he should be
+justified in thinking that she did really like Hugh very much, which
+would be an uncomfortable state of affairs. Still, explain it away as he
+might, John did feel a little uneasy, and once when he heard of a visit
+to the theater preceded by dinner he was upon the verge of pointing out
+to Hugh that until he was definitely established in mahogany<a
+name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> and logwood he must be extremely careful
+about raising false hopes. He managed to refrain from approaching Hugh
+on the subject, because he knew that if he betrayed the least anxiety in
+that direction Hugh was capable of making it a matter of public jest. He
+decided instead to sound Miss Hamilton upon her views.</p>
+
+<p>"You've never had any longing for the tropics?" he asked, as casually as
+he was able.</p>
+
+<p>"Not particularly, though of course I should enjoy any fresh
+experience."</p>
+
+<p>"I was noticing the other day that you seemed to dislike spiders; and,
+of course, the spiders in hot countries are terrible. I remember reading
+of some that snare birds, and I'm not sure that in parts of South
+America they don't even attack human beings. Many people of course do
+not mind them. For instance, my brother-in-law Daniel Curtis wrote a
+very moving account of a spider as large as a bat, with whom he
+fraternized on the banks of the Orinoco. It's quite a little classic in
+its way."</p>
+
+<p>John noted with the warmest satisfaction that Miss Hamilton shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"Your poor brother," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he'll be all right," said John, hurriedly. "I'm equipping him with
+every kind of protection against insects. Only yesterday I discovered a
+most ingenious box which is guaranteed to keep one's tobacco from being
+devoured by cockroaches, and I thought Hugh looked very well in his pith
+helmet, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I really didn't notice," Miss Hamilton replied,
+indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this conversation James' birthright was formally surrendered
+and John gave up contemplating himself upon a peak in Darien in order to
+contemplate himself as the head of an ancient and distinguished family.
+While the portraits were being hung in the library he discoursed upon
+the romance of lineage so volubly that he had a sudden dread of Miss
+Hamilton taking him for a snob, which he<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> tried to counteract by putting
+into the mouth of Joan of Arc sentiments of the purest demophilism.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall aim at getting all the material for the play complete by April
+1st&mdash;my birthday, by the way. Yes, I shall be forty-three. And then I
+thought we might go into retreat and aim at finishing entirely by the
+end of June. That would enable Miss Bond to produce in September without
+hurrying the rehearsals. <i>Lucretia</i> will be produced over here in April.
+I think it would be rather jolly to finish off the play in France.
+Domrèmy, Bourges, Chinon, Orleans, Compiègne, Rouen&mdash;a delightful tour.
+You could have an aluminum typewriter...."</p>
+
+<p>John's dreams of literature and life in France were interrupted by Mrs.
+Worfolk, who entered the room with a mystery upon her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the Reverend Armitage waiting to see you in the hall, sir. But
+he was looking so queer that I was in two minds if I ought to admit him
+or not. It was Elsa who happened to open the door. Well, I mean to say,
+Maud's upstairs doing her rooms, and Elsa was a bit frightened when she
+saw him, through her being engaged to a policeman and so her mind
+running on murders and such like. Of course as soon as I saw it was the
+Reverend Armitage I quieted her down. But he really does look most
+peculiar, if you'll pardon the obsivation on Mrs. Armitage's husband. I
+don't think he's actually barmy <i>yet</i>; but you know, he gives any one
+the idea he will be soon, and I thought you ought to be told before he
+started to rave up and down the house. He's got a funny look in his eye,
+the same as what a man once had who sat opposite me in a bus and five
+minutes afterwards jumped off on Hammersmith Bridge and threw himself
+into the river. Quite a sensation it created, I remember, and we all had
+to alight, so as the conductor could give what information he had to a
+policeman who'd only heard the splash."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Worfolk had been too garrulous; before she had time to ascertain
+her master's views on the subject of admitting<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> Laurence there was a tap
+at the door, and Laurence himself stalked into the room. Unquestionably,
+even to one who had not known him as a clergyman, he did present an odd
+appearance with his fur-lined cloak of voluminous black, his long hair,
+his bundle of manuscript and theatrical newspapers, and his tragic eye;
+the only article of attire that had survived his loss of faith was the
+clergyman's hat; but even that had lost its former meekness and now gave
+the effect of a farouche sombrero.</p>
+
+<p>"Well met," he intoned, advancing solemnly into the room and gripping
+his brother-in-law's hand with dramatic effect. "I would converse with
+you, John."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a blank verse line," said John. There really was not much else
+that he could have said to such an affected greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably, probably," Laurence muttered, shaking his head. "It's
+difficult for me to talk in prose nowadays. But I have news for you,
+John, good news. <i>Thomas</i> is finished."</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't wait, Mrs. Worfolk," said John.</p>
+
+<p>His housekeeper was standing by the door with a face wreathed in notes
+of interrogation and seemed unwilling to retire.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't wait, Mrs. Worfolk," he repeated, irritably.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you might have been wanting somebody fetched, sir."</p>
+
+<p>John made an impatient gesture and Mrs. Worfolk vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"You know Miss Hamilton, Laurence," said John, severely.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Miss Hamilton! Forgive my abstraction. How d'ye do? But&mdash;ah&mdash;I was
+anxious to have a few words in private."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Hamilton is my confidential secretary."</p>
+
+<p>"I bow to your domestic arrangements," said Laurence. "But&mdash;ah&mdash;my
+business is of an extremely private nature. It bears in fact directly
+upon my future."</p>
+
+<p>John was determined to keep his secretary in the room.<a
+name="page_276" id="page_276"></a> He had a feeling that money was going to
+be asked for, and he hoped that her presence would encourage him to hold
+out against agreeing to lend it.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have anything to say to me, Laurence, you must say it in front
+of my secretary. I cannot be continually shooing her from the room like
+a troublesome cat."</p>
+
+<p>The ex-vicar looked awkward for a moment; but his natural conceit
+reasserted itself and flinging back his cloak he laid upon the table a
+manuscript.</p>
+
+<p>"Fresh from Miss Quirk's typewriting office here is <i>Thomas</i>," he
+announced. "And now, my dear fellow, I require a little good advice."
+There was flowing into his voice the professional unction of the
+clergyman with a north transept to restore. "Who was it that first said
+'Charity begins at home'? Yes, a little good advice about my play. In
+deference to the Lord Chamberlain while reserving to my conscience the
+right to execrate his despotism I have expunged from my scenes the
+<i>central</i> figures of the gospel story, and I venture to think that there
+is now no reason why <i>Thomas</i> should not be&mdash;ah&mdash;produced."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't invite you to read it to me just at present,
+Laurence," said John, hurriedly. "No, not just at present, I'm afraid.
+When I'm working myself I'm always chary of being exposed to outside
+influences. <i>You</i> wouldn't like and <i>I</i> shouldn't like to find in <i>Joan
+of Arc</i> echoes of <i>Thomas</i>. Miss Hamilton, however, who is thoroughly
+conversant with my point of view, would perhaps...."</p>
+
+<p>"I confess," Laurence interrupted, loftily, "that I do not set much
+store by its being read. No, no. You will acquit me of undue
+self-esteem, my dear fellow, if I say at once in all modesty that I am
+satisfied with my labors, though you may be a little alarmed when I
+confide in you my opinion that it is probably a classic. Still, such is
+my deliberate conviction. Moreover, I have already allowed our little
+party at Ambles to hear it. Yes, we spent a memorable evening before the
+manuscript was dispatched to Miss Quirk. Some of the scenes, indeed,
+proved almost too<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> dramatic. Edith was quite exhausted by her emotion
+and scarcely slept all night. As for Hilda, I've never seen her so
+overcome by anything. She couldn't say anything when I finished. No, no,
+I sha'n't read it to you. In fact, to be&mdash;ah&mdash;blunt, I could scarcely
+endure the strain a second time. No, what I want you to do, my dear
+fellow, is to&mdash;ah&mdash;back it. The phrase is Hugh's. We have all been
+thrilled down at Ambles by rumors of your generosity, and I know you'll
+be glad of another medium for exercising it. Am I unduly proud of my
+work if I say that it seems to me a more worthy medium than British
+Honduras or weekly papers?"</p>
+
+<p>John had been gazing at Miss Hamilton with a mute appeal to save him
+while his brother-in-law was talking; she, however, bending lower every
+moment to hide her mirth made no attempt to show him a way of escape and
+John had to rely upon his own efforts.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it be better," he suggested, mildly, "to submit your play to a
+manager before we&mdash;before you try to put it on yourself? I have never
+invested any money in my own plays, and really I...."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear John, far be it from me to appear to cast the least slur&mdash;to
+speak in the faintest way at all slightingly of your plays, but I do not
+quite see the point of the comparison. Your plays&mdash;excellent as they
+are, most excellent&mdash;are essentially commercial transactions. My play is
+not a commercial transaction."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why should I be invited to lose my money over it?"</p>
+
+<p>Laurence smiled compassionately.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would be glad of the opportunity to show a disinterested
+appreciation of art. In years to come you will be proud to think that
+you were one of the first to give practical evidence of your belief in
+<i>Thomas</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"But perhaps I'm just as skeptical as your hero was. I may not believe
+in your play's immortality."</p>
+
+<p>Laurence frowned.<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Come, my dear fellow, this is being petty. We are all counting on you.
+You wouldn't like to hear it said that out of jealousy you had tried to
+suppress a rival dramatist. But I must not let my indignation run away
+with me, and you must forgive my heat. I am overstrained. The magnitude
+of the subject has almost been too much for me. Besides, I should have
+explained at once that I intended to invest in <i>Thomas</i> all that is left
+of my own little capital. Yes, I am even ready to do that. Then I shall
+spend a year as an actor, after which I shall indulge my more worldly
+self by writing a few frankly commercial plays before I begin my next
+great tragedy entitled <i>Paul</i>."</p>
+
+<p>John decided that his brother-in-law had gone mad; unable to think of
+any action more effective at such a crisis, he rang the bell. But when
+Maud came to inquire his need he could not devise anything to tell her
+except that Mr. Armitage was staying to lunch.</p>
+
+<p>It was a most uncomfortable meal, because Miss Hamilton in order to keep
+herself from laughing aloud had to be preternaturally grave, and John
+himself was in a continuous state of nervous irritation at Laurence, who
+would let everything on his plate grow cold while he droned on without a
+pause about the simplicity of the best art. It was more than tantalizing
+to watch him gradually build up a mouthful upon his fork, still talking;
+slowly raise it to his lips, still talking; and wave the overloaded fork
+to and fro before him, still talking. But it was an agony to watch the
+carefully accumulated mouthful drop back bit by bit upon his plate,
+until at last very slowly and still talking he would insert one cold and
+tiny morsel into his patient mouth, so tiny a morsel that the
+mastication of it did not prevent him from still talking.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you're not enjoying your lunch," his host said.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't wait for me, my dear fellow; when I am interested in something
+else I cannot gobble my food. Though in any case," he added in a
+resigned voice, "I shall have indigestion.<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a> One cannot write plays like
+<i>Thomas</i> without exposing oneself to the ills that flesh is heir to."</p>
+
+<p>After lunch, much to John's relief, his brother-in-law announced that he
+had an appointment with Eleanor and would therefore be unable to stay
+even long enough to smoke a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said. "Eleanor and I are going to interview one or two of her
+theatrical friends. No doubt I shall soon be able to proclaim myself a
+rogue and a vagabond. Yes, yes, poor Edith was quite distressed this
+morning when I told her that jestingly. However, she will be happy to
+hear to-night when I get back that her brother has been so large."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that Edith expected him to be otherwise. No, no, my dear fellow,
+Edith has a most exalted opinion of you, which indeed I share, if I may
+be permitted so to do. Good-by, John, and many thanks. Who knows? Our
+little lunch may become a red-letter day in the calendar of English
+dramatic art. Let me see, the tube-station is on the left as I go out?
+Good-by, John; I wish I could stay the night with you, but I have a
+cheap day-ticket which forbids any extension of my plans."</p>
+
+<p>When John got back to the library he turned in bewilderment to his
+secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here. I surely never gave him the least idea that I was going to
+back his confounded play, did I?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, you made it perfectly clear that you were not."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to hear you say so, because he has gone away from here
+apparently under the delusion that I am. He'll brag about it to Eleanor
+this afternoon, and before I know where I am she will be asking me to
+set George up with a racing-stable."</p>
+
+<p>Eleanor did not go as far as that, but she did write to John and point
+out that the present seemed a suitable moment to deal with the question
+of George's health by sending him on a voyage round the world. She added
+that for herself<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> she asked nothing; but John had an uneasy impression
+that it was only in the belief that he who asks not to him shall it be
+given.</p>
+
+<p>"Take down two letters, please, Miss Hamilton," he said, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>D<small>EAR</small> L<small>AURENCE</small>,&mdash;I am afraid that you went away yesterday afternoon under
+a misapprehension. I do <i>not</i> see my way to offer any financial
+contribution toward the production of your play. I myself passed a long
+apprenticeship before I was able to get one of my plays acted, and I do
+not think that you can expect to do otherwise. Do not imagine that I am
+casting any doubts upon the excellence of <i>Thomas</i>. If it is as good as
+you claim, you will have your reward without any help from me. Your idea
+of getting acquainted with the practical side of the stage is a good
+one. If you are not already engaged in the autumn, I think I can offer
+you one of the minor bishops in <i>Joan of Arc</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your affectionate brother-in-law,<br />
+J<small>OHN</small> T<small>OUCHWOOD</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>D<small>EAR</small> E<small>LEANOR</small>,&mdash;I must say decidedly that I do not perceive any
+likelihood of George's health deriving much benefit from a voyage round
+the world. If he is threatened with sleeping sickness, it would be rash
+to expose him to a tropical climate. If he is suffering from a sluggish
+liver, he will get no benefit from lolling about in smoking-saloons,
+whatever the latitude and longitude. I have repeatedly helped George
+with his schemes to earn a living for himself and he has never failed to
+squander my money upon capricious race-horses. You know that I am always
+willing to come forward on behalf of Bertram and Viola; but their father
+must show signs of helping himself before I do anything more for him. I
+am sorry that I cannot offer you a good part in <i>Joan of Arc</i>; there is
+really nothing to suit you for I presume you would not care to accept
+the part of Joan's mother. However, it has now been decided to produce
+<i>Lucretia</i> in<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a> April and I shall do my best to persuade Grohmann to
+offer you a part in that.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Your affectionate brother-in-law,<br />
+J<small>OHN</small> T<small>OUCHWOOD</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>John did not receive an answer to either of these letters, and out of an
+atmosphere of pained silence he managed to conjure optimistically an
+idea that Laurence and Eleanor had realized the justice of his point of
+view.</p>
+
+<p>"You do agree with me that they were going too far?" he asked Miss
+Hamilton; but she declined to express an opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the good of having a confidential secretary, if I can't ask her
+advice about confidential matters?" he grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you dissatisfied with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no. I'm not dissatisfied. What an exaggeration of my remark!
+I'm simply a little puzzled by your attitude. It seems to me&mdash;I may be
+wrong&mdash;that instead of ... well, at first you were always perfectly
+ready to talk about my relations and about me, whereas now you won't
+talk about anything except Joan of Arc. I'm really getting quite bored
+with Joan of Arc."</p>
+
+<p>"I was only an amateur when I began," she laughed. "Now I'm beginning to
+be professional."</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's a great mistake," said John, decidedly. "Suppose I insist
+upon having your advice?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd find that dictation bears two meanings in English, to only one of
+which are you entitled under the terms of our contract."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, have I done anything to offend you?" he asked, pathetically.</p>
+
+<p>But she would not be moved and held her pencil so conspicuously ready
+that the author was impaled upon it before he could escape and was soon
+hard at work dictating his first arrangement of the final scene in a
+kind of indignant absent-mindedness.<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a></p>
+
+<p>Soon after this John received a note from Sir Percy Mortimer, asking if
+he could spare time to visit the great actor-manager some evening in the
+course of the current week. Between nine-thirty and ten was indicated as
+a suitable time, inasmuch as Sir Percy would then be in his
+dressing-room gathering the necessary momentum to knock down all the
+emotional fabric carefully built up in the first two acts by the most
+cunning of contemporary dramatists. Sir Percy Mortimer, whose name was
+once Albert Snell, could command anybody, so it ought not to have been
+remarkable that John rather flustered by the invitation made haste to
+obey. Yet, he must have been aware of an implied criticism in Miss
+Hamilton's smile, which flashed across her still deep eyes like a sunny
+wind, for he murmured, apologetically:</p>
+
+<p>"We poor writers of plays must always wait upon our masters."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to convey that Sir Percy was only a mortal like himself, but he
+failed somehow to eliminate the deep-rooted respect, almost it might be
+called awe of the actor that was perceptible under the assumed
+carelessness of the author.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, it may be that he is anxious to hear some of my plans for the
+near future," he added.</p>
+
+<p>If Sir Percy Mortimer was impressive in the smoking-room of the Garrick
+Club as himself, he was dumbfounding in his dressing-room as Lord
+Claridge, the ambassador, about to enter Princess Thingumabobski's salon
+and with diplomatic wiles and smiles to settle the future of several
+couples, incidentally secure for himself the heart and hand of a young
+heiress. His evening-dress had achieved an immaculation that even Ouida
+never dreamed of; he wore the Grand Cross of the Victorian Order with as
+easy an assurance as his father had worn the insignia of a local
+friendly society in Birmingham; he was the quintessential diplomat of
+girlish dreams, and it was not surprising that women were ready to
+remove even their hats to see him perform at matinees.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, it's very good of you to look me up, my dear fellow. I have just a
+quarter-of-an-hour. Godfrey!" He turned to<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a> address his valet, who might
+have been a cardinal driven by an ecclesiastical crisis like the spread
+of Modernism into attendance upon an actor.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Percy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to be disturbed until I am called for the third act."</p>
+
+<p>"Very good, Sir Percy."</p>
+
+<p>"And Godfrey!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Percy?"</p>
+
+<p>"The whisky and soda for Mr. Touchwood. Oh, and Godfrey!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Percy?"</p>
+
+<p>"If the Duke of Shropshire comes behind, tell His Grace that I am
+unavoidably prevented from seeing him until after the third act. I will
+<i>not</i> be interrupted."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Sir Percy. I quite understand, Sir Percy."</p>
+
+<p>The valet set the decanter at John's elbow and vanished like the ghost
+of a king.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just this, my dear fellow," the actor-manager began, when John who
+had been trying to decide whether he should suggest Peter the Great or
+Augustus the Strong as the next part for his host was inclining towards
+Augustus. "It's just this. I believe that Miss Cartright, a former
+member of my company, is <i>also</i> a relation of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"She is my sister-in-law," admitted John, swallowing both Peter and
+Augustus in a disappointed gulp.</p>
+
+<p>"In fact, I believe that in private life she is Mrs. George Touchwood.
+Correct me if I am wrong in my names."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Percy waited, but John did not avail himself of the offer, and he
+went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my dear fellow, she has approached me upon a matter which I
+confess I have found somewhat embarrassing, referring as it does to
+another man's private affairs; but as one of the&mdash;as&mdash;how shall I
+describe myself?&mdash;" He fingered the ribbon of the Victorian Order for
+inspiration. "As an actor-manager of some standing, I felt that you
+would prefer me to hear what she had to say in order that I might<a
+name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> thereby adjudicate&mdash;yes, I think that is
+the word&mdash;without any&mdash;no, forgive me&mdash;adjudicate is <i>not</i> the word.
+Adjudicate is too strong. What is the word for outsiders of standing who
+are called in to assist at the settlement of a trade dispute? Whatever
+the word is, that is the word I want. I understand from Miss
+Cartright&mdash;Mrs. George Touchwood in private life&mdash;that her husband is in
+a very grave state of health and entirely without means." Sir Percy
+looked at himself in the glass and dabbed his face with the powder-puff.
+"Miss Cartright asked me to use my influence with you to take some steps
+to mitigate this unpleasant situation upon which, it appears, people are
+beginning to comment rather unfavorably. Now, you and I, my dear fellow,
+are members of the same club. You and I have high positions in our
+respective professions. Is it wise? There may of course be a thousand
+reasons for leaving your brother to starve with an incurable disease.
+But is it wise? As a man of the world, I think not." He touched his
+cheeks with the hare's-foot and gave them a richer bloom. "Don't allow
+me to make any suggestion that even borders upon the impertinent, but if
+you care to accept my mediation&mdash;<i>that</i> is the word I couldn't
+remember." In his enthusiasm Sir Percy smacked his leg, which caused him
+a momentary anxiety for the perfection of his trousers. "Mediation! Of
+course, that's it&mdash;if you care, as I say, to accept my mediation I am
+willing to mediate."</p>
+
+<p>John stared at the actor-manager in angry amazement. Then he let himself
+go:</p>
+
+<p>"My brother is not starving&mdash;he eats more than any human being I know.
+Nor is he suffering from anything incurable except laziness. I do not
+wish to discuss with you or anybody else the affairs of my relations,
+which I regret to say are in most cases only too much my own affairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there is nothing for me to do," Sir Percy sighed, deriving what
+consolation he could from being unable to find a single detail of his
+dress that could be improved.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing whatever," John agreed, emphatically.<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But what shall I say to Miss Cartright, who you <i>must</i> remember is a
+former member of my company, as well as your sister-in-law?"</p>
+
+<p>"I leave that to you."</p>
+
+<p>"It's very awkward," Sir Percy murmured. "I thought you would be sure to
+see that it is always better to settle these unpleasant matters&mdash;out of
+court, if I may use the expression. I'm so afraid that Miss Cartright
+will air her grievance."</p>
+
+<p>"She can wash as much dirty linen as she likes and air it every day in
+your theater," said John, fiercely. "But my brother George shall <i>not</i>
+go on a voyage round the world. You've nothing else to ask me? Nothing
+about my plans for the near future?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. I've a success, as you know, and I don't expect I shall want
+another play for months. You've seen my performance, of course?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said John, curtly, "I've not."</p>
+
+<p>And when he left the actor-manager's dressing-room he knew that he had
+wounded him more deeply by that simple negative than by all the mighty
+insults imaginable.</p>
+
+<p>However, notwithstanding his successful revenge John left the theater in
+a rage and went off to his club with the hope of finding a sympathetic
+listener into whose ears he could pour the tale of Sir Percy's
+megalomania; but by ill luck there was nobody suitable in the
+smoking-room that night. To be sure, Sir Philip Cranbourne was snoring
+in an armchair, and Sir Philip Cranbourne was perhaps a bigger man in
+the profession than Sir Percy Mortimer. Yet, he was not so much bigger
+but that he would have welcomed a tale against the younger theatrical
+knight whose promotion to equal rank with himself he had resented very
+much. Sir Philip, however, was fast asleep, and John doubted if he hated
+Sir Percy sufficiently to welcome being woken up to hear a story against
+him&mdash;particularly a story by a playwright, one of that miserable class
+for which Sir Philip as an actor had naturally a very profound contempt.
+Moreover,<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> thinking the matter over, John came to the conclusion that
+the story, while it would tell against Sir Percy would also tell against
+himself, and he decided to say nothing about it. When he was leaving the
+club he ran into Mr. Winnington-Carr, who greeted him airily.</p>
+
+<p>"Evening, Touchwood!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening."</p>
+
+<p>"What's this I hear about Hugh going to Sierra Leone? Bit tough, isn't
+it, sending him over to a plague spot like that? You saw that paragraph
+in <i>The Penguin</i>? Things we should like to know, don't you know? Why
+John Touchwood's brother is taking up a post in the tropics and whether
+John himself is really sorry to see him go."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I did not see that paragraph," said John, icily.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning a bundle of press-cuttings arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing here but stupid gossip," said John to his secretary,
+flinging the packet into the fire. "Nothing that is worth preserving in
+the album, I mean to say."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton smiled to herself.<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span><b>HE</b> buzz of gossip, the sting of scandalous paragraph, even the
+blundering impertinence of the actor-knight were all forgotten the
+following afternoon when a telegram arrived from Hampshire to say that
+old Mrs. Touchwood was dying. John left London immediately; but when he
+reached Ambles he found that his mother was already dead.</p>
+
+<p>"She passed away at five o'clock," Edith sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was to stop his wife's crying that Laurence abandoned at any
+rate temporarily his unbelief and proclaimed as solemnly as if he were
+still Vicar of Newton Candover that the old lady was waiting for them
+all above. Hilda seemed chiefly worried by the fact that she had never
+warned James of their mother's grave condition.</p>
+
+<p>"I did telegraph Eleanor, who hasn't come; and how I came to overlook
+James and Beatrice I can't think. They'll be so hurt. But Mama didn't
+fret for anybody in particular. No, Hugh sat beside the bed and held her
+hand, which seemed to give her a little pleasure, and I was kept
+occupied with changing the hot-water bottles."</p>
+
+<p>In the dining-room George was knitting lugubriously.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't worry yourself, old chap," he said to John with his usual
+partiality for seductive advice. "You can't do anything now. None of us
+can do anything till the funeral, though I've written to Eleanor to
+bring my top-hat with her when she comes."</p>
+
+<p>The embarrassment of death's presence hung heavily over the household.
+The various members sat down to supper with apologetic glances at one
+another, and nobody took a second helping of any dish. The children were
+only corrected in whispers for their manners, but they were given to
+understand by reproachful head-shakes that for a child to put<a
+name="page_288" id="page_288"></a> his elbows on the table or crumble his
+bread or drink with his mouth full was at such a time a cruel exhibition
+of levity. John could not help contrasting the treatment of children at
+a death with their treatment at a birth. Had a baby arrived upstairs,
+they would have been hustled out of sight and sound of the unclean
+event; but over death they were expected to gloat, and their curiosity
+was encouraged as the fit expression of filial piety.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Frida, darling, dear Grandmama will have lots and lots of lovely
+white flowers. Don't kick the table, sweetheart. Think of dear Grandmama
+looking down at you from Heaven, and don't kick the table-leg, my
+precious," said Edith in tremulous accents, gently smoothing back her
+daughter's indefinite hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Can people only see from Heaven or can they hear?" asked Harold.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, my boy," his Uncle Laurence interposed. "These are mysteries into
+which God does not permit us to inquire too deeply. Let it suffice that
+our lightest actions are known. We cannot escape the omniscient eye."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't speaking about God," Harold objected. "I was asking about
+Grandmama. Does she hear Frida kicking the table, or does she only see
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"At this solemn moment, Harold, when we should all of us be dumb with
+grief, you should not persist. Your poor grandmother would be pained to
+hear you being persistent like this."</p>
+
+<p>Harold seemed to think he had tricked his uncle into answering the
+question, for he relapsed into a satisfied silence; Edith's eyes flashed
+gladly through her tears to welcome the return of her husband's truant
+orthodoxy. All managed to abstain while they were eating from any more
+conspicuous intrusion of the flesh than was inevitable; but there was a
+painful scene after supper, because Frida insisted that she was
+frightened to sleep alone, and refused to be comforted by the offer of
+Viola for company. The terrible increase of Grandmama's powers of
+hearing and seeing<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> might extend to new powers of locomotion in the
+middle of the night, in which case Viola would be no protection.</p>
+
+<p>"But Grandmama is in Heaven, darling," her mother urged.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to sleep with you. I'm frightened. I want to sleep with you,"
+she wailed.</p>
+
+<p>"Laurence!" murmured Edith, appealingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Death is a great leveler," he intoned. Grateful to the chance of being
+able to make this observation, he agreed to occupy his daughter's room
+and thereby allow her to sleep with her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"You're looking sad, Bertram," John observed, kindly, to his favorite
+nephew. "You mustn't take this too much to heart."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Uncle John, I'm not. Only I keep wishing Grandmama had lived a
+little longer."</p>
+
+<p>"We all wish that, old man."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I only meant a very little longer, so that I needn't have gone
+back for the first week of term."</p>
+
+<p>John nervously hurried his nephew up to bed beyond the scorching of
+Laurence's rekindled flames of belief. Downstairs, he tried to extract
+from the attitude of the grown-up members of the family the attitude he
+would have liked to detect in himself. If a few months ago John had been
+told that his mother's death would affect him so little he would have
+been horrified by the suggestion; even now he was seriously shocked at
+himself. Yet, try as he might, he could not achieve the apotheosis of
+the old lady that he would have been so content to achieve. Undoubtedly
+a few months ago he would have been able without being conscious of
+self-deception to pretend that he believed not only in the reality of
+his own grief, but also in that of the others. He would have taken his
+part in the utterance of platitudes about life and death, separation and
+reunion. His own platitudes would have been disguised with poetic
+tropes, and he might have thought to himself how well such and such a
+phrase was put; but he would quickly have assured himself<a
+name="page_290" id="page_290"></a> that it was well put because it was the
+just expression of a deep emotion. Now he could not make a single
+contribution to the woeful reflections of those round him. He believed
+neither in himself nor in them. He knew that George was faintly anxious
+about his top-hat, that Hilda was agitated at the prospect of having to
+explain to James and Beatrice her unintentional slight, that Laurence
+was unable to resist the opportunity of taking the lead at this
+sorrowful time by reverting to his priestly office. And Hugh, for whom
+the old lady had always possessed a fond unreasoning affection, did his
+countenance express more than a hardly concealed relief that it was all
+over? Did he not give the impression that he was stretching his legs
+after sitting still in one position for too long? Edith, to be sure, was
+feeling some kind of emotion that required an endless flow of tears, but
+it seemed to John that she was weeping more for the coming of death than
+for the going of her mother. And the children, how could they be
+expected to feel the loss of the old lady? There under the lamp like a
+cenotaph recording the slow hours of age stood her patience-cards in
+their red morocco case; there they would be allowed to stand for a while
+to satisfy the brief craving for reverence, and then one of the children
+realizing that Grandmama had no more need of playing would take
+possession of them; they would become grubby and dog-eared in younger
+hands; they would disappear one by one, and the memory of that placid
+presence would hardly outlive them.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so nice to think that her little annuity died with her," sighed
+Edith. She spoke of the annuity as if it were a favorite pug that had
+died out of sympathy with its mistress. "I should hate to feel I was
+benefiting from the death of somebody I loved," she explained presently.</p>
+
+<p>John shivered; that remark of his sister's was like a ghostly footstep
+upon his own grave, and from a few years hence, perhaps much less, he
+seemed to hear the family lawyer cough before he settled himself down to
+read the last will and testament of John Touchwood.<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Of course, poor Mama had been dreadfully worried these last weeks,"
+Hilda said. "She felt very much the prospect of Hugh's going abroad&mdash;and
+other things."</p>
+
+<p>John regarded his elder sister, and was on the point of asking what she
+meant to insinuate by other things, when a lament from upstairs startled
+the assembled family.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to bed, mother, come to bed, I want you," Frida was shrieking over
+the balustrade. "The door of Grandmama's room made a noise just now."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better go," said Laurence in answer to his wife's unvoiced
+appeal; and Edith went off gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>"It will always be a consolation to me," said Laurence, "that Mama was
+able to hear <i>Thomas</i> read to her. Yes, yes, she was so well upon that
+memorable evening. So very well. By the way, John, I shall arrange with
+the Vicar to read the burial service myself. It will add the last touch
+to the intimacy of our common grief."</p>
+
+<p>In his own room that night John tried hard not to criticize anybody
+except himself. It was he who was cynical, he who was hard, he who was
+unnatural, not they. He tried to evoke from the past early memories of
+his mother, but he could not recall one that might bring a tear to his
+eye. He remembered that once she had smacked him for something George
+had done, that she had never realized what a success he had made of his
+life's work, that she was&mdash;but he tore the unfilial thoughts from his
+brain and reminded himself how much of her personality endured in his
+own. George, Edith, and himself resembled her: James, Hilda, and Hugh
+resembled their father. John's brothers and sisters haunted the
+darkness; and he knew that deep down in himself he blamed his father and
+mother for bringing them all into the world; he could not help feeling
+that he ought to have been an only child.</p>
+
+<p>"I do resent their existence," John thought. "I'm a heartless egotist.
+And Miss Hamilton thinks I'm an egotist. Her manner towards me lately
+has been distant, even contemptuous. Could that suggestion of Hilda's
+have had any<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a> truth in it? Was Mama worried to death by Hugh's going
+abroad? Did James complain to her about my taking the portraits and the
+silver? Is it from any standpoint conceivable that my own behavior did
+hasten her end?"</p>
+
+<p>John's self-reproaches were magnified in the darkness, and he spent a
+restless and unhappy night, trying to think that the family was more
+important than the individual.</p>
+
+<p>"You feel it terribly, don't you, dear Johnnie?" Edith asked him next
+morning with an affectionate pressure upon his arm. "You're looking
+quite worn out."</p>
+
+<p>"We all feel it terribly," he sighed.</p>
+
+<p>During the three days before the funeral John managed to work himself up
+into a condition of sentimentality which he flattered himself was
+outwardly at any rate affecting. Continuous reminders of his mother's
+existence culminating in the arrival of a new cap she had ordered just
+before her last swift illness seemed to induce in him the illusion of
+sorrow; and without the least idea of what he intended to do with them
+afterwards he collected a quantity of small relics like spectacle-cases
+and caps and mittens, which he arranged upon his dressing-table and
+brooded over with brimming eyes. He indulged Harold's theories about the
+psychical state of his grandmother; he practiced swinging a golf club,
+but he never once took out a ball; he treated everybody to magnificent
+wreaths, and presented the servants as well as his nephews and nieces
+with mourning; he ordered black-edged note-paper; he composed an epitaph
+in the manner of Sir Thomas Browne with cadences and subtle
+alliterations. Then came the funeral, which ruined the last few romantic
+notions of grief that he had been able to preserve.</p>
+
+<p>To begin with, Beatrice arrived in what could only be described as a
+towering rage: no less commonplace epithet would have done justice to
+the vulgarity of her indignation. That James the eldest son and she his
+wife should not have been notified of the dangerous condition of Mama,
+but should have been summoned to the obsequies like mere friends of<a
+name="page_293" id="page_293"></a> the family had outraged her soul, or, as
+Beatrice herself put it, had knocked her down like a feather. Oh yes,
+she had always been considered beneath the Touchwood standard of
+gentility, but poor Mama had not thought the worse of her for that; poor
+Mama had many times gone out of her way to be specially gracious towards
+her; poor Mama must have "laid" there wondering why her eldest
+daughter-in-law did not come to give her the last and longest farewell.
+She had not been lucky enough to be blessed with children, but poor Mama
+had sometimes congratulated her upon that fact; poor Mama had realized
+only too well that children were not always a source of happiness. She
+knew that the undeserved poverty which had always dogged poor old
+Jimmie's footsteps had lately caused to be exacted from him the family
+portraits and the family silver pressed upon him by poor Mama herself;
+but was that a reason for excluding him from his mother's death-bed? She
+would not say whom she blamed, but she had her own ideas, and though
+Hilda might protest it was her fault, she knew better; Hilda was
+incapable of such barbarity. No, she would <i>not</i> walk beside James as
+wife of the chief mourner; she would follow in the rear of the funeral
+procession and hope that at any rate she was not grudged that humble
+place. If some people resented her having bought the largest wreath from
+a very expensive flower-shop, she was not too proud to carry the wreath
+herself; she had carried it all the way from town first-class to avoid
+its being crushed by heedless third-class passengers.</p>
+
+<p>"And when I die," sobbed Beatrice, "I hope that James will remember we
+weren't allowed to see poor Mama before she went to Heaven, and will let
+me die quite alone. I'm sure I don't want my death to interfere with
+other people's amusements."</p>
+
+<p>The funeral party gathered round the open grave; Laurence read the
+service so slowly and the wind was so raw that grief was depicted upon
+every countenance; the sniffing of many noses, above which rose
+Beatrice's sobs of mortification<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a> and rage, mingled with the sighing of
+the yews and the sexton's asthma in a suitably lachrymose symphony.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that poor Mama has gone," said Hilda to her brother that afternoon,
+"I dare say you're anxious for me to be gone too."</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't think you are entitled to ascribe to me such unnatural
+sentiments," John expostulated. "Why should I want you to die?"</p>
+
+<p>He could indeed ask this, for such an event would inevitably connote his
+adoption of Harold.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean you wanted me to die," said Hilda, crossly. "I meant you
+would like me to leave Ambles."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I'm delighted for you to stay here so long as it suits your
+convenience. And that applies equally to Edith. Also I may say to
+George," he added with a glance at Eleanor, who had taken the
+opportunity of mourning to equip herself with a new set of black
+bearskin furs. Eleanor shook herself like a large animal emerging from
+the stream.</p>
+
+<p>"And to me?" she asked with a challenge in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You must judge for yourself, Eleanor, how far my hospitality is likely
+to be extended willingly to you after last week," replied John, coldly.
+He had not yet spoken to his sister-in-law about the interference of Sir
+Percy Mortimer with his private affairs, and he now awaited her excuses
+of reproaches with a curiosity that was very faintly tinged with
+apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not at all ashamed of what I did," she declared. "George can't
+speak up for himself, and it was my duty to do all I could to help him
+in a matter of life and death."</p>
+
+<p>John's cheeks flushed with stormy rose like a menacing down, and he was
+about to break over his sister-in-law in thunder and lightning when
+Laurence, entering the room at the moment and only hearing imperfectly
+her last speech, nodded and sighed:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. Eleanor is indeed right. Yes, yes. In the midst of life...."</p>
+
+<p>Everybody hurried to take advantage of the diversion;<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a> a hum of
+platitudes rose and fell upon the funereal air. John in a convulsion of
+irritability ordered the dog-cart to drive him to the station. He was
+determined to travel back to town alone; he feared that if he stayed any
+longer at Ambles his brother-in-law would revive the discussion about
+his play; he was afraid of Hugh's taking advantage of his mother's death
+to dodge British Honduras and of James' trading upon his filial piety to
+recover the silver and the family portraits.</p>
+
+<p>When John got back to Church Row he found a note from Miss Hamilton to
+say she had influenza and was unlikely to be back at work for at least a
+week&mdash;if indeed, she added, she was able to come back at all. This
+unpleasant prospect filled him with genuine gloom, and it was with great
+difficulty that he refrained from driving immediately to Camera Square
+in order to remonstrate with her in person. His despondency was not
+lightened by Mrs. Worfolk's graveside manner and her assumption of a
+black satin dress hung with jet bugles that was usually reserved to mark
+the more cheerful festivals of the calendar. Worn thus out of season
+hung it about the rooms like a fog, and its numerous rustlings coupled
+with the housekeeper's sighs of commiseration added to the lugubrious
+atmosphere a sensation of damp which gave the final touch to John's
+depression. Next morning the weather was really abominable; the view
+over London from his library window showed nothing but great cobwebs of
+rain that seemed to be actually attached to a sky as gray and solid as a
+dusty ceiling. Action offered the only hope of alleviating life upon
+such a day, and John made up his mind to drive over to Chelsea and
+inquire about his secretary's health. He found that she was better,
+though still in bed; being anxious to learn more about her threatened
+desertion he accepted the maid's invitation to come in and speak to Mrs.
+Hamilton. The old lady looked more like a clown than ever in the
+forenoon while the rice-powder was still fresh upon her cheeks, and John
+found her humor as irritating as he would have found the humor of a real
+clown<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> in similar circumstances. Her manner towards him was that of a
+person who is aware of, but on certain terms is willing to overlook a
+grave indiscretion, and she managed most successfully to make him feel
+that he was on his defense.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, poor Doris has been very seedy. And her illness has unluckily
+coincided with mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm sorry ..." he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. I'm used to being ill. I am always ill. At least, as luck
+will have it, I usually feel ill when Doris has anything the matter with
+her."</p>
+
+<p>This John was ready to believe, but he tried to look at once shocked and
+sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not let us discuss my health," Mrs. Hamilton went on scorching her
+eyebrows in the aureole of martyrdom she wore. "Of what importance is my
+health? Poor Doris has had a very sharp attack, a very sharp attack
+indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid that the weather...."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not the weather, Mr. Touchwood. It is overwork." And before John
+could say a word she was off. "You must remember that Doris is not used
+to hard work. She has spent all her life with me, and you can easily
+imagine that with a mother always at hand she has been spared the least
+hardship. I would have done anything for her. Ever since my husband
+died, my life has been one long buffer between Doris and the world. You
+know how obstinately she has refused to let me do all I wanted. I refer
+to my brother-in-law, Mr. Hamilton of Glencockie. And this is the
+result. Nervous prostration, influenza, a high temperature&mdash;and sharp
+pains, which between ourselves I'm inclined to think are perhaps not so
+bad as she imagines. People who are not accustomed to pains," said the
+old lady, jealously, "are always apt to be unduly alarmed and to
+attribute to them a severity that is a leetle exaggerated. I suffer so
+much myself that I cannot take these pains quite as seriously as Doris
+does. However, the poor child really has a good deal to put up with, and
+of course I've insisted that she must never attempt such hard work
+again. I don't suppose<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a> you meant to be inconsiderate, Mr. Touchwood. I
+don't accuse you of deliberate callousness. Please do not suppose that I
+am suggesting that the least cruelty in your behavior; but you <i>have</i>
+overworked her. Moreover, she has been worried. One or two of our
+friends have suggested more in joke than in earnest that she might be
+compromised by her association with you. No doubt this was said in joke,
+but Doris lacks her mother's sense of humor, and I'm afraid she has
+fretted over this. Still, a stitch in time saves nine, and her illness
+must serve as an excuse for what with a curiously youthful
+self-importance she calls 'leaving you in the lurch.' As I said to her,
+'Do not, my dear child, worry about Mr. Touchwood. He can find as many
+secretaries as he wants. Probably he thought he was doing you a good
+turn, and you've overstrained yourself in trying to cope with duties to
+which you have not been accustomed. You cannot expect to fly before you
+can walk.'"</p>
+
+<p>The old lady paused to fan back her breath, and John seized the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Miss Hamilton herself wish to leave me like this, or is it only
+you who think that she ought to leave me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will be frank with you," the old lady panted. "Doris has not yet made
+up her mind."</p>
+
+<p>"As long as she is allowed to make up her own mind," said John, "I have
+nothing to say. But I hope you are not going to overpersuade her. After
+all she is old enough to know what she wants to do."</p>
+
+<p>"She is not as old as her mother."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Could I see her?"</p>
+
+<p>"See her?" the old lady answered in amazement. "See her, Mr. Touchwood?
+Didn't I explain that she was in bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon. I'd forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>"Men are apt to forget somewhat easily. Come, come, do not let us get
+bitter. I took a great fancy to you when I met you first, and though I
+have been a little disappointed<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> by the way in which you have taken
+advantage of Doris's eagerness for new experiences I don't really bear
+you any deep grudge. I don't believe you meant to be selfish. It is only
+a mother who can pierce a daughter's motives. You with your recent loss
+should be able to appreciate that particularly now. Poor Doris! I wish
+she were more like me."</p>
+
+<p>"If you really think I have overworked her," said John, "I'm extremely
+sorry. I dare say her enthusiasm carried me away. But I cannot
+relinquish her services without a struggle. She has been, and she <i>is</i>
+invaluable," he added, warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but we must think of her health. I'm sorry to seem so
+<i>intransigente</i>, but I am only thinking of her."</p>
+
+<p>John was not at all taken in by the old lady's altruism, but he was
+entirely at a loss how to argue in favor of her daughter's continuing to
+work for him. His perplexity was increased by the fact that she herself
+had written to express her doubtfulness about returning; it might
+conceivably be that she did not want to return and that he was
+misjudging Mrs. Hamilton's sincerity. Yet when he looked at the old lady
+he could not discover anything but a cold egotism in every fold of those
+flabby cheeks where the powder lay like drifted snow in the ruts of a
+sunless lane. It was surely impossible that Doris should willingly have
+surrendered the liberty she enjoyed with him; she must have written
+under the depressing effects of influenza.</p>
+
+<p>While John was pondering his line of action Mrs. Hamilton had fanned
+herself into a renewed volubility; finding that it was impossible to
+cross the torrent of words that she was now pouring forth, he sat down
+by the edge of it, confused and deafened, and sometimes gasping a faint
+protest when he was splashed by some particularly outrageous argument.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll write to her," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg you will do nothing of the kind. In the present feeble state of
+her health a letter will only agitate her. I hope to persuade her to
+come with me to Glencockie where<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a> her uncle will, I know, once more
+suggest adopting her as his heiress...."</p>
+
+<p>The old lady flowed on with schemes for the future of Doris in which
+there was so much talk of Scotland that in the end his secretary
+appeared to John like an advertisement for whisky. He saw her
+rosy-cheeked and tam-o-shantered, smiling beneath a fir-tree while
+mockingly she quaffed a glass to the health of her late employer. He saw
+her as a kind of cross between Flora Macdonald and Highland Mary by the
+banks of Loch Lomond. He saw her in every guise except that in which he
+desired to see her&mdash;bending with that elusive and ironical smile over
+the typewriter they had purchased together. Damn!</p>
+
+<p>John made hurried adieus and fled to his taxi from the little house in
+Camera Square. The interview with Mrs. Hamilton had cost him
+half-a-crown and his peace of mind: it had cost the driver one halfpenny
+for the early edition of the <i>Star</i>. How much happier was the life of a
+taxi-driver than the life of a playwright!</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't say as how Benedictine mightn't win at Kempton this
+afternoon," the driver observed to John when he alighted. "I reckon I'll
+have half-a-dollar on, any old way. It's Bolmondeley's horse and bound
+to run straight."</p>
+
+<p>Benedictine did win that afternoon at six to one: indubitably the life
+of a taxi-driver was superior to his own, John thought as he turned with
+a shudder from the virgin foolscap upon his writing-desk and with a late
+edition of the <i>Star</i> sank into a deep armchair.</p>
+
+<p>"A bachelor's life is a very lonely one," he sighed. For some reason
+Maud had neglected to draw the curtains after tea, and the black yawning
+window where the rain glistened drearily weighed upon his heart with a
+sense of utter abandonment. Ordinarily he would have rung the bell and
+pointed reproachfully to the omission; but this afternoon, he felt
+incapable of stirring from his chair to ring a bell. He could not even
+muster enough energy to poke the fire, which would soon show as little
+life as himself. He listened vainly<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a> for the footsteps of Maud or Mrs.
+Worfolk that he might call out and be rescued from this lethargy of
+despair; but not a sound was audible except the dripping rain outside
+and the consumptive coughs of the moribund fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I'm feeling my mother's death," said John, hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>He made an effort to concentrate his mind upon an affectionate
+retrospect of family life. He tried to convince himself that the death
+of his mother would involve a change in the attitude of his relations.
+Technically he might not be the eldest son, and while his mother had
+been alive he had never assumed too definitely the rights of an eldest
+son. Practically, however, that was his status, and his acquisition of
+the family portraits and family silver could well be taken as the
+visible sign of that status; with his mother's death he might surely
+consider himself in the eyes of the world the head of the family. Did he
+want such an honor? It would be an expensive, troublesome, and
+ungrateful post like the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. Why didn't Maud
+come and draw those curtains? A thankless job, and it would be more
+congenial to have a family of his own. That meant marriage. And why
+shouldn't he get married? Several palmists had assured him he would be
+married one day: most of them indeed had assured him he was married
+already.</p>
+
+<p>"If I get married I can no longer be expected to bother about my
+relations. Of course in that case I should give back the portraits and
+the silver. My son would be junior to Bertram. My son would occupy an
+altogether inconspicuous position in the family, though he would always
+take precedence of Harold. But if my son had a child, Harold would
+become an uncle. No, he wouldn't. Harold would be a first cousin once
+removed. Harold cannot become an uncle unless Hilda marries again and
+has another child who has another child. Luckily, it's all very
+improbable. I'm glad Harold is never likely to be an uncle: he would
+bring the relationship into an even greater disrepute. Still, even now
+an uncle is disreputable enough.<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a> The wicked uncle! It's proverbial, of
+course. We never hear of the wicked cousin or the nefarious aunt. No,
+uncles share with stepmothers the opprobrium and with mothers-in-law the
+ridicule of the mob. Unquestionably, if I do marry, I shall still be an
+uncle, but the status may perhaps be merged in paternity. Suppose I
+marry and never have any children? My wife will be pitied by Hilda,
+Edith, and Eleanor and condoled with by Beatrice. She would find her
+position intolerable. My wife? I wish to goodness Maud would come in and
+draw those curtains. My wife? That's the question. At this stage the
+problem of her personality is more important than theoretical
+speculation about future children. Should I enjoy a woman's bobbing in
+and out of my room all the time? Suppose I were married at this moment,
+it would be my wife's duty to correct Maud for not having drawn those
+curtains. If I were married at this moment I should say, 'My dear, Maud
+does not seem to have drawn the curtains. I wonder why.' And my wife
+would of course ring the bell and remonstrate with Maud. But suppose my
+wife were upstairs? She might be trying on a new hat. Apparently wives
+spend a great deal of time with hats. In that case I should be no better
+off than I am at present. I should still have to get out of this chair
+and ring for Maud. And I should have to complain twice over. Once to
+Maud herself and afterwards all over again to my wife about Maud. Then
+my wife would have to rebuke Maud. Oh, it would be a terribly
+complicated business. Perhaps I'm better off as a bachelor. It's an odd
+thing that with my pictorial temperament I should never yet have
+visualized myself as a husband. My imagination is quite untrammeled in
+most directions. Were I to decide to-morrow that I would write a play
+about Adam and Eve, I should see myself as Adam and Eve and the Serpent
+and almost as the Forbidden Fruit itself without any difficulty. Why
+can't I see myself as a husband? When I think of the number of people
+and things I've been in imagination it really does seem extraordinary I
+should never have thought<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a> of being a husband. Apparently Maud has
+completely forgotten about the curtains. It looks as if I should have to
+give up all hope now of her coming in to draw them of her own accord.
+Poor Miss Hamilton! I do trust that horrible old clown of a mother isn't
+turning somersaults round her room at this moment and sending up her
+temperature to three figures. Of course, she must come back to me. She
+is indispensable. I miss her very much. I've accustomed myself to a
+secretary's assistance, and naturally I'm lost without her. These morbid
+thoughts about matrimony are due to my not having done a stroke of work
+all day. I will count seventeen and rise from this chair."</p>
+
+<p>John counted seventeen, but when he came to the fatal number he found
+that his will to move was still paralyzed, and he went on to
+forty-nine&mdash;the next fatal number in his private cabbala. When he
+reached it he tightened every nerve in his body and leapt to his feet.
+Inertia was succeeded by the bustle of activity: he rang for Maud; he
+poked the fire; he brushed the tobacco-ash from his waistcoat; he blew
+his nose; he sat down at his desk.</p>
+
+<p>My dear Miss Hamilton, [he wrote,] I cannot say how distressed I was to
+hear the news of your illness and still more to learn from your mother
+that you were seriously thinking of resigning your post. I'm also
+extremely distressed to hear from her that there are symptoms of
+overwork. If I've been inconsiderate I must beg your forgiveness and ask
+you to attribute it to your own good-will. The fact is your example has
+inspired me. With your encouragement I undoubtedly do work much harder
+than formerly. Today, without you, I have not written a single word, and
+I feel dreadfully depressed at the prospect of your desertion. Do let me
+plead for your services when you are well again, at any rate until I've
+finished Joan of Arc, for I really don't think I shall ever finish that
+play without them. I have felt the death of my poor mother very much,
+but I do not ascribe my present disinclination for work to that. No, on
+the contrary,<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a> I came back from the funeral with a determination to bury
+myself&mdash;that might be expressed better&mdash;to plunge myself into hard work.
+Your note telling me of your illness was a great shock, and your
+mother's uncompromising attitude this morning has added to my dejection.
+I feel that I am growing old and view with horror the approach of age.
+I've been sitting by the fire indulging myself in very morbid thoughts.
+You will laugh when I tell you that amongst them was the idea&mdash;I might
+call it the chimera of marriage. Do please get well soon and rescue me
+from myself.</p>
+
+<p class="r">Yours very sincerely,<br />
+J<small>OHN</small> T<small>OUCHWOOD</small>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>I do not, of course, wish to disturb the relationship between yourself
+and your mother, but my own recent loss has reminded me that mothers do
+not live forever.<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">J</span><b>OHN</b> waited in considerable anxiety for Miss Hamilton's reply to his
+letter, and when a few days later she answered his appeal in person by
+presenting herself for work as usual he could not express in words the
+intensity of his satisfaction, but could only prance round her as if he
+had been a dumb domestic animal instead of a celebrated romantic
+playwright.</p>
+
+<p>"And what have you done since I've been away?" she asked, without
+alluding to her illness or to her mother or to her threat of being
+obliged to leave him.</p>
+
+<p>John looked abashed.</p>
+
+<p>"Not very much, I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"How much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to be quite honest, nothing at all"</p>
+
+<p>She referred sympathetically to the death of Mrs. Touchwood, and,
+without the ghost of a blush, he availed himself of that excuse for
+idleness.</p>
+
+<p>"But now you're back," he added, "I'm going to work harder than ever.
+Oh, but I forgot. I mustn't overwork you."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," said Miss Hamilton, sharply. "I don't think the amount you
+write every day will ever do me much harm."</p>
+
+<p>John busied himself with paper, pens, ink, and notebooks, and was soon
+as deep in the fourth act as if there had never been an intermission.
+For a month he worked in perfect tranquillity, and went so far as to
+calculate that if Miss Hamilton was willing to remain forever in his
+employ there was no reason why he should not produce three plays a year
+until he was seventy. Then one morning in mid-February Mr. Ricketts
+arrived in a state of perturbation to say that he had been unable to
+obtain any reply to several letters<a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a> and telegrams informing Hugh when
+their steamer would leave. Now here they were with only a day before
+departure, and he was still without news of the young man. John looked
+guilty. The fact was that he had decided not to open any letters from
+his relations throughout this month, alleging to himself the
+interruption they caused to his work and trusting to the old
+superstition that if left unanswered long enough all letters, even the
+most disagreeable, answered themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"I was wondering why your correspondence had dwindled so," said Miss
+Hamilton, severely.</p>
+
+<p>"But that is no excuse for my brother," John declared. "Because I don't
+write to him, that is no reason why he shouldn't write to Mr. Ricketts."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we're off to-morrow," said the mahogany-planter.</p>
+
+<p>An indignant telegram was sent to Hugh; but the prepaid answer came back
+from Hilda to say that he had gone off with a friend a fortnight ago
+without leaving any address. Mr. Ricketts, who had been telephoned for
+in the morning, arrived about noon in a taxi loaded with exotic luggage.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't wait," he assured John. "The lad must come on by the next boat.
+I shan't go up country for a week or so. Good-by, Mr. Touchwood; I'm
+sorry not to have your brother's company. I was going to put him wise to
+the job on the trip across."</p>
+
+<p>"But look here, can't you...." John began, despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't wait. I shall miss the boat. West India Docks," he shouted to the
+driver, "and stop at the last decent pub in the city on the way
+through."</p>
+
+<p>The taxi buzzed off.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later Hugh appeared at Church Row, mentioned casually that he
+was sorry he had missed the boat, but that he had been doing a little
+architectural job for a friend of his.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good bridge," he commented, approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Over what?" John demanded.<a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Over very good whisky," said Hugh. "It was up in the North. Capital
+fun. I was designing a smoking-room for a man I know who's just come
+into money. I've had a ripping time. Good hands every evening and a very
+decent fee. In fact, I don't see why I shouldn't start an office of my
+own."</p>
+
+<p>"And what about mahogany?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, I never liked that idea of yours, Johnnie. Everybody agrees
+that British Honduras is a rotten climate, and if you want to help me,
+you can help me much more effectively by setting me up on my own as an
+architect."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want to help you. I've invested £2,000 in mahogany and
+logwood, and I insist on getting as much interest on my money as your
+absence from England will bring me in."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's all very well, old chap. But why do you want me to leave
+England?"</p>
+
+<p>John embarked upon a justification of his attitude, in the course of
+which he pointed out the dangers of idleness, reminded Hugh of the
+forgery, tried to inspire him with hopes of independence, hinted at
+moral obligations, and rhapsodized about colonial enterprise. As a
+mountain of forensic art the speech was wonderful: clothed on the lower
+slopes with a rich and varied vegetation of example and precept, it
+gradually ascended to the hard rocks of necessity, honor, and duty until
+it culminated in a peak of snow where John's singleness of motive
+glittered immaculately and inviolably to heaven. It was therefore
+discouraging for the orator when he paused and walked slowly up stage to
+give the culprit an opportunity to make a suitably penitent reply, after
+which the curtain was to come down upon a final outburst of magnanimous
+eloquence from himself, that Hugh should merely growl the contemptuous
+monosyllable "rot."</p>
+
+<p>"Rot?" repeated John in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Rot. I'm not going to reason with you...."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, indeed?" John interrupted, sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>"Because reason would be lost on you. I simply repeat 'Rot!' If I don't
+want to go to British Honduras, I won't<a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a> go. Why, to hear you talk
+anybody would suppose that I hadn't had the same opportunities as
+yourself. If you chose to blur your intelligence by writing romantic
+tushery, you must remember that by doing so you yielded to temptation
+just as much as I did when I forged Stevie's name. Do you think I would
+write plays like yours? Never!" he proclaimed, proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that the conversation is indeed going outside the limits
+of reason," said John, trying hard to restrain himself.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear old chap, it has never been inside the limits. No, no, you
+collared me when I was down over that check. Well, here's what you paid
+to get me out of the mess." He threw a bundle of notes on the table. "So
+long, Johnnie, and don't be too resentful of my having demonstrated that
+when I <i>am</i> left for a while on my own I can earn money as well as you.
+I'm going to stay in town for a bit before I go North again, so I shall
+see you from time to time. By the way, you might send me the receipt to
+Carlington Road. I'm staying with Aubrey as usual."</p>
+
+<p>When his brother had gone, John counted the notes in a stupor. It would
+be too much to say that he was annoyed at being paid back; but he was
+not sufficiently pleased to mention the fact to Miss Hamilton for two
+days.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am so glad," she exclaimed when at last he did bring himself to
+tell her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's very encouraging," John agreed, doubtfully. "I'm still
+suffering slightly from the shock, which has been a very novel
+sensation. To be perfectly honest, I never realized before how much less
+satisfactory it is to be paid back than one thinks beforehand it is
+going to be."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the disturbing effect of Hugh's honesty, John soon settled
+down again to the play, and became so much wrapped up in its daily
+progress that one afternoon he was able without a tremor to deny
+admittance to Laurence, who having written to warn him that he was
+taking advantage of a further reduction in the price on day-tickets, had
+paid another<a name="page_308" id="page_308"></a> visit to London. Laurence took with ill grace his
+brother-in-law's message that he was too busy on his own work to talk
+about anybody's else at present.</p>
+
+<p>"I confess I was pained," he wrote from Ambles on John's own note-paper,
+"by the harsh reception of my friendly little visit. I confess that
+Edith and I had hoped you would welcome the accession of a relative to
+the ranks of contemporary playwrights. We feel that in the circumstances
+we cannot stay any longer in your house. Indeed, Edith is even as I pen
+these lines packing Frida's little trunk. She is being very brave, but
+her tear-stained face tells its own tale, and I confess that I myself am
+writing with a heavy heart. Eleanor has been most kind, and in addition
+to giving me several more introductions to her thespian friends has
+arranged with the proprietress of Halma House for a large double room
+with dressing-room attached on terms which I can only describe as
+absurdly moderate. Do not think we are angry. We are only pained,
+bitterly pained that our happy family life should suddenly collapse like
+this. However, excelsior, as the poet said, or as another poet even
+greater said, 'sic itur ad astra.' You will perhaps be able to spare a
+moment from the absorption of your own affairs to read with a fleeting
+interest that Sir Percy Mortimer has offered me the part of the butler
+in a comedy of modern manners which he hopes to stage&mdash;you see I am
+already up to the hilt in the jargon of the profession&mdash;next autumn.
+Eleanor considers this to be an excellent opening, as indeed so do I.
+Edith and little Frida laugh heartily when they are not too sad for such
+simple fun when I enter the room and assume the characteristic
+mannerisms of a butler. All agree I have a natural propensity for droll
+impersonation. Who knows? I may make a great hit, although Sir Percy
+warns me that the part is but a slight one. Eleanor, however, reminds me
+that deportment is always an asset for an actor. Have I not read
+somewhere that the great Edmund Kean did not disdain to play the tail
+end of a dragon erstwhile? I wish you all good luck in your own work, my
+dear John. People are<a name="page_309" id="page_309"></a> interested when they hear you are my
+brother-in-law, and I have told them many tales of the way you are wont
+to consult me over the little technical details of religion in which I
+as a former clergyman have been able to afford you my humble
+assistance."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pompous ass the man is," said John to his secretary. He had read
+her the letter, which made her laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you're really quite annoyed that <i>he's</i> showing an
+independent spirit now."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I'm delighted to be rid of him," John contradicted. "I
+suppose he'll share George's aquarium at Halma House."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mind my laughing? Because it is very funny, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's funny in a way," John admitted. "But even if it weren't, I
+shouldn't mind your laughing. You have, if I may say so, a peculiarly
+musical laugh."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to have Joan's scaffold right center or left center?" she
+asked, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? What? Oh, put it where you like. By the way, has your mother been
+girding at you lately?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"She isn't yet reconciled to my being a secretary, if that's what you
+mean."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," John murmured. "Confound all relations!" he burst out. "I
+suppose she'd object to your going to France with me to finish off the
+play?"</p>
+
+<p>"She would object violently. But you mustn't forget that I've a will of
+my own."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you have," said John, admiringly. "And you will go, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see&mdash;I won't promise. Look here, Mr. Touchwood, I don't want to
+seem&mdash;what shall I call it&mdash;timid, but if I did go to France with you, I
+suppose you realize my mother would make such a fuss about it that
+people would end by really talking? Forgive my putting such an
+unpleasant idea into your innocent head; being your confidential
+secretary, I<a name="page_310" id="page_310"></a> feel I oughtn't to let you run any risks. I don't suppose
+you care a bit how much people talk, and I'm sure I don't; at the same
+time I shouldn't like you to turn round on me and say I ought to have
+warned you."</p>
+
+<p>"Talk!" John exclaimed. "The idea is preposterous. Talk! Good gracious
+me, can't I take my secretary abroad without bring accused of ulterior
+motives?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, don't work yourself into a state of wrath, or you won't be able to
+think of this terribly important last scene. Anyway, we sha'n't be going
+to France yet, and we can discuss the project more fully when the time
+comes."</p>
+
+<p>John thought vaguely how well Miss Hamilton knew how to keep him
+unruffled, and with a grateful look&mdash;or what was meant to be a grateful
+look, though she blushed unaccountably when he gave it&mdash;he concentrated
+upon the site of his heroine's scaffold.</p>
+
+<p>During March the weather was so bright and exhilarating that John and
+his secretary took many walks together on Hampstead Heath; they also
+often went to town, and John derived much pleasure from discussing
+various business affairs with her clerical support; he found that it
+helped considerably when dealing with the manager of a film company to
+be able to say "Will you make a note of that, please, Miss Hamilton?"
+The only place, in fact, to which John did not take her was his club,
+and that was only because he was not allowed to introduce ladies there.</p>
+
+<p>"A rather mediæval restriction," he observed one day to a group
+assembled in the smoking-room.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a time, Touchwood, when you used to take refuge here from
+your leading ladies," a bachelor member chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"But nowadays Touchwood has followed Adam with the rest of us," put in
+another.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" said John, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>There was a general burst of merriment and headshaking and wagging of
+fingers, from which and a succession of almost ribald comment John began
+to wonder if his private<a name="page_311" id="page_311"></a> life was beginning to be a subject for club
+gossip. He managed to prevent himself from saying that he thought such
+chaff in bad taste, because he did not wish to give point to it by
+taking it too much in earnest. Nevertheless, he was seriously annoyed
+and avoided the smoking-room for a week.</p>
+
+<p>One night, after the first performance of a friend's play, he turned in
+to the club for supper, and, being disinclined for sleep, because
+although it was a friend's play it had been a tremendous success, which
+always made him feel anxious about his own future he lingered on until
+the smoking-room was nearly deserted. Towards three o'clock he was
+sitting pensively in a quiet corner when he heard his name mentioned by
+two members, who had taken seats close by without perceiving his
+presence. They were both strangers to him, and he was about to rise from
+his chair and walk severely out of the room, when he heard one say to
+the other:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they tell me his brother-in-law writes his plays for him."</p>
+
+<p>John found this so delightfully diverting an idea that he could not
+resist keeping quiet to hear more.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't believe that," said the second unknown member.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact, I assure you. I was told so by a man who knows Eleanor
+Cartright."</p>
+
+<p>"The actress?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she's a sister-in-law of his."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, I never knew that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes. Well, this man met her with a fellow called Armitage, an
+ex-monk who broke his vows in order to marry Touchwood's sister."</p>
+
+<p>John pressed himself deeper into his armchair.</p>
+
+<p>"Really? But I never knew monks could marry," objected number two.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, he broke his vows."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see," murmured number two, who was evidently no wiser, but was
+anxious to appear so.<a name="page_312" id="page_312"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, it seems that this fellow Armitage is a thundering fine poet, but
+without much experience of the stage. Of course, he wouldn't have had
+much as a monk."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," agreed number two, decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>"So, what does Johnnie Touchwood do&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Damned impudence calling me Johnnie," thought the subject of the
+duologue.</p>
+
+<p>"But make a contract with his brother-in-law to stay out of the way down
+in Devonshire or Dorsetshire&mdash;I forget which&mdash;but, anyway, down in the
+depths of the country somewhere, and write all the best speeches in old
+Johnnie's plays. Now, it seems there's been a family row, and they tell
+me that Armitage is going to sue Johnnie."</p>
+
+<p>"What was the row about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, apparently Johnnie is a bit close. Most of these successful
+writers are, of course," said number one with the nod of an expert.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," agreed his companion, with an air of equally profound
+comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"And took advantage of his position as the fellow with money to lord it
+over the rest of his family. There's another brother&mdash;an awful clever
+beggar&mdash;James, I think his name is&mdash;a real first-class scientist,
+original research man and all that, who's spent the whole of his fortune
+on some great discovery or other. Well, will you believe it, but the
+other day when he was absolutely starving, Johnnie Touchwood offered to
+lend him some trifling sum if he would break the entail."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know the Touchwoods were landed proprietors. I always
+understood the father was a dentist," said number two.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, no. Very old family. Wonderful old house down in Devonshire or
+Dorset&mdash;I wish I could remember just where it is. Anyway, it seems that
+the eldest brother clung on to this like anything. Of course, he would."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," number two agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"But Johnnie, who's hard as flint, insisted on breaking<a
+name="page_313" id="page_313"></a> the entail in his own favor, and now I
+hear he's practically turned the whole family into the street, including
+James' boy, who in the ordinary course of events would have inherited."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Eleanor Cartright tell your friend this?" asked number two.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, I've heard that from lots of people. It seems that old Mrs.
+Touchwood died of grief over the way Johnnie carried on. It's really a
+very grim story when you hear the details; unfortunately, I can't
+remember all of them. My memory's getting awfully bad nowadays."</p>
+
+<p>Number two muttered an expression of sympathy, and the other continued:</p>
+
+<p>"But one detail I do remember is that another brother&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a large family, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very large. As I was saying, the old lady was terribly upset not
+only about breaking the entail, but also over her youngest son, who had
+some incurable disease. It seems that he was forced by Johnnie to go out
+to the Gold Coast&mdash;I think it was&mdash;in order to see about some money that
+Johnnie had invested in rubber or something. As I say, I can't remember
+the exact details. However, cherchez la femme, I needn't add the reasons
+for all this."</p>
+
+<p>"A woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said number one. "Some people say it's a married woman, and
+others say it's a young girl of sixteen. Anyway, Johnnie's completely
+lost his head over her, and they tell me...."</p>
+
+<p>The two members put their heads together so that John could not hear
+what was said: but it must have been pretty bad, because when they put
+them apart again number two was clicking his tongue in shocked
+amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, that will cause a terrific scandal, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>John decided he had heard enough. Assuming an expression of intense
+superiority, the sort of expression a man might assume who was standing
+on the top of Mount Everest, he rose from his chair, eyed the two
+gossips with disdain,<a name="page_314" id="page_314"></a> and strode out of the smoking-room. Just as he
+reached the door, he heard number one exclaim:</p>
+
+<p>"Hulloa, see who that was? That was old Percy Mortimer."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course," said number two, as sapiently as ever, "I didn't
+recognize him for a moment. He's beginning to show his age, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>On the way back to Hampstead John tried to assure himself that the
+conversation he had just overheard did not represent anything more
+important than the vaporings of an exceptionally idiotic pair of men
+about town; but the more he meditated upon the tales about himself
+evidently now in general circulation, the more he was appalled at the
+recklessness of calumny.</p>
+
+<p>"One has joked about it. One has laughed at Sheridan's <i>School for
+Scandal</i>. One has admitted that human beings are capable of almost
+incredible exaggeration. But&mdash;no, really this is too much. I've gossiped
+sometimes myself about my friends, but never like that about a
+stranger&mdash;a man in the public eye."</p>
+
+<p>John nearly stopped the taxi to ask the driver if <i>he</i> had heard any
+stories about John Touchwood; but he decided it would not be wise to run
+risk of discovery that he enjoyed less publicity than he was beginning
+to imagine, and he kept his indignation to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, it is a sign of&mdash;well, yes, I think it might fairly be
+called fame&mdash;a sign of fame to be talked about like that by a couple of
+ignorant chatterboxes. It is, I suppose, a tribute to my position. But
+Laurence! That's what annoyed me most. Laurence to be the author of my
+plays! I begin to understand this ridiculous Bacon and Shakespeare
+legend now. The rest of the gossip was malicious, but that was&mdash;really,
+I think it was actionable. I shall take it up with the committee. The
+idea of that pompous nincompoop writing Lucretia's soliloquy before she
+poisons her lips! Laurence! Good heavens! And fancy Laurence writing
+Nebuchadnezzar's meditation upon grass! By Jove, an<a name="page_315" id="page_315"></a> audience would have
+some cause to titter then! And Laurence writing Joan's defense to the
+Bishop of Beauvais! Why, the bombastic pedant couldn't even write a
+satisfactory letter to the Bishop of Silchester to keep himself from
+being ignominiously chucked out of his living."</p>
+
+<p>The infuriated author bounced up and down on the cushions of the taxi in
+his rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I give you an arm up the steps, sir?" the driver offered,
+genially, when John, having alighted at his front door, had excessively
+overpaid him under the impression from which he was still smarting of
+being called a skinflint.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon, sir. I thought you was a little bit tiddly. You seemed a
+bit lively inside on the way up."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose the next thing is that I shall get the reputation of being a
+dipsomaniac," said John to himself, as he flung open his door and
+marched immediately, with a slightly accentuated rigidity of bearing,
+upstairs to bed.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not sleep. The legend of his behavior that was obviously
+common gossip in London oppressed him with its injustice. Every
+accusation took on a new and fantastic form, while he turned over and
+over in an attempt to reach oblivion. He began to worry now more about
+what had been implied in his association with Miss Hamilton than about
+the other stories. He felt that it would only be a very short time
+before she would hear of the tale in some monstrous shape and leave him
+forever in righteous disgust. Ought he, indeed, to make her aware
+to-morrow morning of what was being suggested? And even if he did not
+say anything about the past, ought he to compromise her more deeply in
+the future?</p>
+
+<p>It was six o'clock before John fell asleep, and it was with a violent
+headache that he faced his secretary after breakfast. Luckily there was
+a letter from Janet Bond asking him to come and see her that morning
+upon a matter of importance. He seized the excuse to postpone any
+discussion of last night's revelation, and, telling Miss Hamilton he<a
+name="page_316" id="page_316"></a> should be back for lunch, he decided to
+walk down to the Parthenon Theater in the hope of arriving there with a
+clearer and saner view of life. He nearly told her to go home; but,
+reflecting that he might come back in quite a different mood, he asked
+her instead to occupy herself with the collation of some scattered notes
+upon Joan of Arc that were not yet incorporated into the scheme of the
+play. He remembered, too, that it would be his birthday in three days'
+time, and he asked her to send out notes of invitation to his family for
+the annual celebration, at which the various members liked to delude
+themselves with the idea that by presenting him with a number of useless
+accessories to the smoking-table they were repaying him in full for all
+his kindness. He determined that his birthday speech on this occasion
+should be made the vehicle for administering a stern rebuke to malicious
+gossip. He would dam once for all this muddy stream of scandal, and he
+would make Laurence write a letter to the press disclaiming the
+authorship of his plays. Burning with reformative zeal and fast losing
+his headache, John swung down Fitzjohn's Avenue in the spangled March
+sunlight to the wicked city below.</p>
+
+<p>The Parthenon Theater had for its acropolis the heights of the Adelphi,
+where, viewed from the embankment gardens below, it seemed to be looking
+condescendingly down upon the efforts of the London County Council to
+intellectualize the musical taste of the generation. In the lobby&mdash;it
+had been called the propylæum until it was found that such a long name
+had discouraged the public from booking seats beforehand through fear of
+mispronunciation&mdash;a bust of Janet Bond represented the famous statue
+Pallas Athene on the original acropolis, and the programme-girls,
+dressed as caryatides, supplied another charming touch of antiquity. The
+proprietress herself was the outstanding instance in modern times of the
+exploitation of virginity&mdash;it must have been a very profitable
+exploitation, because the Parthenon Theater itself had been built and
+paid for by her unsuccessful admirers. Each year made Janet Bond's
+position as<a name="page_317" id="page_317"></a> virgin and actress more secure, and at the rate her
+reputation was growing it was probable that she would soon be at liberty
+to produce the most immodest plays. At present, however, she still
+applied the same standard of her conduct to her plays as to herself. Nor
+did she confine herself to that. She was also very strict about the
+private lives of her performers, and many a young actress had been seen
+to leave the stage door in tears because Miss Bond had observed her in
+unsuitable company at supper. Mothers wrote from all over England to beg
+Miss Bond to charge herself with the care of their stage-struck
+daughters; the result was a conventional tone among the supernumeraries
+slightly flavored with militant suffragism and the higher mathematics.
+Nor was art neglected; indeed some critics hinted that in the Parthenon
+Theater art was cultivated at the expense of life, though none of them
+attempted to gainsay that Miss Bond had learned how to make virtue pay
+without selling it.</p>
+
+<p>In appearance the great tragedienne was somewhat rounder in outline than
+might have been expected, and more matronly than virginal, perhaps
+because she was in her own words a mother to all her girls. Her voice
+was rich and deep with as much variety as a cunningly sounded gong. She
+never made up for the stage, and she wore hygienic corsets: this
+intimate fact was allowed to escape through the indiscretion of a
+widespread advertisement, but its publication helped her reputation for
+decorum, and clergymen who read their wives' <i>Queen</i> or <i>Lady</i> commented
+favorably on the contrast between Miss Bond and the numerous
+open-mouthed actresses who preferred to advertise toothpaste. England
+was proud of Miss Bond, feeling that America had no longer any right to
+vaunt a monopoly of virtuous actresses; and John, when he rang the bell
+of Miss Bond's flat that existed cleverly in the roof of the theater,
+was proud of his association with her. He did not have to wait long in
+her austere study; indeed he had barely time to admire the fluted calyx
+of a white trumpet daffodil that in chaste symbolism was the<a
+name="page_318" id="page_318"></a> only occupant of a blue china bowl before
+Miss Bond herself came in.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so hating what I'm going to have to say to you," she boomed.</p>
+
+<p>This was a jolly way to begin an interview, John thought, especially in
+his present mood. He tried to look attentive, faintly surprised,
+dignified, and withal deferential; but, not being a great actor, he
+failed to express all these states of mind at a go, and only succeeded
+in dropping his gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"Hating it," the actress cried. "Oh, hating it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you'd rather postpone it," John began.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. It must be said now. It's just this!" She paused and fixed the
+author more intensely than a snake fixes a rabbit or a woman in a bus
+tries to see if the woman opposite has blacked her eyelashes. "Can I
+produce <i>Joan of Arc</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think that question is answered by our contract," replied John, who
+was used to leading ladies, and when they started like this always fell
+back at once in good order on business.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but what about my unwritten contract with the public?" she
+demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about that," said the author. Moreover, I don't
+see how an unwritten contract can interfere with our written contract."</p>
+
+<p>"John Touchwood, I'm going to be frank with you, fiercely frank. I can't
+afford to produce a play by you about a heroine like Joan of Arc unless
+you take steps to put things right."</p>
+
+<p>"If you want me to cut that scene...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not talking about scenes, John Touchwood. I'm talking about
+these terrible stories that everybody is whispering about you. I don't
+mind myself what you do. Good gracious me, I'm a broad-minded modern
+woman; but my public looks for something special at the Parthenon. The
+knowledge that I am going to play the Maid of Orleans has<a
+name="page_319" id="page_319"></a> moved them indescribably; I was fully
+prepared to give you the success of your career, but ... these stories!
+This girl! You know what people are saying? You must have heard. How can
+I put your name on my programme as the author of <i>Joan of Arc</i>? How can
+I, John Touchwood?"</p>
+
+<p>If John had not overheard that conversation at his club the night
+before, he would have supposed that Miss Bond had gone mad.</p>
+
+<p>"May I inquire exactly what you have heard about me and my private
+life?" he inquired, as judicially as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"Please spare me from repeating the stories. I can honestly assure you
+that I don't believe them. But you as a man of the world know very well
+how unimportant it is whether a story is true or not. If you were a
+writer of realistic drama, these stories, however bad they were,
+wouldn't matter. If your next play was going to be produced at the Court
+Theater, these stories would, if anything, be in favor of success ...
+but at the Parthenon...."</p>
+
+<p>"You are talking nonsense, Miss Bond," interrupted John, angrily. "You
+are more in a condition to play Ophelia than Joan of Arc. Moreover, you
+shan't play Joan of Arc now. I've really been regretting for some weeks
+now that you were going to play her, and I'm delighted to have this
+opportunity of preventing you from playing her. I don't know to what
+tittle-tattle you've been listening. I don't care. Your opinion of your
+own virtue may be completely justified, but your judgment of other
+people's is vulgar and&mdash;however, let me recommend you to produce a play
+by my brother-in-law, the Reverend Laurence Armitage. Even your
+insatiable ambition may be gratified by the part of the Virgin Mary, who
+is one of the chief characters. Good morning, Miss Bond. I shall
+communicate with you more precisely through my agent."</p>
+
+<p>John marched out of the theater, and on the pavement outside ran into
+Miss Ida Merritt.<a name="page_320" id="page_320"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you're a sensible woman," he spluttered, much to her astonishment.
+"For goodness' sake, come and have lunch with me, and let's talk over
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>John, in his relief at meeting Miss Merritt, had taken her arm in a
+cordial fashion, and steered her across the Strand to Romano's without
+waiting to choose a less conspicuously theatrical restaurant. Indeed in
+his anxiety to clear his reputation he forgot everything, and it was
+only when he saw various people at the little tables nudging one another
+and bobbing their heads together that he realized he was holding Miss
+Merritt's arm. He dropped it like a hot coal, and plunged down at a
+table marked "reserved." The head waiter hurried across to apprise him
+of the mistake, and John, who was by now horribly self-conscious,
+fancied that the slight incident had created a stir throughout the
+restaurant. No doubt it would be all over town by evening that he and
+his companion in guilt had been refused service at every restaurant in
+London.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," said John, when at last they were accommodated at a table
+painfully near the grill, the spitting and hissing from which seemed to
+symbolize the attitude of a hostile society. "Look here, what stories
+have you heard about me? You're a journalist. You write chatty
+paragraphs. For heaven's sake, tell me the worst."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I haven't heard anything that's printable," Miss Merritt assured
+him, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>John put his head between his hands and groaned; the waiter thought he
+was going to dip his hair into the hors d'&oelig;uvres and hurriedly
+removed the dishes.</p>
+
+<p>"No, seriously, I beg you to tell me if you've heard my name connected
+in any unpleasant way with Miss Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>"No, the only thing I've heard about Doris is that your brother, Hugh,
+is always pestering her with his attentions."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" John shouted.</p>
+
+<p>"Coming, sir," cried the waiter, skipping round the table like a
+monkey.<a name="page_321" id="page_321"></a></p>
+
+<p>John waved him away, and begged Miss Merritt to be more explicit.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't she complain to me?" he asked when he had heard her story.</p>
+
+<p>"She probably thought she could look after herself. Besides, wasn't he
+going to British Guiana?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was," replied John. "At least he was going to some tropical colony.
+I've heard so many mentioned that I'm beginning myself to forget which
+it was now. So that's why he didn't go. But he shall go. If I have to
+have him kidnaped and spend all my savings on chartering a private yacht
+for the purpose, by Heaven, he shall go. If he shrivels up like a burnt
+sausage the moment he puts his foot on the beach he shall be left there
+to shrivel. The rascal! When does he pester her? Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't get so excited. Doris is perfectly capable of looking after
+herself. Besides, I think she rather likes him in a way."</p>
+
+<p>"Never," John cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Liver is finished, sair," said the officious waiter, dancing in again
+between John and Miss Merritt.</p>
+
+<p>John shook his fist at him and leant earnestly over the table with one
+elbow in the butter.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't seriously suggest that she is in love with him?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think so. But I met him myself once and took rather a fancy
+to him. No, she just likes him as a friend. It's he who's in love with
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Under my very eyes," John ejaculated. "Why, it's overwhelming."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden thought struck him that even at this moment while he was calmly
+eating lunch with Miss Merritt, as he somewhat loosely qualified the
+verb, Hugh might be making love to Miss Hamilton in his own house.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he cried, "have you nearly finished? Because I've suddenly
+remembered an important appointment at Hampstead."<a name="page_322" id="page_322"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I don't want any more," said Miss Merritt, obligingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Waiter, the bill! Quick! You don't mind if I rush off and leave you to
+finish your cheese alone?"</p>
+
+<p>His guest shook her head and John hurried out of the restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>No taxi he had traveled in had ever seemed so slow, and he kept putting
+his head out of the window to urge the driver to greater speed, until
+the man goaded to rudeness by John's exhortations and the trams in
+Tottenham Court Road asked if his fare thought he was a blinking bullet.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not bullying you. I'm only asking you to drive a little faster,"
+John shouted back.</p>
+
+<p>The driver threw his eyes heavenward in a gesture of despair for John's
+sanity but he was pacified at Church Row by half-a-sovereign and even
+went so far as to explain that he had not accused John of bullying him,
+but merely of confusing his capacity for speed with that of a bullet's.
+John thought he was asking for more money, gave him half-a-crown and
+waving his arm, half in benediction, half in protest, he hurried into
+the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"They've nearly finished lunch, sir," murmured Maud who was just coming
+from the dining-room. "Would you like Elsa to hot you up something?"</p>
+
+<p>John without a word pounced into the dining-room, where he caught Hugh
+with a stick of celery half-way to his mouth and Miss Hamilton with a
+glass of water half-way down from hers in the other direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so sorry we began without you," said the culprits
+simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p>John murmured something about a trying interview with Janet Bond, lit a
+cigar, realized it was rude to light cigars when people were still
+eating, threw the cigar away, and sat down with an appearance of
+exhaustion in one of those dining-room armchairs that stand and wait all
+their lives to serve a moment like this.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, but I must ask you to go off as soon as you've<a
+name="page_323" id="page_323"></a> finished your lunch, Hugh. I've a lot of
+important business to transact with Miss Hamilton."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I've finished already," she exclaimed, jumping up from the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first pleasant moment in John's day, and he smiled,
+gratefully. He felt he could even afford to be generous to this
+intrusive brother, and before he left the room with Miss Hamilton he
+invited him to have some more celery.</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll find a cigar in the sideboard," he added. "But Maud will
+look after you. Maud, look after Mr. Hugh, please, and if anybody calls
+this afternoon, I'm not at home."<a name="page_324" id="page_324"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="letra">J</span><b>OHN'S</b> first impulse had been to pour out in Miss Hamilton's ears the
+tale of his wrongs, and afterward, when he had sufficiently impressed
+her with the danger of the position in which the world was trying to
+place them, to ask her to marry him as the only way to escape from it.
+On second thoughts, he decided that she might be offended by the
+suggestion of having been compromised by him and that she might resent
+the notion of their marriage's being no more than a sop to public
+opinion. He therefore abandoned the idea of enlarging upon the scandal
+their association had apparently created and proposed to substitute the
+trite but always popular scene of the prosperous middle-aged man's
+renunciation of love and happiness in favor of a young and penurious
+rival. He recalled how many last acts in how many sentimental comedies
+had owed their success to this situation, which never failed with an
+audience. But then the average audience was middle-aged. Thinking of the
+many audiences on which from private boxes he had looked down, John was
+sure that bald heads always predominated in the auditorium; and
+naturally those bald heads had been only too ready to nod approval of a
+heroine who rejected the dashing jeune premier to fling herself into the
+arms of the elderly actor-manager. It was impossible to think of any
+infirmity severe enough to thwart an actor-manager. Yet a play was
+make-believe: in real life events would probably turn out quite
+differently. It would be very depressing, if he offered to make Doris
+and Hugh happy together by settling upon them a handsome income, to find
+Doris jumping at the prospect. Perhaps it would be more prudent not to
+suggest any possibility of a marriage between them. It might even be
+more prudent not to mention the subject of marriage at all.<a
+name="page_325" id="page_325"></a> John looked at his secretary with what
+surely must have been a very eloquent glance indeed, because she dropped
+her pencil, blushed, and took his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"How much simpler life is than art," John murmured. He would never have
+dared to allow one of his heroes in a moment of supreme emotion like
+this to crane his neck across a wide table in order to kiss the heroine.
+Any audience would have laughed at such an awkward gesture; yet, though
+he only managed to reach her lips with half an inch to spare, the kiss
+was not at all funny somehow. No, it ranked with Paolo's or Anthony's or
+any other famous lover's kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"And now of course I can't be your secretary any longer," she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Do you disapprove of wives' helping their husbands?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you really want to get married, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I'm absolutely dying to get married."</p>
+
+<p>"Truly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Doris, look at me."</p>
+
+<p>And surely she looked at him with more admiration than he had ever
+looked at himself in a glass.</p>
+
+<p>"What a time I shall have with mother," she gasped with the gurgling
+triumphant laugh of a child who has unexpectedly found the way to open
+the store-cupboard.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, you won't," John prophesied, confidently. "I'm not going to
+have such an excellent last scene spoilt by unnecessary talk. We'll get
+married first and tell everybody afterwards. I've lately discovered what
+an amazing capacity ordinary human nature has for invention. It really
+frightens me for the future of novelists, who I cannot believe will be
+wanted much longer. Oh no, Doris, I'm not going to run the risk of
+hearing any preliminary gossip about our marriage. Neither your mother
+nor my relations nor the general public are going to have any share in
+it before or after. In fact to be brief I propose to elope.
+Notwithstanding my romantic plays I have spent a private life of utter
+dullness. This is my last opportunity to do anything unusual. Please, my
+dearest<a name="page_326" id="page_326"></a> girl, let me experience the joys of an actual elopement before
+I relapse into eternal humdrummery."</p>
+
+<p>"A horrid description of marriage!" she protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Comparative humdrummery, I should have said, comparative, that is to
+say, with the excesses attributed to me by rumor. I've often wanted to
+write a play about Tiberius, and I feel well equipped to do so now. But
+I'm serious about the elopement. I really do want to avoid my relations'
+tongues."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you're afraid of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I am. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm in terror of them," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But where are we going to elope to?"</p>
+
+<p>John picked up the <i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"If only the <i>Murmania</i>," he began. "And by Jove, she will too," he
+cried. "Yes, she's due to sail from Liverpool on April 1st."</p>
+
+<p>"But that's your birthday," she objected.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly."</p>
+
+<p>"And I've already sent out those invitations."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. For some years my relations have made an April fool of me by
+dining at my expense on that day. I have two corner-cupboards
+overflowing with their gifts&mdash;the most remarkable exhibition of
+cheapness and ingenuity ever known. This year I am going to make April
+fools of them."</p>
+
+<p>"By marrying me?" she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course it's no use pretending that they'll be delighted by
+that joke, though I intend to play another still more elaborately
+unpleasant. At the back of all their minds exists one anxiety&mdash;the
+dispositions of my last will and testament. Very well. I am going to
+cure that worry forever by leaving them Ambles. I can't imagine anything
+more irritating than to be left a house in common with a number of
+people whom you hate. Oh, it's an exquisite revenge. Darling secretary,
+take down for dictation as your last task the following:</p>
+
+<p>"'I, John Touchwood, playwright, of 36 Church Row,<a name="page_327" id="page_327"></a> Hampstead, N.W., and
+Ambles, Wrottesford, Hants, do hereby will and bequeathe.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," she said. "Are you really making a will? or are
+you only playing a joke?"</p>
+
+<p>"Both."</p>
+
+<p>"But is this really to take effect when you're dead? Oh dear, I wish you
+wouldn't talk about death when I've just said I'll marry you."</p>
+
+<p>John paused thoughtfully:</p>
+
+<p>"It does seem rather a challenge to fate," he agreed. "I know what I'll
+do. I'll make over Ambles to them at once. After all, I am dead to them,
+for I'll never have anything more to do with any of them. Cross out what
+you took down. I'll alter the form. Begin as for a letter:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="nind">"'My dear relations,</p>
+
+<p>"'When you read this I shall be far away.' ... I think that's the
+correct formula?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds familiar from many books," she assured him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Far away on my honeymoon with Miss Doris Hamilton.' Perhaps that
+sounds a little ambiguous. Cross out the maiden name and substitute
+'with Mrs. John Touchwood, my former secretary. Since you have
+attributed to us every link except that of matrimony you will no
+doubt be glad of this opportunity to contradict the outrageous
+tales you have most of you' ... I say most of you," John explained,
+"because I don't really think the children started any scandal ...
+'you have most of you been at such pains to invent and circulate.
+Realizing that this announcement will come as a sad blow, I am
+going to soften it as far as I can by making you a present of my
+country house in Hampshire, and I am instructing my solicitors to
+effect the conveyance in due form. From now onwards therefore one
+fifth of Ambles will belong to James and Beatrice, one fifth to
+George, Eleanor, Bertram, and Viola, and one fifth to Hilda and
+Harold, one <a name="page_328" id="page_328"></a>fifth to Edith, Laurence, and Frida, and one fifth to
+Hugh.' ... I feel that Hugh is entitled to a proportionately larger
+share," he said with his eyes on the ceiling, "because I understand
+that I've robbed him of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Who on earth told you that?" she demanded, putting down her
+pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," said John, humming gayly his exultation. "Continue
+please, Miss Hamilton! 'I shall make no attempt to say which fifth
+of the house shall belong to whom. Possibly Laurence and Hilda will
+argue that out between them, and if any structural alterations are
+required no doubt Hugh will charge himself with them. The
+twenty-acre field is included in the gift, so that there will be
+plenty of ground for any alterations or extensions deemed necessary
+by the future owners.'"</p>
+
+<p>"How ridiculous you are ... John," she laughed. "It all sounds so
+absurdly practical&mdash;as if you really meant it."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear girl, I do mean it. Continue please, Miss Hamilton! 'I
+have long felt that the collection of humming-birds made by Daniel
+Curtis in the Brazils should be suitably housed, and I propose that
+a portion of the stables should be put in order for their reception
+together with what is left of the collection of British
+dragon-flies made by James. My solicitors will supply a sum of £50
+for this purpose and Harold can act as curator of what will be
+known as the Touchwood Museum. With regard to Harold's future, the
+family knows that I have invested £2000 in the mahogany plantations
+of Mr. Sydney Ricketts in British Honduras, and if Hugh does not
+take up his post within three months I shall ask Mr. Ricketts to
+accept Harold as a pupil in five years' time. He had better begin
+to study Hondurasian or whatever the language is called at once.
+Until Harold is called upon to make his decision I shall instruct
+Mr. Ricketts to put the interest with the capital. While on the
+subject of nephews and nieces, I may as well say that the family
+pictures and family silver will be sent back to Ambles to be held
+in trust for Bertram upon his coming of age. Furthermore, I am
+prepared to pay for the education of Bertram,<a name="page_329" id="page_329"></a> Harold, Frida, and
+Viola at good boarding-schools. Viola can practice her dancing in
+the holidays. Bertram's future I will provide for when the time
+comes. I do not wish George to have any excuse for remaining at
+Halma House&mdash;and I have no doubt that a private sitting-room will
+be awarded to him at Ambles. In the event of undue congestion his
+knitting would not disturb Laurence's poetic composition, and his
+system of backing second favorites in imagination can be carried on
+as easily at Ambles as in London. If he still hankers for a sea
+voyage, the river with Harold and himself in a Canadian canoe will
+give him all the nautical adventure he requires. My solicitors have
+been instructed to place a canoe at his disposal. To James who has
+so often reproved me for my optimism I would say-once more "Beware
+of new critical weeklies" and remind him that a bird in the hand is
+worth two in the bush. In other words, he has got a thousand pounds
+out of me, and he won't get another penny. Eleanor has shown
+herself so well able to look after herself that I am not going to
+insult her by offering to look after her. Hilda with her fifth of
+the house and her small private income will have nothing to do but
+fuss about the proportionate expenses of the various members of the
+family who choose to inhabit Ambles. I am affording her an unique
+opportunity for being disagreeable, of which I'm sure she will take
+the fullest advantage. I may say that no financial allowance will
+be made to those who prefer to live elsewhere. As for Laurence, his
+theatrical future under the patronage of Sir Percy Mortimer is no
+doubt secure. However, if he grows tired of playing butlers, I hope
+that his muse will welcome him back to Ambles as affectionately as
+his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't think I have anything more to say, my dear relations,
+except that I hope the presents you are bringing me for my birthday
+will come in useful as knick-knacks for your delightful house. You
+can now circulate as many stories about me as you like. You can
+even say that I have<a name="page_330" id="page_330"></a> founded a lunatic asylum at Ambles. I am so
+happy in the prospect of my marriage that I cannot feel very hardly
+towards you all, and so I wish you good luck.</p>
+
+<p>"'Your affectionate brother, brother-in-law, and uncle,</p>
+
+<p class="r">"'J<small>OHN</small> T<small>OUCHWOOD</small>.'<br />
+</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>"Type that out, please, Miss Hamilton, while I drive down to Doctors
+Commons to see about the license and book our passage in the
+<i>Murmania</i>."</p>
+
+<p>John had never tasted any success so sweet as the success of these two
+days before his forty-third birthday; and he was glad to find that Doris
+having once made up her mind about getting married showed no signs of
+imperilling the adventure by confiding her intention to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear John," she said, "I bolted to America with Ida Merritt last year
+without a word to Mother until I sent her a wireless from on board.
+Surely I may elope with you ... and explain afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think it will kill her," suggested John a little anxiously.
+"People are apparently quite ready to accuse one of breaking a maternal
+heart as lightly as they would accuse one of breaking an appointment."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear John, when we're married she'll be delighted."</p>
+
+<p>"Not too delighted, eh, darling? I mean not so delighted that she'll
+want to come and gloat over us all day. You see, when the honeymoon's
+over, I shall have to get to work again on that last act, and your
+mother does talk a good deal. I know it's very intelligent talk, but it
+would be rather an interruption."</p>
+
+<p>The only person they took into their confidence about the wedding,
+except the clergyman, the verger, and a crossing-sweeper brought in to
+witness the signing of the register was Mrs. Worfolk.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's highly satisfactory! You couldn't have chosen a nicer
+young lady. Well, I mean to say, I've known her so long and all. And you
+expect to be back in June? Oh well, I shall have everything nice and
+tidy you may be<a name="page_331" id="page_331"></a> sure. And this letter you want handed to Mr. James to
+be read to the family on your birthday? And I'm to give them their
+dinners the same as if you were here yourself? I see. And how many
+bottles of champagne shall I open? Oh, not to stint them? No, I quite
+understand. Of course, they would want to drink your healths. Certainly.
+And so they ought! Well, I'm bound to say I wish Mr. Worfolk could have
+been alive. It makes me quite aggravated to think he shouldn't be here.
+Well, I mean to say, he being a family carpenter had helped at so many
+weddings."</p>
+
+<p>The scene on the <i>Murmania</i> did not differ much from the scene on board
+the same ship six months ago. John had insisted that Doris should wear
+her misty green suit of Harris tweed; but he himself had bought at the
+Burlington Arcade a traveling cap that showed plainly the sobering
+effects of matrimony. In the barber's saloon he invested in a pair of
+rope-soled shoes; he wanted to be sure of being able to support his wife
+even upon a heeling deck. Before dinner they went forward to watch the
+stars come out in the twilight&mdash;stars that were scarcely as yet more
+luminous in the green April sky than daisies in a meadow. They stood
+silent listening to the splash of the dusky sea against the bows, until
+the shore lamps began to wink astern.</p>
+
+<p>"How savage the night looks coming after us," said John. "It's jolly to
+think that in the middle of all that blackness James is reading my
+birthday welcome to the family."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor dears!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they deserve all they've got," he said, fiercely. "And to think
+that only six months ago I was fool enough to read their letters of
+congratulation quite seriously in this very ship. It was you with your
+remark about poor relations that put your foot through my picture."</p>
+
+<p>"You're very much married already, aren't you, John?"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for you're already blaming me for everything."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose this is what James would call one of my confounded
+sentimental endings," John murmured.<a name="page_332" id="page_332"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Whatever he called it, he couldn't invent a better ending himself," she
+murmured back. "You know, critics are very like disappointed old maids."</p>
+
+<p>The great ship trembled faintly in the deeper motion, and John holding
+Doris to him felt that she too trembled faintly in unison. They stood
+like this in renewed silence until the stars shone clearly, and the
+shore lamps were turning to a gold blur. John may be excused for
+thinking that the bugle for dinner sounded like a flourish from
+<i>Lohengrin</i>. He had reason to feel romantic now.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="c">THE END</p>
+
+<p class="figcenter" style="width: 345px;">
+<a href="images/back_lg.jpg">
+<img src="images/back.jpg" width="345" height="550" alt="image of the book&#39;s back cover" title="image of the book&#39;s back cover" /></a>
+</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""
+style="border: 3px dotted gray;padding:2%;">
+<tr><th align="center">The following typographical errors have been corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr>
+<tr><td>light of a setting moor.=> light of a setting moon.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>the attenuated spinsters of Halam=> the attenuated spinsters of Halma</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Do you thing Stevie wants=> Do you think Stevie wants</td></tr>
+<tr><td>walk to Chealsea=> walk to Chelsea</td></tr>
+<tr><td>"It is bcoming every day=> "It is becoming every day</td></tr>
+<tr><td>that it it worth while making another attempt=> that it is worth while making another attempt</td></tr>
+<tr><td>taken up a stauesque=> taken up a statuesque</td></tr>
+<tr><td>caught a faint mumur about=> caught a faint murmur about</td></tr>
+<tr><td>The tax buzzed off.=> The taxi buzzed off.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>But I'm serious about the elopment.=> But I'm serious about the elopement.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Relations, by Compton Mackenzie
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Relations, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Poor Relations
+
+Author: Compton Mackenzie
+
+Release Date: February 9, 2012 [EBook #38816]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR RELATIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images available at the Interent
+Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+[Illustration: image of the book's cover]
+
+_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+SYLVIA & MICHAEL
+
+PLASHERS MEAD
+
+SYLVIA SCARLETT
+
+Harper & Brothers _Publishers_
+
+
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+By COMPTON MACKENZIE
+
+Author of "SYLVIA SCARLETT" "SYLVIA AND MICHAEL"
+ETC.
+
+[Illustration: colophon]
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+Published February, 1920
+
+B-U
+
+THIS THEME IN C MAJOR WITH VARIATIONS IS INSCRIBED TO THE ROMANTIC AND
+MYSTERIOUS MAJOR C BY ONE WHO WAS PRIVILEGED TO SERVE UNDER HIM DURING
+MORE THAN TWO YEARS OF WAR
+
+CAPRI, APRIL 30, 1919.
+
+
+
+
+POOR RELATIONS
+
+
+
+
+_Poor Relations_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+There was nothing to distinguish the departure of the _Murmania_ from
+that of any other big liner leaving New York in October for Liverpool or
+Southampton. At the crowded gangways there was the usual rain of
+ultimate kisses, from the quayside the usual gale of speeding
+handkerchiefs. Ladies in blanket-coats handed over to the arrangement of
+their table-stewards the expensive bouquets presented by friends who, as
+the case might be, had been glad or sorry to see them go. Middle-aged
+gentlemen, who were probably not at all conspicuous on shore, at once
+made their appearance in caps that they might have felt shy about
+wearing even during their university prime. Children in the first
+confusion of settling down ate more chocolates from the gift boxes lying
+about the cabins than they were likely to be given (or perhaps to want)
+for some time. Two young women with fresh complexions, short skirts, tam
+o' shanters, brightly colored jumpers, and big bows to their shoes were
+already on familiar terms with one of the junior ship's officers, and
+their laughter (which would soon become one of those unending oceanic
+accompaniments that make land so pleasant again) was already competing
+with the noise of the crew. Everybody boasted aloud that they fed you
+really well on the _Murmania_, and hoped silently that perhaps the sense
+of being imprisoned in a decaying hot-water bottle (or whatever more or
+less apt comparison was invented to suggest atmosphere below decks)
+would pass away in the fresh Atlantic breezes. Indeed it might be said,
+except in the case of a few ivory-faced ladies already lying back with
+the professional aloofness of those who are a prey to chronic headaches,
+that outwardly optimism was rampant.
+
+It was not surprising, therefore, that John Touchwood, the successful
+romantic playwright and unsuccessful realistic novelist, should on
+finding himself hemmed in by such invincible cheerfulness surrender to
+his own pleasant fancies of home. This was one of those moments when he
+was able to feel that the accusation of sentimentality so persistently
+laid against his work by superior critics was rebutted out of the very
+mouth of real life. He looked round at his fellow passengers as though
+he would congratulate them on conforming to his later and more
+profitable theory of art; and if occasionally he could not help seeing a
+stewardess with a glance of discreet sympathy reveal to an inquirer the
+ship's provision for human weakness, he did not on this account feel
+better disposed toward morbid intrusions either upon art or life, partly
+because he was himself an excellent sailor and partly because after all
+as a realist he had unquestionably not been a success.
+
+"Time for a shave before lunch, steward?" he inquired heartily.
+
+"The first bugle will go in about twenty minutes, sir."
+
+John paused for an instant at his own cabin to extract from his suitcase
+the particular outrage upon conventional headgear (it was a deerstalker
+of Lovat tweed) that he had evolved for this voyage; and presently he
+was sitting in the barber shop, wondering at first why anybody should be
+expected to buy any of the miscellaneous articles exposed for sale at
+such enhanced prices on every hook and in every nook of the little
+saloon, and soon afterward seriously considering the advantage of a pair
+of rope-soled shoes upon a heeling deck.
+
+"Very natty things those, sir," said the barber. "I laid in a stock once
+at Gib., when we did the southern rowt. Shave you close, sir?"
+
+"Once over, please."
+
+"Skin tender?"
+
+"Rather tender."
+
+"Yes, sir. And the beard's a bit strong, sir. Shave yourself, sir?"
+
+"Usually, but I was up rather early this morning."
+
+"Safety razor, sir?"
+
+"If you think such a description justifiable--yes--a safety."
+
+"They're all the go now, and no mistake ... safety bicycles, safety
+matches, safety razors ... they've all come in our time ... yes, sir,
+just a little bit to the right--thank you, sir! Not your first crossing,
+I take it?"
+
+"No, my third."
+
+"Interesting place, America. But I am from Wandsworth myself. Hair's
+getting rather thin round the temples. Would you like something to
+brisken up the growth a bit? Another time? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
+Parting on the left's it, I think?"
+
+"No grease," said John as fiercely as he ever spoke. The barber seemed
+to replace the pot of brilliantine with regret.
+
+"What would you like then?" He might have been addressing a spoilt
+child. "Flowers-and-honey? Eau-de-quinine? Or perhaps a friction? I've
+got lavingder, carnation, wallflower, vilit, lilerk...."
+
+"Bay rum," John declared, firmly.
+
+The barber sighed for such an unadventurous soul; and John, who could
+not bear to hurt even the most superficial emotions of a barber, changed
+his mind and threw him into a smiling bustle of gratification.
+
+"Rather strong," John said, half apologetically; for while the friction
+was being administered the barber had explained in jerks how every time
+he went ashore in New York or Liverpool he was in the habit of searching
+about for some novel wash or tonic or pomade, and John did not want to
+make him feel that his enterprise was unappreciated.
+
+"Strong is it? Well, that's a good fault, sir."
+
+"Yes, I suppose it is."
+
+"What took my fancy was the natural way it smelled."
+
+"Yes, indeed, painfully natural," John agreed.
+
+He stood up and confronted himself in the barber's mirror; regarding the
+fair, almost florid man, rather under six feet in height, with sanguine
+blue eyes and full, but clearly cut, lips therein reflected, he came to
+the comforting conclusion that he did not look his forty-two years and
+nine months; indeed, while his muffled whistle was shaping rather than
+uttering the tune of _Nancy Lee_, he nearly asked the barber to guess
+his age. However, he decided not to risk it, pulled down the lapels of
+his smoke-colored tweed coat, put on his deerstalker, tipped the barber
+sufficiently well to secure a parting caress from the brush, promised to
+meditate the purchase of the rope-soled shoes, and stepped jauntily in
+the direction of the luncheon bugle. If John Touchwood had not been a
+successful romantic playwright and an unsuccessful realistic novelist,
+he might have found in the spectacle of the first lunch of an Atlantic
+voyage an illustration of human madness and the destructive will of the
+gods. As it was, his capacity for rapidly covering the domestic offices
+of the brain with the crimson-ramblers of a lush idealism made him
+forget the base fabric so prettily if obviously concealed. As it was, he
+found an exhilaration in all this berserker greed, in the cries of
+inquisitive children, in the rumpled appearance of women whom the bugle
+had torn from their unpacking with the urgency of the last trump, in the
+acrid smell of pickles, and in the persuasive gesture with which the
+glistening stewards handed the potatoes while they glared angrily at one
+another over their shoulders. If a cynical realist had in respect of
+this lunch observed to John that a sow's ear was poor material for a
+silk purse, he would have contested the universal truth of the proverb,
+for at this moment he was engaged in chinking the small change of
+sentimentality in just such a purse.
+
+"How jolly everybody is," he thought, swinging round to his neighbor, a
+gaunt woman in a kind of draggled mantilla, with an effusion of
+good-will that expressed itself in a request to pass her the pickled
+walnuts. John fancied an impulse to move away her chair when she
+declined his offer; but of course the chair was fixed, and the only sign
+of her distaste for pickles or conversation was a faint quiver, which to
+any one less rosy than John might have suggested abhorrence, but which
+struck him as merely shyness. It was now that for the first time he
+became aware of a sickly fragrance that was permeating the atmosphere, a
+fragrance that other people, too, seemed to be noticing by the way in
+which they were looking suspiciously at the stewards.
+
+"Rather oppressive, some of these flowers," said John to the gaunt lady.
+
+"I don't see any flowers at our end of the table," she replied.
+
+And then with an emotion that was very nearly horror John realized that,
+though the barber was responsible, he must pay the penalty in a
+vicarious mortification. His first impulse was to snatch a napkin and
+wipe his hair; then he decided to leave the table immediately, because
+after all nobody _could_ suspect him, in these as yet unvexed waters, of
+anything but repletion; finally, hoping that the much powdered lady
+opposite swathed in mauve chiffons was getting the discredit for the
+fragrance, he stayed where he was. Nevertheless, the exhilaration had
+departed; his neighbors all seemed dull folk; and congratulating himself
+that after this first confused lunch he might reasonably expect to be
+put at the captain's table in recognition of the celebrity that he could
+fairly claim, John took from his pocket a bundle of letters which had
+arrived just before he had left his hotel and busied himself with them
+for the rest of the meal.
+
+His success as a romantic playwright and his failure--or, as he would
+have preferred to think of it in the satisfaction of fixing the guilty
+fragrance upon the lady in mauve chiffons, his comparative failure--as a
+realistic novelist had not destroyed John's passion for what he called
+"being practical in small matters," and it was in pursuit of this that
+having arranged his letters in two heaps which he mentally labeled as
+"business" and "pleasure" he began with the former, as a child begins
+(or ought to begin) his tea with the bread and butter and ends it with
+the plumcake. In John's case, fresh from what really might be described
+as a triumphant production in New York, the butter was spread so thickly
+that "business" was too forbidding a name for such pleasantly nutritious
+communications. His agent had sent him the returns of the second week;
+and playing to capacity in one of the largest New York theaters is
+nearer to a material paradise than anything outside the Mohammedan
+religion. Then there was an offer from one of the chief film companies
+to produce his romantic drama of two years ago, that wonderful riot of
+color and Biblical phraseology, _The Fall of Babylon_. They ventured to
+think that the cinematographer would do his imagination more justice
+than the theater, particularly as upon their dramatic ranch in
+California they now had more than a hundred real camels and eight real
+elephants. John chuckled at the idea of a few animals compensating for
+the absence of his words, but nevertheless ... the entrance of
+Nebuchadnezzar, yes, it should be wonderfully effective ... and the
+great grass-eating scene, yes, that might positively be more impressive
+on the films ... with one or two audiences it had trembled for a moment
+between the sublime and the ridiculous. It was a pity that the offer had
+not arrived before he was leaving New York, but no doubt he should be
+able to talk it over with the London representatives of the firm. Hullo
+here was Janet Bond writing to him ... charming woman, charming
+actress.... He wandered for a few minutes rather vaguely in the maze of
+her immense handwriting, but disentangled his comprehension at last and
+deciphered:
+
+THE PARTHENON THEATRE.
+
+Sole Proprietress: Miss Janet Bond.
+
+_October 10, 1910._
+
+DEAR MR. TOUCHWOOD,--I wonder if you have forgotten our talk at Sir
+Herbert's that night? I'm so hoping not. And your scheme for a real
+Joan of Arc? Do think of me this winter. Your picture of the scene with
+Gilles de Rais--you see I followed your advice and read him up--has
+_haunted_ me ever since. I can hear the horses' hoofs coming nearer and
+nearer and the cries of the murdered children. I'm so glad you've had a
+success with _Lucrezia_ in New York. I don't _think_ it would suit me
+from what I read about it. You know how _particular_ my public is.
+That's why I'm so anxious to play the Maid. When will _Lucrezia_ be
+produced in London, and where? There are many rumours. Do come and see
+me when you get back to England, and I'll tell you who I've thought of
+to play Gilles. I _think_ you'll find him very intelligent. But of
+course everything depends on your inclination, or should I say
+inspiration? And then that wonderful speech to the Bishop! How does it
+begin? "Bishop, thou hast betrayed thy holy trust." Do be a little
+flattered that I've remembered that line. It needn't _all_ be in blank
+verse, and I think little Truscott would be so good as the Bishop. You
+see how _enthusiastic_ I am and how I _believe_ in the idea. All good
+wishes.
+
+Yours sincerely and hopefully,
+
+JANET BOND.
+
+John certainly was a little flattered that Miss Bond should have
+remembered the Maid's great speech to the Bishop of Beauvais, and the
+actress's enthusiasm roused in him an answering flame, so that the cruet
+before him began to look like the castelated walls of Orleans, and while
+his gaze was fixed upon the bowl of salad he began to compose _Act II._
+_Scene I_--_Open country. Enter Joan on horseback. From the summit of a
+grassy knoll she searches the horizon._ So fixedly was John regarding
+his heroine on top of the salad that the head steward came over and
+asked anxiously if there was anything the matter with it. And even when
+John assured him that there was nothing he took it away and told one of
+the under-stewards to remove the caterpillar and bring a fresh bowl.
+Meanwhile, John had picked up the other bundle of letters and begun to
+read his news from home.
+
+65 HILL ROAD,
+
+St. John's Wood, N.W.,
+
+_October 10_.
+
+DEAR JOHN,--We have just read in the _Telegraph_ of your great success
+and we are both very glad. Edith writes me that she did have a letter
+from you. I dare say you thought she would send it on to us but she
+didn't, and of course I understand you're busy only I should have liked
+to have had a letter ourselves. James asks me to tell you that he is
+probably going to do a book on the Cymbalist movement in literature. He
+says that the time has come to take a final survey of it. He is also
+writing some articles for the _Fortnightly Review_. We shall all be so
+glad to welcome you home again.
+
+Your affectionate sister-in-law,
+
+BEATRICE TOUCHWOOD.
+
+"Poor Beatrice," thought John, penitently. "I ought to have sent her a
+line. She's a good soul. And James ... what a plucky fellow he is!
+Always full of schemes for books and articles. Wonderful really, to go
+on writing for an audience of about twenty people. And I used to grumble
+because my novels hadn't world-wide circulations. Poor old James ... a
+good fellow."
+
+He picked up the next letter; which he found was from his other
+sister-in-law.
+
+HALMA HOUSE,
+
+198 Earl's Court Square, S.W.,
+
+_October 9_.
+
+DEAR JOHN,--Well, you've had a hit with _Lucrezia_, lucky man! If you
+sent out an Australian company, don't you think I might play lead? I
+quite understand that you couldn't manage it for me either in London or
+America, but after all you _are_ the author and you surely have _some_
+say in the cast. I've got an understudy at the Parthenon, but I can't
+stand Janet. Such a selfish actress. She literally doesn't think of any
+one but herself. There's a chance I may get a decent part on tour with
+Lambton this autumn. George isn't very well, and it's been rather
+miserable this wet summer in the boarding house as Bertram and Viola
+were ill and kept away from school. I would have suggested their going
+down to Ambles, but Hilda was so very unpleasant when I just hinted at
+the idea that I preferred to keep them with me in town. Both children
+ask every day when you're coming home. You're quite the favourite uncle.
+George was delighted with your success. Poor old boy, he's had another
+financial disappointment, and your success was quite a consolation.
+
+ELEANOR.
+
+"I wish Eleanor was anywhere but on the stage," John sighed. "But she's
+a plucky woman. I _must_ write her a part in my next play. Now for
+Hilda."
+
+He opened his sister's letter with the most genial anticipation, because
+it was written from his new country house in Hampshire, that county
+house which he had coveted for so long and to which the now faintly
+increasing motion of the _Murmania_ reminded him that he was fast
+returning.
+
+AMBLES,
+
+Wrottesford, Hants,
+
+_October 11_.
+
+MY DEAR JOHN,--Just a line to congratulate you on your new success. Lots
+of money in it, I suppose. Dear Harold is quite well and happy at
+Ambles. Quite the young squire! I had a little coolness with
+Eleanor--entirely on her side of course, but Bertram is really such a
+_bad_ influence for Harold and so I told her that I did not think you
+would like her to take possession of your new house before you'd had
+time to live in it yourself. Besides, so many children all at once would
+have disturbed poor Mama. Edith drove over with Frida the other day and
+tells me you wrote to her. I should have liked a letter, too, but you
+always spoil poor Edith. Poor little Frida looks very peaky. Much love
+from Harold who is always asking when you're coming home. Mama is very
+well, I'm glad to say.
+
+Your affectionate sister,
+
+HILDA CURTIS.
+
+"She might have told me a little more about the house," John murmured to
+himself. And then he began to dream about Ambles and to plant
+old-fashioned flowers along its mellow red-brick garden walls. "I shall
+be in time to see the colouring of the woods," he thought. The
+_Murmania_ answered his aspiration with a plunge, and several of the
+rumpled ladies rose hurriedly from table to prostrate themselves for the
+rest of the voyage. John opened a fourth letter from England.
+
+THE VICARAGE,
+
+Newton Candover, Hants,
+
+_October 7_.
+
+MY DEAREST JOHN,--I was so glad to get your letter, and so glad to hear
+of your success. Laurence says that if he were not a vicar he should
+like to be a dramatic author. In fact, he's writing a play now on a
+Biblical subject, but he fears he will have trouble with the Bishop, as
+it takes a very broad view of Christianity. You know that Laurence has
+recently become very broad? He thinks the village people like it, but
+unfortunately old Mrs. Paxton--you know who I mean--the patroness of the
+living--is so bigoted that Laurence has had a great deal of trouble with
+her. I'm sorry to say that dear little Frida is looking thin. We think
+it's the wet summer. Nothing but rain. Ambles was looking beautiful when
+we drove over last week, but Harold is a little bumptious and Hilda does
+not seem to see his faults. Dear Mama was looking _very_ well--better
+than I've seen her for ages. Frida sends such a lot of love to dearest
+Uncle John. She never stops talking about you. I sometimes get quite
+jealous for Laurence. Not really, of course, because family affection is
+the foundation of civil life. Laurence is out in the garden speaking to
+a man whose pig got into our conservatory this morning. Much love.
+
+Your loving sister,
+
+EDITH.
+
+John put the letter down with a faint sigh: Edith was his favorite
+sister, but he often wished that she had not married a parson. Then he
+took up the last letter of the family packet, which was from his
+housekeeper in Church Row.
+
+39 CHURCH ROW,
+
+_Hampstead, N.W._
+
+DEAR SIR,--This is to inform you with the present that everythink is
+very well at your house and that Maud and Elsa is very well as it leaves
+me at present. We as heard nothink from Emily since she as gone down to
+Hambles your other house, and we hope which is Maud, Elsa and myself you
+wont spend all your time out of London which is looking lovely at
+present with the leaves beginning to turn and all. With dutiful respects
+from Maud, Elsa and self, I am,
+
+Your obedient servant,
+
+MARY WORFOLK.
+
+"Dear old Mrs. Worfolk. She's already quite jealous of Ambles ...
+charming trait really, for after all it means she appreciates Church
+Row. Upon my soul, I feel a bit jealous of Ambles myself."
+
+John began to ponder the pleasant heights of Hampstead and to think of
+the pale blue October sky and of the yellow leaves shuffling and
+slipping along the quiet alleys in the autumn wind; to think, too, of
+his library window and of London spread out below in a refulgence of
+smoke and gold; to think of the chrysanthemums in his little garden and
+of the sparrows' chirping in the Virginia-creeper that would soon be all
+aglow like a well banked-up fire against his coming. Five delightful
+letters really, every one of them full of good wishes and cordial
+affection! The _Murmania_ swooped forward, and there was a faint tingle
+of glass and cutlery. John gathered up his correspondence to go on deck
+and bless the Atlantic for being the pathway to home. As he rose from
+the table he heard a voice say:
+
+"Yes, my dear thing, but I've never been a poor relation yet, and I
+don't intend to start now."
+
+The saloon was empty except for himself and two women opposite, the
+climax of whose conversation had come with such a harsh fitness of
+comment upon the letters he had just been reading. John was angry with
+himself for the dint so easily made upon the romantic shield he upheld
+against life's onset; he felt that he had somehow been led into an
+ambush where all his noblest sentiments had been massacred; five bells
+sounded upon the empty saloon with an almost funereal gravity; and, when
+the two women passed out, John, notwithstanding the injured regard of
+his steward, sat down again and read right through the family letters
+from a fresh standpoint. The fact of it was that there had turned out to
+be very few currants in the cake, for the eating of which he had
+prepared himself with such well-buttered bread. Few currants? There was
+not a single one, unless Mrs. Worfolk's antagonism to the idea of Ambles
+might be considered a gritty shred of a currant. John rose at once when
+he had finished his letters, put them in his pocket, and followed the
+unconscious disturbers of his hearth on deck. He soon caught sight of
+them again where, arm in arm, they were pacing the sunlit starboard side
+and apparently enjoying the gusty southwest wind. John wondered how long
+it would be before he was given a suitable opportunity to make their
+acquaintance, and tried to regulate his promenade so that he should
+always meet them face to face either aft or forward, but never amidships
+where heavily muffled passengers reclined in critical contemplation of
+their fellow-travellers over the top of the last popular novel. "Some
+men, you know," he told himself, "would join their walk with a mere
+remark about the weather. They wouldn't stop to consider if their
+company was welcome. They'd be so serenely satisfied with themselves
+that they'd actually succeed ... yes, confound them ... they'd bring it
+off! Yet, after all, I suppose in a way that without vanity I might
+presume they _would_ be rather interested to meet me. Because, of
+course, there's no doubt that people _are_ interested in authors. But,
+it's no good ... I can't do that ... this is really one of those moments
+when I feel as if I was still seventeen years old ... shyness, I suppose
+... yet the rest of my family aren't shy."
+
+This took John's thoughts back to his relations, but to a much less
+complacent point of view of them than before that maliciously apposite
+remark overheard in the saloon had lighted up the group as abruptly and
+unbecomingly as a magnesium flash. However inconsistent he might appear,
+he was afraid that he should be more critical of them in future. He
+began to long to talk over his affairs with that girl and, looking up at
+this moment, he caught her eyes, which either because the weather was so
+gusty or because he was so ready to hang decorations round a simple fact
+seemed to him like calm moorland pools, deep violet-brown pools in
+heathery solitudes. Her complexion had the texture of a rose in
+November, the texture that gains a rare lucency from the grayness and
+moisture by which one might suppose it would be ruined. She was wearing
+a coat and skirt of Harris tweed of a shade of misty green, and with her
+slim figure and fine features she seemed at first glance not more than
+twenty. But John had not passed her another half-dozen times before he
+had decided that she was almost a woman of thirty. He looked to see if
+she was wearing a wedding ring and was already enough interested in her
+to be glad that she was not. This relief was, of course, not at all due
+to any vision of himself in a more intimate relationship; but merely
+because he was glad to find that her personality, of which he was by now
+more definitely aware than of her beauty (well, not beauty, but charm,
+and yet perhaps after all he was being too grudging in not awarding her
+positive beauty) would be her own. There was something distinctly
+romantic in this beautiful young woman of nearly thirty leading her own
+life unimpeded by a loud-voiced husband. Of course, the husband might
+have had a gentle voice, but usually this type of woman seemed a prey to
+bluffness and bigness, as if to display her atmosphere charms she had
+need of a rugged landscape for a background. He found himself glibly
+thinking of her as a type; but with what type could she be classified?
+Surely she was attracting him by being exceptional rather than typical;
+and John soothed his alarmed celibacy by insisting that she appealed to
+him with a hint of virginal wisdom which promised a perfect intercourse,
+if only their acquaintanceship could be achieved naturally, that is to
+say, without the least suggestion of an ulterior object. _She had never
+been a poor relation yet, and she did not intend to start being one
+now._ Of course, such a woman was still unmarried. But how had she
+avoided being a poor relation? What was her work? Why was she coming
+home to England? And who was her companion? He looked at the other woman
+who walked beside her with a boyish slouch, wore gold pince-nez, and had
+a tight mouth, not naturally tight, but one that had been tightened by
+driving and riding. It was absurd to walk up and down forever like this;
+the acquaintance must be made immediately or not at all; it would never
+do to hang round them waiting for an opportunity of conversation. John
+decided to venture a simple remark the next time he met them face to
+face; but when he arrived at the after end of the promenade deck they
+had vanished, and the embarrassing thought occurred to him that perhaps
+having divined his intention they had thus deliberately snubbed him. He
+went to the rail and leaned over to watch the water undulating past; a
+sudden gust caught his cap and took it out to sea. He clapped his hand
+too late to his head; a fragrance of carnations breathed upon the salt
+windy sunlight; a voice behind him, softly tremulous with laughter,
+murmured:
+
+"I say, bad luck."
+
+John commended his deerstalker to the care of all the kindly Oceanides
+and turned round: it was quite easy after all, and he was glad that he
+had not thought of deliberately letting his cap blow into the sea.
+
+"Look, it's actually floating like a boat," she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, it was shaped like a boat," John said; he was thinking how absurd
+it was now to fancy that swiftly vanishing, utterly inappropriate piece
+of concave tweed should only a few seconds ago have been worn the other
+way round on a human head.
+
+"But you mustn't catch cold," she added. "Haven't you another cap?"
+
+John did possess another cap, one that just before he left England he
+had bought about dusk in the Burlington Arcade, one which in the velvety
+bloom of a July evening had seemed worthy of summer skies and seas, but
+which in the glare of the following day had seemed more like the shreds
+of barbaric attire that are brought back by travelers from exotic lands
+to be taken out of a glass case and shown to visitors when the
+conversation is flagging on Sunday afternoons in the home counties. Now
+if John's plays were full of fierce hues, if his novels had been sepia
+studies of realism which the public considered painful and the critics
+described as painstaking, his private life had been of a mild uniform
+pink, a pinkishness that recalled the chaste hospitality of the best
+spare bedroom. Never yet in that pink life had he let himself go to the
+extent of wearing a cap, which, even if worn afloat by a colored
+prizefighter crossing the Atlantic to defend or challenge supremacy,
+would have created an amused consternation, but which on the head of a
+well-known romantic playwright must arouse at least dismay and possibly
+panic. Yet this John (he had reached the point of regarding himself with
+objective surprise), the pinkishness of whose life, though it might be a
+protest against cynicism and gloom, was eternally half-way to a blush,
+went off to his cabin with the intention of putting on that cap. With
+himself for a while he argued that something must be done to imprison
+the smell of carnations, that a bowler hat would look absurd, that he
+really must not catch cold; but all the time this John knew perfectly
+well that what he really wanted was to give a practical demonstration of
+his youth. This John did not care a damn about his success as a romantic
+playwright, but he did care a great deal that these two young women
+should vote him a suitable companion for the rest of the voyage.
+
+"Why, it's really not so bad," he assured himself, when before the
+mirror he tried to judge the effect. "I rather think it's better than
+the other one. Of course, if I had seen when I bought it that the checks
+were purple and not black I dare say I shouldn't have bought it--but, by
+Jove, I'm rather glad I didn't notice them. After all, I have a right to
+be a little eccentric in my costume. What the deuce does it matter to me
+if people do stare? Let them stare! I shall be the last of the lot to
+feel seasick, anyway."
+
+John walked defiantly back to the promenade deck, and several people who
+had not bothered to remark the well-groomed florid man before now asked
+who he was, and followed his progress along the deck with the easily
+interested gaze of the transatlantic passenger.
+
+For the rest of the voyage John never knew whether the attention his
+entrance into the saloon always evoked was due to his being the man who
+wore the unusual cap or to his being the man who had written _The Fall
+of Babylon_; nor, indeed, did he bother to make sure, for he was
+fortified during the rest of the voyage by the company of Miss Doris
+Hamilton and Miss Ida Merritt and thoroughly enjoyed himself.
+
+"Now am I attributing to Miss Hamilton more discretion than she's really
+got?" he asked himself on the last night of the passage, a stormy night
+off the Irish coast, while he swayed before the mirror in the creaking
+cabin. John was accustomed, like most men with clear-cut profiles, to
+take advice from his reflection, and perhaps it was his dramatic
+instinct that led him usually to talk aloud to this lifelong friend.
+"Have I in fact been too impulsive in this friendship? Have I? That's
+the question. I certainly told her a lot about myself, and I think she
+appreciated my confidence. Yet suppose that she's just an ordinary young
+woman and goes gossiping all over England about meeting me? I really
+must remember that I'm no longer a nonentity and that, though Miss
+Hamilton is not a journalist, her friend is, and, what is more,
+confessed that the sole object of her visit to America had been to
+interview distinguished men with the help of Miss Hamilton. The way she
+spoke about her victims reminded me of the way that fellow in the
+smoking-saloon talked about the tarpon fishing off Florida ... famous
+American statesmen, financiers, and architects existed quite
+impersonally for her to be caught just like tarpon. Really when I come
+to think of it I've been at the end of Miss Merritt's rod for five days,
+and as with all the others the bait was Miss Hamilton."
+
+John's mistrust in the prudence of his behavior during the voyage had
+been suddenly roused by the prospect of reaching Liverpool next day. The
+word positively exuded disillusionment; it was as anti-romantic as a
+notebook of Herbert Spencer. He undressed and got into his bunk; the
+motion of the ship and the continual opening and shutting of cabin doors
+all the way along the corridor kept him from sleep, and for a long time
+he lay awake while the delicious freedom of the seas was gradually
+enslaved by the sullen, prosaic, puritanical, bilious word--Liverpool.
+He had come down to his cabin, full of the exhilaration of a last quick
+stroll up and down the spray-whipped deck; he had come down from a long
+and pleasant talk all about himself where he and Miss Hamilton had sat
+in the lee of some part of a ship's furniture the name of which he did
+not know and did not like to ask, a long and pleasant talk, cozily
+wrapped in two rugs glistening faintly in the starlight with salty rime;
+he had come down from a successful elimination of Miss Merritt, his
+whole personality marinated in freedom, he might say; and now the mere
+thought of Liverpool was enough to disenchant him and to make him feel
+rather like a man who was recovering from a brilliant, a too brilliant
+revelation of himself provoked by champagne. He began to piece together
+the conversation and search for indiscretions. To begin with, he had
+certainly talked a great deal too much about himself; it was not
+dignified for a man in his position to be so prodigally frank with a
+young woman he had only known for five days. Suppose she had been
+laughing at him all the time? Suppose that even now she was laughing at
+him with Miss Merritt? "Good heavens, what an amount I told her," John
+gasped aloud. "I even told her what my real circulation was when I used
+to write novels, and I very nearly told her how much I made out of _The
+Fall of Babylon_, though since that really was a good deal, it wouldn't
+have mattered so much. And what did I say about my family? Well, perhaps
+that isn't so important. But how much did I tell her of my scheme for
+_Joan of Arc_? Why, she might have been my confidential secretary by the
+way I talked. My confidential secretary? And why not? I am entitled to a
+secretary--in fact my position demands a secretary. But would she accept
+such a post? Now don't let me be impulsive."
+
+John began to laugh at himself for a quality in which as a matter of
+fact he was, if anything, deficient. He often used to chaff himself,
+but, of course, always without the least hint of ill-nature, which is
+perhaps why he usually selected imaginary characteristics for genial
+reproof.
+
+"Impulsive dog," he said to himself. "Go to sleep, and don't forget that
+confidential secretaries afloat and confidential secretaries ashore are
+very different propositions. Yes, you thought you were being very clever
+when you bought those rope-soled shoes to keep your balance on a
+slippery deck, but you ought to have bought a rope-soled cap to keep
+your head from slipping."
+
+This seemed to John in the easy optimism that prevails upon the borders
+of sleep an excellent joke, and he passed with a chuckle through the
+ivory gate.
+
+The next day John behaved helpfully and politely at the Customs, and
+indeed continued to be helpful and polite until his companions of the
+voyage were established in a taxi at Euston. He had carefully written
+down the Hamiltons' address with a view to calling on them one day, but
+even while he was writing the number of the square in Chelsea he was
+thinking about Ambles and trying to decide whether he should make a dash
+across London to Waterloo on the chance of catching the 9:05 P.M. or
+spend the night at his house in Church Row.
+
+"I think perhaps I'd better stay in town to-night," he said. "Good-by.
+Most delightful trip across--see you both again soon, I hope. You don't
+advise me to try for the 9:05?" he asked once more, anxiously.
+
+Miss Hamilton laughed from the depths of the taxi; when she laughed, for
+the briefest moment John felt an Atlantic breeze sweep through the
+railway station.
+
+"_I_ recommend a good night's rest," she said.
+
+So John's last thought of her was of a nice practical young woman; but,
+as he once again told himself, the idea of a secretary was absurd.
+Besides, did she even know shorthand?
+
+"Do you know shorthand?" he turned round to shout as the taxi buzzed
+away; he did not hear her answer, if answer there was.
+
+"Of course I can always write," he decided, and without one sigh he
+busied himself with securing his own taxi for Hampstead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+"I've got too many caps, Mrs. Worfolk," John proclaimed next morning to
+his housekeeper. "You can give this one away."
+
+"Yes, sir. Who would you like it given to?"
+
+"Oh, anybody, anybody. Tramps very often ask for old boots, don't they?
+Some tramp might like it."
+
+"Would you have any erbjections if I give it to my nephew, sir?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"It seems almost too perky for a tramp, sir; and my sister's boy--well,
+he's just at the age when they like to dress theirselves up a bit. He's
+doing very well, too. His employers is extremely satisfied with the way
+he's doing. Extremely satisfied, his employers are."
+
+"I'm delighted to hear it."
+
+"Yes, sir. Well, it's been some consolation to my poor sister, I mean to
+say, after the way her husband behaved hisself, and it's to be hoped
+Herbert'll take fair warning. Let me see, you _will_ be having lunch at
+home I think you said?"
+
+John winced: this was precisely what he would have avoided by catching
+the 9:05 at Waterloo last night.
+
+"I shan't be in to lunch for a few days, Mrs. Worfolk, no--er--nor to
+dinner either as a matter of fact. No--in fact I'll be down in the
+country. I must see after things there, you know," he added with an
+attempt to suggest as jovially as possible a real anxiety about his new
+house.
+
+"The country, oh yes," repeated Mrs. Worfolk grimly; John saw the
+beech-woods round Ambles blasted by his housekeeper's disapproval.
+
+"You wouldn't care to--er--come down and give a look round yourself,
+Mrs. Worfolk? My sister, Mrs. Curtis--"
+
+"Oh, I should prefer not to intrude in any way, sir. But if you insist,
+why, of course--"
+
+"Oh no, I don't insist," John hurriedly interposed.
+
+"No, sir. Well, we shall all have to get used to being left alone
+nowadays, and that's all there is to it."
+
+"But I shall be back in a few days, Mrs. Worfolk. I'm a Cockney at
+heart, you know. Just at first--"
+
+Mrs. Worfolk shook her head and waddled tragically to the door.
+
+"There's nothing else you'll be wanting this morning, sir?" she turned
+to ask in accents that seemed to convey forgiveness of her master in
+spite of everything.
+
+"No, thank you, Mrs. Worfolk. Please send Maud up to help me pack. Good
+heavens," he added to himself when his housekeeper had left the room,
+"why shouldn't I be allowed a country house? And I suppose the next
+thing is that James and Beatrice and George and Eleanor will all be
+offended because I didn't go tearing round to see them the moment I
+arrived. One's relations never understand that after the production of a
+play one requires a little rest. Besides, I must get on with my new
+play. I absolutely _must_."
+
+John's tendency to abhor the vacuum of success was corrected by the
+arrival of Maud, the parlor-maid, whose statuesque anemia and impersonal
+neatness put something in it. Before leaving for America he had
+supplemented the rather hasty preliminary furnishing of his new house by
+ordering from his tailor a variety of country costumes. These Maud, with
+feminine intuition superimposed on what she would have called her
+"understanding of valeting," at once produced for his visit to Ambles;
+John in the prospect of half a dozen unworn peat-perfumed suits of tweed
+flung behind him any lingering doubt about there being something in
+success, and with the recapture of his enthusiasm for what he called
+"jolly things" was anxious that Maud should share in it.
+
+"Do you think these new things are a success, Maud?" he asked, perhaps a
+little too boisterously. At any rate, the parlor-maid's comprehension of
+valeting had apparently never been so widely stretched, for a faint
+coralline blush tinted her waxen cheeks.
+
+"They seem very nice, sir," she murmured, with a slight stress upon the
+verb.
+
+John felt that he had trespassed too far upon the confines of Maud's
+humanity and retreated hurriedly. He would have liked to explain that
+his inquiry had merely been a venture into abstract esthetics and that
+he had not had the least intention of extracting her opinion about these
+suits _on him_; but he felt that an attempt at explanation would
+embarrass her, and he hummed instead over a selection of ties, as a bee
+hums from flower to flower in a garden, careless of the gardener who
+close at hand is potting up plants.
+
+"I will take these ties," he announced on the last stave of _A Fine Old
+English Gentleman_.
+
+Maud noted them gravely.
+
+"And I shall have a few books. Perhaps there won't be room for them?"
+
+"There won't be room for them, not in your dressing-case, sir."
+
+"Oh, I know there won't be room in that," said John, bitterly.
+
+His dressing-case might be considered the medal he had struck in honor
+of _The Fall of Babylon_: he had passed it every morning on his way to
+rehearsals and, dreaming of the triumph that might soon be his, had
+vowed he would buy it were such a triumph granted. It had cost L75, was
+heavy enough when empty to strain his wrist and when full to break his
+back, and it contained more parasites of the toilet table and the
+writing desk than one could have supposed imaginable. These parasites
+each possessed an abode of such individual shape that leaving them
+behind made no difference to the number of really useful articles, like
+pajamas, that could be carried in the cubic space lined with blue
+corded silk on which they looked down like the inconvenient houses of a
+fashionable square. Therefore wherever John went, the fittings went too,
+a glittering worthless mob of cut-glass, pigskin, tortoiseshell and
+ivory.
+
+"But in my portmanteau," John persisted. "Won't there be room there?"
+
+"I might squeeze them in," Maud admitted. "It depends what boots you're
+wanting to take with you, sir."
+
+"Never mind," he sighed. "I can make a separate parcel of them."
+
+"There's the basket what we were going to use for the cat, sir."
+
+"No, I should prefer a brown paper parcel," he decided. It would be
+improper for the books out of which the historical trappings of his
+_Joan of Arc_ were to be manufactured to travel in a lying-in hospital
+for cats.
+
+John left Maud to finish the packing and went downstairs to his library.
+This double room of fine proportions was, as one might expect from the
+library of a popular writer, the core--the veritable omphalos of the
+house; with its fluted pilasters, cream-colored panels and
+cherub-haunted ceiling, the expanse of city and sky visible from three
+sedate windows at the south end and the glimpse of a busy Hampstead
+street caught from those facing north, not to speak of the prismatic
+rows of books, it was a room worthy of art's most remunerative triumphs,
+the nursery of inspiration, and, save for a slight suggestion that the
+Muses sometimes drank afternoon tea there, the room of an indomitable
+bachelor. When John stepped upon the wreaths, ribbons, and full-blown
+roses of the threadbare Aubusson rug that floated like gossamer upon a
+green carpet of Axminster pile as soft as some historic lawn, he was
+sure that success was not a vacuum. In his now optimistic mood he hoped
+ultimately to receive from Ambles the kind of congratulatory benediction
+that the library at Church Row always bestowed upon his footsteps.
+Indeed, if he had not had such an ambition for his country house, he
+could scarcely have endured to quit even for a week this library, where
+fires were burning in two grates and where the smoke of his Partaga was
+haunting, like a complacent ghost, the imperturbable air. John possessed
+another library at Ambles, but he had not yet had time to do more than
+hurriedly stock it with the standard works that he felt no country house
+should be without. His library in London was the outcome of historical
+research preparatory to writing his romantic plays; and since all works
+of popular historical interest are bound with a much more lavish
+profusion of color and ornament even than the works of fiction to which
+they most nearly approximate, John's shelves outwardly resembled rather
+a collection of armor than a collection of books. There were, of course,
+many books the insides of which were sufficiently valuable to excuse
+their dingy exterior; but none of these occupied the line, where romance
+after romance of exiled queens, confession after confession of
+morganatic wives, memoir after memoir from above and below stairs,
+together with catch-penny alliterative gatherings as of rude regents and
+libidinous landgraves flashed in a gorgeous superficiality of gilt and
+text. In order to amass the necessary material for a play about Joan of
+Arc John did not concern himself with original documents. He assumed,
+perhaps rightly, that a Camembert cheese is more palatable and certainly
+more portable than a herd of unmilked cows. To dramatize the life of
+Joan of Arc he took from his shelves _Saints and Sinners of the
+Fifteenth Century_ ... but a catalogue is unnecessary: enough that when
+the heap of volumes chosen stood upon his desk it glittered like the
+Maid herself before the walls of Orleans.
+
+"After all," as John had once pointed out in a moment of exasperation to
+his brother, James, the critic, "Shakespeare didn't sit all day in the
+reading-room of the British Museum."
+
+An hour later the playwright, equipped alike for country rambles and
+poetic excursions, was sitting in a first-class compartment of a London
+and South-Western railway train; two hours after that he was sitting in
+the Wrottesford fly swishing along between high hazel hedges of
+golden-brown.
+
+"I shall have to see about getting a dog-cart," he exclaimed, when after
+a five minutes' struggle to let down the window with the aid of a strap
+that looked like an Anglican stole he had succeeded in opening the door
+and nearly falling head-long into the lane.
+
+"You have to let down the window _before_ you get out," said the driver
+reproachfully, trying to hammer the frameless window back into place and
+making such a noise about it that John could not bear to accentuate by
+argument the outrage that he was offering to this morning of exquisite
+decline, on which earth seemed to be floating away into a windless
+infinity like one of her own dead leaves. No, on such a morning
+controversy was impossible, but he should certainly take immediate steps
+to acquire a dog-cart.
+
+"For it's like being jolted in a badly made coffin," he thought, when he
+was once more encased in the fly and, having left the high road behind,
+was driving under an avenue of sycamores bordered by a small stream, the
+water of which was stained to the color of sherry by the sunlight
+glowing down through the arches of tawny leaves overhead. To John this
+avenue always seemed the entrance to a vast park surrounding his country
+house; it was indeed an almost unfrequented road, grass-grown in the
+center and lively with rabbits during most of the day, so that his
+imagination of ancestral approaches was easily stimulated and he felt
+like a figure in a painting by Marcus Stone. It was lucky that John's
+sanguine imagination could so often satisfy his ambition; prosperous
+playwright though he was, he had not yet made nearly enough money to buy
+a real park. However, in his present character of an eighteenth-century
+squire he determined, should the film version of _The Fall of Babylon_
+turn out successful, to buy a lawny meadow of twenty acres that would
+add much to the dignity and seclusion of Ambles, the boundaries of which
+at the back were now overlooked by a herd of fierce Kerry cows who
+occupied the meadow and during the summer had made John's practice
+shots with a brassy too much like big-game shooting to be pleasant or
+safe. After about a mile the avenue came to an end where a narrow curved
+bridge spanned the stream, which now flowed away to the left along the
+bottom of a densely wooded hillside. The fly crossed over with an
+impunity that was surprising in face of a printed warning that
+extraordinary vehicles should avoid this bridge, and began to climb the
+slope by a wide diagonal track between bushes of holly, the green of
+which seemed vivid and glossy against the prevailing brown. The noise of
+the wheels was deadened by the heavy drift of beech leaves, and the
+stillness of this russet world, except for the occasional scream of a
+jay or the flapping of disturbed pigeons, demanded from John's
+illustrative fancy something more remote and Gothic than the eighteenth
+century.
+
+"Malory," he said to himself. "Absolute Malory. It's almost impossible
+not to believe that Sir Gawaine might not come galloping down through
+this wood."
+
+Eager to put himself still more deeply in accord with the romantic
+atmosphere, John tried this time to open the door of the fly with the
+intention of walking meditatively up the hill in its wake; the door
+remained fast; but he managed to open the window, or rather he broke it.
+
+"I've a jolly good mind to get a motor," he exclaimed, savagely.
+
+Every knight errant's horse in the neighborhood bolted at the thought,
+and by the time John had reached the top of the hill and emerged upon a
+wide stretch of common land dotted with ancient hawthorns in full
+crimson berry he was very much in the present. For there on the other
+side of the common, flanked by shelving woods of oak and beech and
+backed by rising downs on which a milky sky ruffled its breast like a
+huge swan lazily floating, stood Ambles, a solitary, deep-hued,
+Elizabethan house with dreaming chimney-stacks and tumbled mossy roofs
+and garden walls rising from the heaped amethysts of innumerable
+Michaelmas daisies.
+
+"My house," John murmured in a paroxysm of ownership.
+
+The noise of the approaching fly had drawn expectant figures to the
+gate; John, who had gratified affection, curiosity and ostentation by
+sending a wireless message from the _Murmania_, a telegram from
+Liverpool yesterday, and another from Euston last night to announce his
+swift arrival, had therefore only himself to thank for perceiving in the
+group the black figure of his brother-in-law, the Reverend Laurence
+Armitage. He drove away the scarcely formed feeling of depression by
+supposing that Edith could not by herself have trundled the
+barrel-shaped vicarage pony all the way from Newton Candover to Ambles,
+and, finding that the left-hand door of the fly was unexpectedly
+susceptible to the prompting of its handle, he alighted with such
+rapidity that not one of his smiling relations could have had any
+impression but that he was bounding to greet them. The two sisters were
+so conscious of their rich unmarried brother's impulsive advance that
+each incited her own child to responsive bounds so that they might meet
+him half-way along the path to the front door, in the harborage of which
+Grandma (whose morning nap had been interrupted by a sudden immersion in
+two shawls, and a rapid swim with Emily, the maid from London, acting as
+lifebuoy down the billowy passages and stairs of the old house) rocked
+in breathless anticipation of the filial salute.
+
+"Welcome back, my dear Johnnie," the old lady panted.
+
+"How are you, mother? What, another new cap?"
+
+Old Mrs. Touchwood patted her head complacently. "We bought it at
+Threadgale's in Galton. The ribbons are the new hollyhock red."
+
+"Delightful!" John exclaimed. "And who helped you to choose it? Little
+Frida here?"
+
+"Nobody _helped_ me, Johnnie. Hilda accompanied me into Galton; but she
+wanted to buy a sardine-opener for the house."
+
+John had not for a moment imagined that his mother had wanted any
+advice about a cap; but inasmuch as Frida, in what was intended to be a
+demonstrative welcome, prompted by her mother, was rubbing her head
+against his ribs like a calf against a fence, he had felt he ought to
+hook her to the conversation somehow. John's concern about Frida was
+solved by the others' gathering round him for greetings.
+
+First Hilda offered her sallow cheek, patting while he kissed it her
+brother on the back with one hand, and with the other manipulating
+Harold in such a way as to give John the impression that his nephew was
+being forced into his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"He feels you're his father now," whispered Hilda with a look that was
+meant to express the tender resignation of widowhood, but which only
+succeeded in suggesting a covetous maternity. John doubted if Harold
+felt anything but a desire to escape from being sandwiched between his
+mother's crape and his uncle's watch chain, and he turned to embrace
+Edith, whose cheeks, soft and pink as a toy balloon, were floating
+tremulously expectant upon the glinting autumn air.
+
+"We've been so anxious about you," Edith murmured. "And Laurence has
+such a lot to talk over with you."
+
+John, with a slight sinking that was not altogether due to its being
+past his usual luncheon hour, turned to be welcomed by his
+brother-in-law.
+
+The vicar of Newton Candover's serenity if he had not been a tall and
+handsome man might have been mistaken for smugness; as it was, his
+personality enveloped the scene with a ceremonious dignity that was not
+less than archidiaconal, and except for his comparative youthfulness (he
+was the same age as John) might well have been considered
+archiepiscopal.
+
+"Edith has been anxious about you. Indeed, we have all been anxious
+about you," he intoned, offering his hand to John, for whom the sweet
+damp odors of autumn became a whiff of pious women's veils, while the
+leaves fluttering gently down from the tulip tree in the middle of the
+lawn lisped like the India-paper of prayer-books.
+
+"I've got an air-gun, Uncle John," ejaculated Harold, who having for
+some time been inhaling the necessary breath now expelled the sentence
+in a burst as if he had been an air-gun himself. John hailed the
+announcement almost effusively; it reached him with the kind of relief
+with which in childhood he had heard the number of the final hymn
+announced; and a robin piping his delicate tune from the garden wall was
+welcome as birdsong in a churchyard had been after service on Sundays
+handicapped by the litany.
+
+"Would you like to see me shoot at something?" Harold went on, hastily
+cramming his mouth with slugs.
+
+"Not now, dear," said Hilda, hastily. "Uncle John is tired. And don't
+eat sweets just before lunch."
+
+"Well, it wouldn't tire him to see me shoot at something. And I'm not
+eating sweets. I'm getting ready to load."
+
+"Let the poor child shoot if he wants to," Grandma put in.
+
+Harold beamed ferociously through his spectacles, took a slug from his
+mouth, fitted it into the air-gun, and fired, bringing down two leaves
+from an espalier pear. Everybody applauded him, because everybody felt
+glad that it had not been a window or perhaps even himself; the robin
+cocked his tail contemptuously and flew away.
+
+"And now I must go and get ready for lunch," said John, who thought a
+second shot might be less innocuous, and was moreover really hungry. His
+bedroom, dimity draped, had a pleasant rustic simplicity, but he decided
+that it wanted living in: the atmosphere at present was too much that of
+a well-recommended country inn.
+
+"Yes, it wants living in," said John to himself. "I shall put in a good
+month here and break the back of Joan of Arc."
+
+"What skin is this, Uncle John?" a serious voice at his elbow inquired.
+John started; he had not observed Harold's scout-like entrance.
+
+"What skin is that, my boy?" he repeated in what he thought was the
+right tone of avuncular jocularity and looking down at Harold, who was
+examining with myopic intensity the dressing-case. "That is the skin of
+a white elephant."
+
+"But it's brown," Harold objected.
+
+John rashly decided to extend his facetiousness.
+
+"Yes, well, white elephants turn brown when they're shot, just as
+lobsters turn red when they're boiled."
+
+"Who shot it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know--probably some friend of the gentleman who keeps the
+shop where I bought it."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Well, I can't exactly say when--but probably about three years ago."
+
+"Father used to shoot elephants, didn't he?"
+
+"Yes, my boy, your father used to shoot elephants."
+
+"Perhaps he shot this one."
+
+"Perhaps he did."
+
+"Was he a friend of the gentleman who keeps the shop where you bought
+it?"
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," said John.
+
+"Wouldn't you?" said Harold, skeptically. "My father was an asplorer.
+When I'm big I'm going to be an asplorer, too; but I sha'n't be friends
+with shopkeepers."
+
+"Confounded little snob," John thought, and began to look for his
+nailbrush, the address of whose palatial residence of pigskin only Maud
+knew.
+
+"What are you looking for, Uncle John?" Harold asked.
+
+"I'm looking for my nailbrush, Harold."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"To clean my nails."
+
+"Are they dirty?"
+
+"Well, they're just a little grubby after the railway journey."
+
+"Mine aren't," Harold affirmed in a lofty tone. Then after a minute he
+added: "I thought perhaps you were looking for the present you brought
+me from America."
+
+John turned pale and made up his mind to creep unobserved after lunch
+into the market town of Galton and visit the local toyshop. It would be
+an infernal nuisance, but it served him right for omitting to bring
+presents either for his nephew or his niece.
+
+"You're too smart," he said nervously to Harold. "Present time will be
+after tea." The sentence sounded contradictory somehow, and he changed
+it to "the time for presents will be five o'clock."
+
+"Why?" Harold asked.
+
+John was saved from answering by a tap at the door, followed by the
+entrance of Mrs. Curtis.
+
+"Oh, Harold's with you?" she exclaimed, as if it were the most
+surprising juxtaposition in the world.
+
+"Yes, Harold's with me," John agreed.
+
+"You mustn't let him bother you, but he's been so looking forward to
+your arrival. _When_ is Uncle coming, he kept asking."
+
+"Did he ask _why_ I was coming?"
+
+Hilda looked at her brother blankly, and John made up his mind to try
+that look on Harold some time.
+
+"Have you got everything you want?" she asked, solicitously.
+
+"He hasn't got his nailbrush," said Harold.
+
+Hilda assumed an expression of exaggerated alarm.
+
+"Oh dear, I hope it hasn't been lost."
+
+"No, no, no, it'll turn up in one of the glass bottles. I was just
+telling Harold that I haven't really begun my unpacking yet."
+
+"Uncle John's brought me a present from America," Harold proclaimed in
+accents of greedy pride.
+
+Hilda seized her brother's hand affectionately.
+
+"Now you oughtn't to have done that. It's spoiling him. It really is.
+Harold never expects presents."
+
+"What a liar," thought John. "But not a bigger one than I am myself," he
+supplemented, and then he announced aloud that he must go into Galton
+after lunch and send off an important telegram to his agent.
+
+"I wonder ..." Hilda began, but with an arch look she paused and seemed
+to thrust aside temptation.
+
+"What?" John weakly asked.
+
+"Why ... but no, he might bore you by walking too slowly. Harold," she
+added, seriously, "if Uncle John is kind enough to take you into Galton
+with him, will you be a good boy and leave your butterfly net at home?"
+
+"If I may take my air-gun," Harold agreed.
+
+John rapidly went over in his mind the various places where Harold might
+be successfully detained while he was in the toyshop, decided that the
+risk would be too great, pulled himself together, and declined the
+pleasure of his nephew's company on the ground that he must think over
+very carefully the phrasing of the telegram he had to send, a mental
+process, he explained, that Harold might distract.
+
+"Another day, darling," said Hilda, consolingly.
+
+"And then I'll be able to take my fishing-rod," said Harold.
+
+"He is so like his poor father," Hilda murmured.
+
+John was thinking sympathetically of the distant Amazonian tribe that
+had murdered Daniel Curtis, when there was another tap at the door, and
+Frida crackling loudly in a clean pinafore came in to say that the bell
+for lunch was just going to ring.
+
+"Yes, dear," said her aunt. "Uncle John knows already. Don't bother him
+now. He's tired after his journey. Come along, Harold."
+
+"He can have my nailbrush if he likes," Harold offered.
+
+"Run, darling, and get it quickly then."
+
+Harold rushed out of the room and could be heard hustling his cousin all
+down the corridor, evoking complaints of "Don't, Harold, you rough boy,
+you're crumpling my frock."
+
+The bell for lunch sounded gratefully at this moment, and John, without
+even washing his hands, hurried downstairs trying to look like a hungry
+ogre, so anxious was he to avoid using Harold's nailbrush.
+
+The dining-room at Ambles was a long low room with a large open
+fireplace and paneled walls; from the window-seats bundles of drying
+lavender competed pleasantly with the smell of hot kidney-beans upon the
+table, at the head of which John took his rightful place; opposite to
+him, placid as an untouched pudding, sat Grandmama. Laurence said grace
+without being invited after standing up for a moment with an expression
+of pained interrogation; Edith accompanied his words by making with her
+forefinger and thumb a minute cruciform incision between two of the
+bones of her stays, and inclined her head solemnly toward Frida in a
+mute exhortation to follow her mother's example. Harold flashed his
+spectacles upon every dish in turn; Emily's waiting was during this meal
+of reunion colored with human affection.
+
+"Well, I'm glad to be back in England," said John, heartily.
+
+An encouraging murmur rippled round the table from his relations.
+
+"Are these French beans from our own garden?" John asked presently.
+
+"Scarlet-runners," Hilda corrected. "Yes, of course. We never trouble
+the greengrocer. The frosts have been so light ..."
+
+"I haven't got a bean left," said Laurence.
+
+John nearly gave a visible jump; there was something terribly suggestive
+in that simple horticultural disclaimer.
+
+"Our beans are quite over," added Edith in the astonished voice of one
+who has tumbled upon a secret of nature. She had a habit of echoing many
+of her husband's remarks like this; perhaps "echoing" is a bad
+description of her method, for she seldom repeated literally and often
+not immediately. Sometimes indeed she would wait as long as half an hour
+before she reissued in the garb of a personal philosophical discovery
+or of an exegitical gloss the most casual remark of Laurence, a habit
+which irritated him and embarrassed other people, who would look away
+from Edith and mutter a hurried agreement or ask for the salt to be
+passed.
+
+"I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that beans were a favorite dish
+of poor Papa, though I myself always liked peas better."
+
+"I like peas," Harold proclaimed.
+
+"I like peas, too," cried Frida excitedly.
+
+"Frida," said her father, pulling out with a click one of the graver
+tenor stops in his voice, "we do not talk at table about our likes and
+dislikes."
+
+Edith indorsed this opinion with a grave nod at Frida, or rather with a
+solemn inclination of the head as if she were bowing to an altar.
+
+"But I like new potatoes best of all," continued Harold. "My gosh, all
+buttery!"
+
+Laurence screwed up his eye in a disgusted wince, looked down his nose
+at his plate, and drew a shocked cork from his throat.
+
+"Hush," said Hilda. "Didn't you hear what Uncle Laurence said, darling?"
+
+She spoke as one speaks to children in church when the organ begins; one
+felt that she was inspired by social tact rather than by any real
+reverence for the clergyman.
+
+"Well, I do like new potatoes, and I like asparagus."
+
+Frida was just going to declare for asparagus, too, when she caught her
+father's eye and choked.
+
+"Evidently the vegetable that Frida likes best," said John, riding
+buoyantly upon the gale of Frida's convulsions, "is an artichoke."
+
+It is perhaps lucky for professional comedians that rich uncles and
+judges rarely go on the stage; their occupation might be even more
+arduous if they had to face such competitors. Anyway, John had enough
+success with his joke to feel much more hopeful of being able to find
+suitable presents in Galton for Harold and Frida; and in the silence of
+exhaustion that succeeded the laughter he broke the news of his having
+to go into town and dispatch an urgent telegram that very afternoon,
+mentioning incidentally that he might see about a dog-cart, and, of
+course, at the same time a horse. Everybody applauded his resolve except
+his brother-in-law who looked distinctly put out.
+
+"But you won't be gone before I get back?" John asked.
+
+Laurence and Edith exchanged glances fraught with the unuttered
+solemnities of conjugal comprehension.
+
+"Well, I _had_ wanted to have a talk over things with you after lunch,"
+Laurence explained. "In fact, I have a good deal to talk over. I should
+suggest driving you in to Galton, but I find it impossible to talk
+freely while driving. Even our poor old pony has been known to shy. Yes,
+indeed, poor old Primrose often shies."
+
+John mentally blessed the aged animal's youthful heart, and said, to
+cover his relief, that old maids were often more skittish than young
+ones.
+
+"Why?" asked Harold.
+
+Everybody felt that Harold's question was one that should not be
+answered.
+
+"You wouldn't understand, darling," said his mother; and the dining-room
+became tense with mystery.
+
+"Of course, if we could have dinner put forward half an hour," said
+Laurence, dragging the conversation out of the slough of sex, "we could
+avail ourselves of the moon."
+
+"Yes, you see," Edith put in eagerly, "it wouldn't be so dark with the
+moon."
+
+Laurence knitted his brow at this and his wife hastened to add that an
+earlier dinner would bring Frida's bed-time much nearer to its normal
+hour.
+
+"The point is that I have a great deal to talk over with John," Laurence
+irritably explained, "and that," he looked as if he would have liked to
+add "Frida's bed-time can go to the devil," but he swallowed the impious
+dedication and crumbled his bread.
+
+Finally, notwithstanding that everybody felt very full of roast beef and
+scarlet-runners, it was decided to dine at half-past six instead of
+half-past seven.
+
+"Poor Papa, I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "always liked to dine
+at half-past three. That gave him a nice long morning for his patients
+and time to smoke his cigar after dinner before he opened the dispensary
+in the evening. Supper was generally cold unless he anticipated a night
+call, in which case we had soup."
+
+All were glad that the twentieth century had arrived, and they smiled
+sympathetically at the old lady, who, feeling that her anecdote had
+scored a hit, embarked upon another about being taken to the Great
+Exhibition when she was eleven years old, which lasted right through the
+pudding, perhaps because it was trifle, and Harold did not feel inclined
+to lose a mouthful by rash interruptions.
+
+After lunch John was taken all over the house and all round the garden
+and congratulated time after time upon the wisdom he had shown in buying
+Ambles: he was made to feel that property set him apart from other men
+even more definitely than dramatic success.
+
+"Of course, Daniel was famous in his way," Hilda said. "But what did he
+leave me?"
+
+John, remembering the L120 a year in the bank and the collection of
+stuffed humming birds at the pantechnicon, the importation of which to
+Ambles he was always dreading, felt that Hilda was not being
+ungratefully rhetorical.
+
+"And of course," Laurence contributed, "a vicar feels that his
+glebe--the value of which by the way has just gone down another L2 an
+acre--is not his own."
+
+"Yes, you see," Edith put in, "if anything horrid happened to Laurence
+it would belong to the next vicar."
+
+Again the glances of husband and wife played together in mid-air like
+butterflies.
+
+"And so," Laurence went on, "when you tell us that you hope to buy this
+twenty-acre field we all realize that in doing so you would most
+emphatically be consolidating your property."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure you're wise to buy," said Hilda, weightily.
+
+"It would make Ambles so much larger, wouldn't it?" suggested Edith.
+"Twenty acres, you see ... well, really, I suppose twenty acres would be
+as big as from...."
+
+"Come, Edith," said her husband. "Don't worry poor John with comparative
+acres--we are all looking at the twenty-acre field now."
+
+The fierce little Kerry cows eyed the prospective owner peacefully,
+until Harold hit one of them with a slug from his air-gun, when they all
+began to career about the field, kicking up their heels and waving their
+tails.
+
+"Don't do that, my boy," John said, crossly--for him very crossly.
+
+A short cut to Galton lay across this field, which John, though even
+when they were quiet he never felt on really intimate terms with cows,
+had just decided to follow.
+
+"Darling, that's such a cruel thing to do," Hilda expostulated. "The
+poor cow wasn't hurting you."
+
+"It was looking at me," Harold protested.
+
+"There is a legend about Francis of Assisi, Harold," his Uncle Laurence
+began, "which will interest you and at the same time...."
+
+"Sorry to interrupt," John broke in, "but I must be getting along. This
+telegram.... I'll be back for tea."
+
+He hurried off and when everybody called out to remind him of the short
+cut across the twenty-acre field he waved back cheerfully, as if he
+thought he was being wished a jolly walk; but he took the long way
+round.
+
+It was a good five miles to Galton in the opposite direction from the
+road by which he had driven up that morning; but on this fine autumn
+afternoon, going down hill nearly all the way through a foreground of
+golden woods with prospects of blue distances beyond, John enjoyed the
+walk, and not less because even at the beginning of it he stopped once
+or twice to think how jolly it would be to see Miss Hamilton and Miss
+Merritt coming round the next bend in the road. Later on, he did not
+bother to include Miss Merritt, and finally he discovered his fancy so
+steadily fixed upon Miss Hamilton that he was forced to remind himself
+that Miss Hamilton in such a setting would demand a much higher standard
+of criticism than Miss Hamilton on the promenade deck of the _Murmania_.
+Nevertheless, John continued to think of her; and so pleasantly did her
+semblance walk beside him and so exceptionally mild was the afternoon
+for the season of the year that he must have strolled along the greater
+part of the way. At any rate, when he saw the tower of Galton church he
+was shocked to find that it was already four o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The selection of presents for children is never easy, because in order
+to extract real pleasure from the purchase it is necessary to find
+something that excites the donor as much as it is likely to excite the
+recipient. In John's case this difficulty was quadrupled by having to
+find toys with an American air about them, and on top of that by the
+narrowly restricted choice in the Galton shops. He felt that it would be
+ridiculous, even insulting, to produce for Frida as typical of New
+York's luxurious catering for the young that doll, the roses of whose
+cheeks had withered in the sunlight of five Hampshire summers, and whose
+smile had failed to allure as little girls those who were now
+marriageable young women. Nor did he think that Harold would accept as
+worthy of American enterprise those more conspicuous portions of a
+diminutive Uhlan's uniform fastened to a dog's-eared sheet of cardboard,
+the sword belonging to which was rusting in the scabbard and the gilt
+lancehead of which no longer gave the least illusion of being metal.
+Finally, however, just as the clock was striking five he unearthed from
+a remote corner of the large ironmonger's shop, to which he had turned
+in despair from the toys offered him by the two stationers, a toboggan,
+and not merely a toboggan but a Canadian toboggan stamped with the image
+of a Red Indian.
+
+"It was ordered for a customer in 1895," the ironmonger explained.
+"There was heavy snow that year, you may remember."
+
+If it had been ordered by Methuselah when he was still in his 'teens
+John would not have hesitated.
+
+"Well, would you--er--wrap it up," he said, putting down the money.
+
+"Hadn't the carrier better bring it, sir?" suggested the ironmonger.
+"He'll be going Wrottesford way to-morrow morning."
+
+Obviously John could not carry the toboggan five miles, but just as
+obviously he must get the toboggan back to Ambles that night: so he
+declined the carrier, and asked the ironmonger to order him a fly while
+he made a last desperate search for Frida's present. In the end, with
+twilight falling fast, he bought for his niece twenty-nine small china
+animals, which the stationer assured him would enchant any child between
+nine and eleven, though perhaps less likely to appeal to ages outside
+that period. A younger child, for instance, might be tempted to put them
+in its mouth, even to swallow them if not carefully watched, while an
+older child might tread on them. Another advantage was that when the
+young lady for whom they were intended grew out of them, they could be
+put away and revived to adorn her mantelpiece when she had reached an
+age to appreciate the possibilities of a mantelpiece. John did not feel
+as happy about these animals as he did about the toboggan: there was not
+a single buffalo among them, and not one looked in the least
+distinctively American, but the stationer was so reassuring and time was
+going by so rapidly that he decided to risk the purchase. And really
+when they were deposited in a cardboard box among cotton-wool they did
+not look so dull, and perhaps Frida would enjoy guessing how many there
+were before she unpacked them.
+
+"Better than a Noah's Ark," said John, hopefully.
+
+"Oh yes, much better, sir. A much more suitable present for a young
+lady. In fact Noah's Arks are considered all right for village treats,
+but they're in very little demand among the gentry nowadays."
+
+When John was within a quarter of a mile from Ambles he told the driver
+of the fly to stop. Somehow he must creep into the house and up to his
+room with the toboggan and the china animals; it was after six, and the
+children would have been looking out for his return since five. Perhaps
+the cows would have gone home by now and he should not excite their
+nocturnal apprehensions by dragging the toboggan across the twenty-acre
+field. Meanwhile, he should tell the fly to wait five minutes before
+driving slowly up to the house, which would draw the scent and enable
+him with Emily's help to reach his room unperceived by the backstairs. A
+heavy mist hung upon the meadow, and the paper wrapped round the
+toboggan, which was just too wide to be carried under his arm like a
+portfolio, began to peel off in the dew with a swishing sound that would
+inevitably attract the curiosity of the cows were they still at large;
+moreover, several of the china animals were now chinking together and,
+John could not help feeling with some anxiety, probably chipping off
+their noses.
+
+"I must look like a broken-down Santa Claus with this vehicle," he said
+to himself. "Where's the path got to now? I wonder why people wiggle so
+when they make a path? Hullo! What's that?"
+
+The munching of cattle was audible close at hand, a munching that was
+sometimes interrupted by awful snorts.
+
+"Perhaps it's only the mist that makes them do that," John tried to
+assure himself. "It seems very imprudent to leave valuable cows out of
+doors on a damp night like this."
+
+There was a sound of heavy bodies moving suddenly in unison.
+
+"They've heard me," thought John, hopelessly. "I wish to goodness I knew
+something about cows. I really must get the subject up. Of course, they
+_may_ be frightened of _me_. Good heavens, they're all snorting now.
+Probably the best thing to do is to keep on calmly walking; most animals
+are susceptible to human indifference. What a little fool that nephew of
+mine was to shoot at them this afternoon. I'm hanged if he deserves his
+toboggan."
+
+The lights of Ambles stained the mist in front; John ran the last fifty
+yards, threw himself over the iron railings, and stood panting upon his
+own lawn. In the distance could be heard the confused thudding of hoofs
+dying away toward the far end of the twenty-acre meadow.
+
+"I evidently frightened them," John thought.
+
+A few minutes later he was calling down from the landing outside his
+bedroom that it was time for presents. In the first brief moment of
+intoxication that had succeeded his defeat of the cattle John had
+seriously contemplated tobogganing downstairs himself in order to
+"surprise the kids" as he put it. But from his landing the staircase
+looked all wrong for such an experiment and he walked the toboggan down,
+which lamplight appeared to him a typical product of the bear-haunted
+mountains of Canada.
+
+Everybody was waiting for him in the drawing-room; everybody was
+flatteringly enthusiastic about the toboggan and seemed anxious to make
+it at home in such strange surroundings; nobody failed to point out to
+the lucky boy the extreme kindness of his uncle in bringing back such a
+wonderful present all the way from America--indeed one almost had the
+impression that John must often have had to wake up and feed it in the
+night.
+
+"The trouble you must have taken," Hilda exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, I did take a good deal of trouble," John admitted. After all, so
+he had--a damned sight more trouble than any one there suspected.
+
+"When will it snow?" Harold asked. "To-morrow?"
+
+"I hope not--I mean, it might," said John. He must keep up Harold's
+spirits, if only to balance Frida's depression, about whose present he
+was beginning to feel very doubtful when he saw her eyes glittering with
+feverish anticipation while he was undoing the string. He hoped she
+would not faint or scream with disappointment when it was opened, and he
+took off the lid of the box with the kind of flourish to which waiters
+often treat dish-covers when they wish to promote an appetite among the
+guests.
+
+"How sweet," Edith murmured.
+
+John looked gratefully at his sister; if he had made his will that night
+she would have inherited Ambles.
+
+"Ah, a collection of small china animals," said Laurence, choosing a cat
+to set delicately upon the table for general admiration. John wished he
+had not chosen the cat that seemed to suffer with a tumor in the region
+of the tail and disinclined in consequence to sit still.
+
+"Yes, I was anxious to get her a Noah's Ark," John volunteered, seeming
+to suggest by his tone how appropriate such a gift would have been to
+the atmosphere of a vicarage. "But they've practically given up making
+Noah's Arks in America, and you see, these china animals will serve as
+toys now, and later on, when Frida is grown-up, they'll look jolly on
+the mantelpiece. Those that are not broken, of course."
+
+The animals had all been taken out of their box by now, but a few paws
+and ears were still adhering to the cotton-wool.
+
+"Frida is always very light on her toys," said Edith, proudly.
+
+"Not likely to put them in her mouth," said John, heartily. "That was
+the only thing that made me hesitate when I first saw them in Fifth
+Avenue. But they don't look quite so edible here."
+
+"Frida never puts anything in her mouth," Edith generalized, primly.
+"And she's given up biting her nails since Uncle John came home, haven't
+you, dear?"
+
+"That's a good girl," John applauded; he did not believe in Frida's
+sudden conquest of autophagy, but he was anxious to encourage her in
+every way at the moment.
+
+Yes, the gift-horses had shown off their paces better than he had
+expected, he decided. To be sure, Frida did not appear beside herself
+with joy, but at any rate she had not burst into tears--she had not
+thrust the present from her sight with loathing and begged to be taken
+home. And then Harold, who had been staring at the animals through his
+glasses, like the horrid little naturalist that he was, said:
+
+"I've seen some animals like them in Mr. Goodman's shop."
+
+John hoped a blizzard would blow to-morrow, that Harold would toboggan
+recklessly down the steepest slope of the downs behind Ambles, and that
+he would hit an oak tree at the bottom and break his glasses. However,
+none of these dark thoughts obscured the remote brightness with which he
+answered:
+
+"Really, Harold. Very likely. There is a considerable exportation of
+china animals from America nowadays. In fact I was very lucky to find
+any left in America."
+
+"Let's go into Gallon to-morrow and look at Mr. Goodman's animals,"
+Harold suggested.
+
+John had never suspected that one day he should feel grateful to his
+brother-in-law; but when the dinner-bell went at half-past six instead
+of half-past seven solely on his account, John felt inclined to shake
+him by the hand. Nor would he have ever supposed that he should one day
+welcome the prospect of one of Laurence's long confidential talks. Yet
+when the ladies departed after dessert and Laurence took the chair next
+to himself as solemnly as if it were a fald-stool, he encouraged him
+with a smile.
+
+"We might have our little talk now," and when Laurence cleared his
+throat John felt that the conversation had been opened as successfully
+as a local bazaar. Not merely did John smile encouragingly, but he
+actually went so far as to invite him to go ahead.
+
+Laurence sighed, and poured himself out a second glass of port.
+
+"I find myself in a position of considerable difficulty," he announced,
+"and should like your advice."
+
+John's mind went rapidly to the balance in his passbook instead of to
+the treasure of worldly experience from which he might have drawn.
+
+"Perhaps before we begin our little talk," said Laurence, "it would be
+as well if I were to remind you of some of the outstanding events and
+influences in my life. You will then be in a better position to give me
+the advice and help--ah--the moral help, of which I stand in
+need--ah--in sore need."
+
+"He keeps calling it a little talk," John thought, "but by Jove, it's
+lucky we did have dinner early. At this rate he won't get back to his
+vicarage before cock-crow."
+
+John was not deceived by his brother-in-law's minification of their
+talk, and he exchanged the trim Henry Clay he had already clipped for a
+very large Upman that would smoke for a good hour.
+
+"Won't you light up before you begin?" he asked, pushing a box of
+commonplace Murillos toward his brother-in-law, whose habit of biting
+off the end of a cigar, of letting it go out, of continually knocking
+off the ash, of forgetting to remove the band till it was smoldering,
+and of playing miserable little tunes with it on the rim of a
+coffee-cup, in fact of doing everything with it except smoke it
+appreciatively, made it impossible for John, so far as Laurence was
+concerned, to be generous with his cigars.
+
+"I think you'll find these not bad."
+
+This was true; the Murillos were not actually bad.
+
+"Thanks, I will avail myself of your offer. But to come back to what I
+was saying," Laurence went on, lighting his cigar with as little
+expression of anticipated pleasure as might be discovered in the
+countenance of a lodging-house servant lighting a fire. "I do not
+propose to occupy your time by an account of my spiritual struggles at
+the University."
+
+"You ought to write a novel," said John, cheerfully.
+
+Laurence looked puzzled.
+
+"I am now occupied with the writing of a play, but I shall come to that
+presently. Novels, however...."
+
+"I was only joking," said John. "It would take too long to explain the
+joke. Sorry I interrupted you. Cigar gone out? Don't take another. It
+doesn't really matter how often those Murillos go out."
+
+"Where am I?" Laurence asked in a bewildered voice.
+
+"You'd just left Oxford," John answered, quickly.
+
+"Ah, yes, I was at Oxford. Well, as I was saying, I shall not detain you
+with an account of my spiritual struggles there.... I think I may
+almost without presumption refer to them as my spiritual progress ...
+let it suffice that I found myself on the vigil of my ordination after a
+year at Cuddesdon Theological College a convinced High Churchman. This
+must not be taken to mean that I belonged to the more advanced or what I
+should prefer to call the Italian party in the Church of England. I did
+not."
+
+Laurence here paused and looked at John earnestly; since John had not
+the remotest idea what the Italian party meant and was anxious to avoid
+being told, he said in accents that sought to convey relief at hearing
+his brother-in-law's personal contradiction of a charge that had for
+long been whispered against him:
+
+"Oh, you didn't?"
+
+"No, I did not. I was not prepared to go one jot or one tittle beyond
+the Five Points."
+
+"Of the compass, you mean," said John, wisely. "Quite so."
+
+Then seeing that Laurence seemed rather indignant, he added quickly,
+"Did I say the compass? How idiotic! Of course, I meant the law."
+
+"The Five Points are the Eastward Position...."
+
+"It was the compass after all," John thought. "What a fool I was to
+hedge."
+
+"The Mixed Chalice, Lights, Wafer Bread, and Vestments, but _not_ the
+ceremonial use of Incense."
+
+"And those are the Five Points?"
+
+Laurence inclined his head.
+
+"Which you were not prepared to go beyond, I think you said?" John
+gravely continued, flattering himself that he was re-established as an
+intelligent listener.
+
+"In adhering to these Five Points," Laurence proceeded, "I found that I
+was able to claim the support of a number of authoritative English
+divines. I need only mention Bishop Ken and Bishop Andrews for you to
+appreciate my position."
+
+"Eastward, I think you said," John put in; for his brother-in-law had
+paused again, and he was evidently intended to say something.
+
+"I perceive that you are not acquainted with the divergences of opinion
+that unhappily exist in our national Church."
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth--and I know you'll excuse my frankness--I
+haven't been to church since I was a boy," John admitted. "But I know I
+used to dislike the litany very much, and of course I had my favorite
+hymns--we most of us have--and really I think that's as far as I got.
+However, I have to get up the subject of religion very shortly. My next
+play will deal with Joan of Arc, and, as you may imagine, religion plays
+an important part in such a theme--a very important part. In addition to
+the vision that Joan will have of St. Michael in the first act, one of
+my chief unsympathetic characters is a bishop. I hope I'm not hurting
+your feelings in telling you this, my dear fellow. Have another cigar,
+won't you? I think you've dipped the end of that one in the
+coffee-lees."
+
+Laurence assured John bitterly that he had no reason to be particularly
+fond of bishops. "In fact," he went on, "I'm having a very painful
+discussion with the Bishop of Silchester at this moment, but I shall
+come to that presently. What I am anxious, however, to impress upon you
+at this stage in our little talk is the fact that on the vigil of my
+ordination I had arrived at a definite theory of what I could and could
+not accept. Well, I was ordained deacon by the Bishop of St. Albans and
+licensed to a curacy in Plaistow--one of the poorest districts in the
+East End of London. Here I worked for three years, and it was here that
+fourteen years ago I first met Edith."
+
+"Yes, I seem to remember. Wasn't she working at a girls' club or
+something? I know I always thought that there must be a secondary
+attraction."
+
+"At that time my financial position was not such as to warrant my
+embarking upon matrimony. Moreover, I had in a moment of what I should
+now call boyish exaltation registered a vow of perpetual celibacy.
+Edith, however, with that devotion which neither then nor at any crisis
+since has failed me expressed her willingness to consent to an
+indefinite engagement, and I remember with gratitude that it was just
+this consent of hers which was the means of widening the narrow--ah--the
+all too narrow path which at that time I was treading in religion. My
+vicar and I had a painful dispute upon some insignificant doctrinal
+point; I felt bound to resign my curacy, and take another under a man
+who could appreciate and allow for my speculative temperament. I became
+curate to St. Thomas's, Kensington, and had hopes of ultimately being
+preferred to a living. I realized in fact that the East End was a
+cul-de-sac for a young and--if I may so describe myself without being
+misunderstood--ambitious curate. For three years I remained at St.
+Thomas's and obtained a considerable reputation as a preacher. You may
+or may not remember that some Advent Addresses of mine were reprinted in
+one of the more tolerant religious weeklies and obtained what I do not
+hesitate to call the honor of being singled out for malicious abuse by
+the _Church Times_. Eleven years ago my dear father died and by leaving
+me an independence of L417 a year enabled me not merely to marry Edith,
+but very soon afterwards to accept the living of Newton Candover. I will
+not detain you with the history of my financial losses, which I hope I
+have always welcomed in the true spirit of resignation. Let it suffice
+that within a few years owing to my own misplaced charity and some bad
+advice from a relative of mine on the Stock Exchange my private income
+dwindled to L152, while at the same time the gross income of Newton
+Candover from L298 sank to the abominably low nett income of L102--a
+serious reflection, I think you will agree, upon the shocking financial
+system of our national Church. It may surprise you, my dear John, to
+learn that such blows from fate not only did not cast me down into a
+state of spiritual despair and intellectual atrophy, but that they
+actually had the effect of inciting me to still greater efforts."
+
+John had been fumbling with his check book when Laurence began to talk
+about his income; but the unexpected turn of the narrative quietened
+him, and the Upman was going well.
+
+"You may or may not come across a little series of devotional
+meditations for the Man in the Street entitled Lamp-posts. They have a
+certain vogue, and I may tell you in confidence that under the pseudonym
+of The Lamplighter I wrote them. The actual financial return they
+brought me was slight. Barabbas, you know, was a publisher. Ha-ha! No,
+although I made nothing, or rather practically nothing out of them for
+my own purse, by leading me to browse among many modern works of
+theology and philosophy I began to realize that there was a great deal
+of reason for modern indifference and skepticism. In other words, I
+discovered that, in order to keep the man in the street a Christian,
+Christianity must adapt itself to his needs. Filled with a reverent
+enthusiasm and perhaps half-consciously led along such a path by your
+conspicuous example of success, I have sought to embody my theories in a
+play, the protagonist of which is the apostle Thomas, whom when you read
+the play you will easily recognize as the prototype of the man in the
+street. And this brings me to the reason for which I have asked you for
+this little talk. The fact of the matter is that in pursuing my studies
+of the apostle Thomas I have actually gone beyond his simple rugged
+agnosticism, and I now at forty-two years of age after eighteen years as
+a minister of religion find myself unable longer to accept in any
+literal sense of the term whatever the Virgin Birth."
+
+Laurence poured himself out a third glass of port and waited for John to
+recover from his stupefaction.
+
+"But I don't think I'm a very good person to talk to about these
+abstruse divine obstetrics," John protested. "I really haven't
+considered the question. I know of course to what you refer, but I think
+this is essentially an occasion for professional advice."
+
+"I do not ask for advice upon my beliefs," Laurence explained. "I
+recognize that nobody is able to do anything for them except myself.
+What I want you to do is to let Edith, myself, and little Frida stay
+with you at Ambles--of course we should be paying guests and you could
+use our pony and trap and any of the vicarage furniture that you thought
+suitable--until it has been decided whether I am likely or not to have
+any success as a dramatist. I do not ask you to undertake the Quixotic
+task of trying to obtain a public representation of my play about the
+apostle Thomas. I know that Biblical subjects are forbidden by the Lord
+Chamberlain, surely a monstrous piece of flunkeyism. But I have many
+other ideas for plays, and I'm convinced that you will sympathize with
+my anxiety to be able to work undisturbed and, if I may say so, in close
+propinquity to another playwright who is already famous."
+
+"But why do you want to leave your own vicarage?" John gasped.
+
+"My dear fellow, owing to what I can only call the poisonous behavior of
+Mrs. Paxton, my patron, to whom while still a curate at St. Thomas's,
+Kensington, I gave an abundance of spiritual consolation when she
+suffered the loss of her husband, owing as I say to her poisonous
+behavior following upon a trifling quarrel about some alterations I made
+in the fabric of _my_ church without consulting her, I have been subject
+to ceaseless inquisition and persecution. There has been an outcry in
+the more bigoted religious press about my doctrine, and in short I have
+thought it best and most dignified to resign my living. I am therefore,
+to use a colloquialism,--ah--at a loose end."
+
+"And Edith?" John asked.
+
+"My poor wife still clings with feminine loyalty to those accretions to
+faith from which I have cut myself free. In most things she is at one
+with me, but I have steadily resisted the temptation to intrude upon the
+sanctity of her intimate beliefs. She sees my point of view. Of her
+sympathy I can only speak with gratitude. But she is still an
+old-fashioned believer. And indeed I am glad, for I should not like to
+think of her tossed upon the stormy seas of doubt and exposed to
+the--ah--hurricanes of speculation that surge through my own brains."
+
+"And when do you want to move in to Ambles?"
+
+"Well, if it would be convenient, we should like to begin gradually
+to-morrow. I have informed the Bishop that I will--ah--be out in a
+fortnight."
+
+"But what about Hilda?" John asked, doubtfully. "She is really looking
+after Ambles for me, you know."
+
+"While we have been having our little talk in the dining-room Edith has
+been having her little talk with Hilda in the drawing-room, and I think
+I hear them coming now."
+
+John looked up quickly to see the effect of that other little talk, and
+determined to avoid for that night at least anything in the nature of
+little talks with anybody.
+
+"Laurence dear," said Edith mildly, "isn't it time we were going?"
+
+John knew that not Hilda herself could have phrased more aptly what she
+was feeling; he was sure that in her opinion it was indeed high time
+that Edith and Laurence were going.
+
+Laurence went over to the window and pulled aside the curtains to
+examine the moon.
+
+"Yes, my dear, I think we might have Primrose harnessed. Where is
+Frida?"
+
+"She is watching Harold arrange the animals that John gave her. They are
+playing at visiting the Natural History Museum."
+
+John was aware that he had not yet expressed his own willingness for the
+Armitage family to move into Ambles; he was equally aware that Hilda was
+trying to catch his eye with a questioning and indignant glance and that
+he had already referred the decision to her. At the same time he could
+not bring himself to exalt Hilda above Edith who was the younger and he
+was bound to admit the favorite of his two sisters; moreover, Hilda was
+the mother of Harold, and if Harold was to be considered tolerable in
+the same house as himself, he could not deny as much of his forbearance
+to Laurence.
+
+"Well, I suppose you two girls have settled it between you?" he said.
+
+Hilda, who did not seem either surprised or elated at being called a
+girl, observed coldly that naturally it was for John to decide, but that
+if the vicarage family was going to occupy Ambles extra furniture would
+be required immediately.
+
+"My dear," said Laurence. "Didn't you make it clear to Hilda that as
+much of the vicarage furniture as is required can be sent here
+immediately? John and I had supposed that you were settling all these
+little domestic details during your little talk together."
+
+"No, dear," Edith said, "we settled nothing. Hilda felt, and of course I
+can't help agreeing with her, that it is really asking too much of John.
+She reminded me that he has come down here to work."
+
+The last icicle of opposition melted from John's heart; he could not
+bear to think of Edith's being lectured all the way home by her husband
+under the light of a setting moon. "I dare say we can manage," he said,
+"and really, you know Hilda, it will do the rooms good to be lived in. I
+noticed this afternoon a slight smell of damp coming from the
+unfurnished part of the house."
+
+"Apples, not damp," Hilda snapped. "I had the apples stored in one of
+the disused rooms."
+
+"All these problems will solve themselves," said Laurence, grandly. "And
+I'm sure that John cannot wish to attempt them to-night. Let us all
+remember that he may be tired. Come along, Edith. We have a long day
+before us to-morrow. Let us say good-night to Mama."
+
+Edith started: it was the first time in eleven years of married life
+that her husband had adopted the Touchwood style of addressing or
+referring to their mother, and it seemed to set a seal upon his more
+intimate association with her family in the future. If any doubts still
+lingered about the forthcoming immigration of the vicarage party to
+Ambles they were presently disposed of once and for all by Laurence.
+
+"What are you carrying?" he asked Frida, when they were gathered in the
+hall before starting.
+
+"Uncle John's present," she replied.
+
+"Do not bother. Uncle John has invited us to stay here, and you do not
+want to expose your little animals to the risk of being chipped. No
+doubt Harold will look after them for you in the interim--the short
+interim. Come, Edith, the moon is not going to wait for us, you know. I
+have the reins. Gee-up, Primrose!"
+
+"Fond as I am of Edith," Hilda said, when the vicarage family was out of
+hearing. "Fond as I am of Edith," she repeated without any trace of
+affection in accent or expression, "I do think this invasion is an
+imposition upon your kindness. But clergymen are all alike; they all
+become dictatorial and obtuse; they're too fond of the sound of their
+own voices."
+
+"Laurence is perhaps a little heavy," John agreed, "a little suave and
+heavy like a cornflour shape, but we ought to do what we can for Edith."
+
+He tactfully offered Hilda a share in his own benevolence, in which she
+ensconced herself without hesitation.
+
+"Well, I suppose we shall have to make the best of it. Indeed the only
+thing that _really_ worries me is what we are to do with the apples."
+
+"Oh, Harold will soon eat them up," said John; though he had not the
+slightest intention of being sarcastic, Hilda was so much annoyed by
+this that she abandoned all discussion of the vicarage and talked so
+long about Harold's inside and with such a passionate insistence upon
+what he required of sweet and sour to prevent him from dropping before
+her very eyes, that John was able fairly soon to plead that the hour was
+late and that he must go to bed.
+
+In his bedroom, which was sharp-scented with autumnal airs and made him
+disinclined for sleep, John became sentimental over Edith and began to
+weave out of her troubles a fine robe for his own good-nature in which
+his sentimentality was able to show itself off. He assured himself of
+Edith's luck in having Ambles as a refuge in the difficult time through
+which she was passing and began to visualize her past life as nothing
+but a stormy prelude to a more tranquil present in which he should be
+her pilot. That Laurence would be included in his beneficence was
+certainly a flaw in the emerald of his bounty, a fly in the amber of his
+self-satisfaction; but, after all, so long as Edith was secure and happy
+such blemishes were hardly perceptible. He ought to think himself lucky
+that he was in a position to help his relations; the power of doing kind
+actions was surely the greatest privilege accorded to the successful
+man. And what right had Hilda to object? Good gracious, as if she
+herself were not dependent enough upon him! But there had always been
+visible in Hilda this wretched spirit of competition. It had been in
+just the same spirit that she had married Daniel Curtis; she had not
+been able to endure her younger sister's engagement to the tall handsome
+curate and had snatched at the middle-aged explorer in order to be
+married simultaneously and secure the best wedding presents for herself.
+But what had Daniel Curtis seen in Hilda? What had that myopic and
+taciturn man found in Hilda to gladden a short visit to England between
+his life on the Orinoco and his intended life at the back of the
+uncharted Amazons? And had his short experience of her made him so
+reckless that nothing but his spectacles were found by the rescuers?
+What mad impulse to perpetuate his name beyond the numerous beetles,
+flowers, monkeys, and butterflies to which it was already attached by
+many learned societies had led him to bequeath Harold to humanity? Was
+not his collection of humming birds enough?
+
+"I'm really very glad that Edith is coming to Ambles," John murmured.
+"Very glad indeed. It will serve Hilda right." He began to wonder if he
+actually disliked Hilda and to realize that he had never really forgiven
+her for refusing to be interested in his first published story. How well
+he remembered that occasion--twenty years ago almost to a day. It had
+been a dreary November in the time when London really did have fogs,
+and when the sense of his father's approaching death had added to the
+general gloom. James had been acting as his father's partner for more
+than a year and had already nearly ruined the practice by his
+inexperience and want of affability. George and himself were both in the
+city offices--George in wool, himself in dog-biscuits. George did not
+seem to mind the soul-destroying existence and was full of financial
+ambition; but himself had loathed it and cared for nothing but
+literature. How he had pleaded with that dry old father, whose cynical
+tormented face on its pillow smeared with cigar ash even now vividly
+haunted his memory; but the fierce old man had refused him the least
+temporary help and had actually chuckled with delight amidst all his
+pain at the thought of how his family would have to work for a living
+when he should mercifully be dead. Was it surprising, when that morning
+he had found at the office a communication from a syndicate of
+provincial papers to inform him of his story's being accepted, that he
+should have arrived home in the fog, full of hope and enthusiasm? And
+then he had been met with whispering voices and the news of his father's
+death. Of course he had been shocked and grieved, even disappointed that
+it was too late to announce his success to the old man; but he had not
+been able to resist telling Hilda, a gawky, pale-faced girl of eighteen,
+that his story had been taken. He could recall her expression in that
+befogged gaslight even now, her expression of utter lack of interest,
+faintly colored with surprise at his own bad taste. Then he had gone
+upstairs to see his mother, who was bathed in tears, though she had been
+warned at least six months ago that her husband might die at any moment.
+He had ventured after a few formal words of sympathy to lighten the
+burden of her grief by taking the auspicious communication from his
+pocket, where it had been cracking nervously between his fingers, and
+reading it to her. He had been sure that she would be interested because
+she was a great reader of stories and must surely derive a grateful
+wonder from the contemplation of her own son as an author. But she was
+evidently too much overcome by the insistency of grief and by the
+prospect of monetary difficulties in the near future to grasp what he
+was telling her; it had struck him that she had actually never realized
+that the stories she enjoyed were written by men and women any more than
+it might have struck another person that advertisements were all written
+by human beings with their own histories of love and hate.
+
+"You mustn't neglect your office work, Johnnie," was what she had said.
+"We shall want every halfpenny now that Papa is gone. James does his
+best, but the patients were more used to Papa."
+
+After these two rebuffs John had not felt inclined to break his good
+news to James, who would be sure to sneer, or to George, who would only
+laugh; so he had wandered upstairs to the old schoolroom, where he had
+found Edith sitting by a dull fire and dissuading little Hugh from
+throwing coals at the cat. As soon as he had told Edith what had
+happened she had made a hero of him, and ever afterwards treated him
+with admiration as well as affection. Had she not prophesied even that
+he would be another Dickens? That was something like sisterly love, and
+he had volunteered to read her the original rough copy, which,
+notwithstanding Hugh's whining interruptions, she had enjoyed as much as
+he had enjoyed it himself. Certainly Edith must come to Ambles; twenty
+years were not enough to obliterate the memory of that warm-hearted girl
+of fifteen and of her welcome praise.
+
+But Hugh? What malign spirit had brought Hugh to his mind at a moment
+when he was already just faintly disturbed by the prospect of his
+relations' increasing demands upon his attention? Hugh was only
+twenty-seven now and much too conspicuously for his own good the
+youngest of the family; like all children that arrive unexpectedly after
+a long interval, he had seemed the pledge of his parents' renewed youth
+on the very threshold of old age, and had been spoiled, even by his
+cross-grained old father, in consequence: as for his mother, though it
+was out of her power to spoil him extravagantly with money, she gave him
+all that she did not spend on caps for herself. John determined to make
+inquiries about Hugh to-morrow. Not another penny should he have from
+him, not another farthing. If he could not live on what he earned in the
+office of Stephen Crutchley, who had accepted the young spendthrift out
+of regard for their lifelong friendship, if he could not become a
+decent, well-behaved architect, why, he could starve. Not another penny
+... and the rest of his relations agreed with John on this point, for if
+to him Hugh was a skeleton in the family cupboard, to them he was a
+skeleton at the family feast.
+
+John expelled from his mind all misgivings about Hugh, hoped it would be
+a fine day to-morrow so that he could really look round the garden and
+see what plants wanted ordering, tried to remember the name of an
+ornamental shrub recommended by Miss Hamilton, turned over on his side,
+and went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Early next morning John dreamed that he was buying calico in an immense
+shop and that in a dreamlike inconsequence the people there, customers
+and shopmen alike, were abruptly seized with a frenzy of destruction so
+violent that they began to tear up all the material upon which they
+could lay their hands; indeed, so loud was the noise of rent cloth that
+John woke up with the sound of it still in his ears. Gradually it was
+borne in upon a brain wrestling with actuality that the noise might have
+emanated from the direction of a small casement in his bedroom looking
+eastward into the garden across a steep penthouse which ran down to
+within two feet of the ground. Although the noise had stopped some time
+before John had precisely located its whereabouts and really before he
+was perfectly convinced that he was awake, he jumped out of bed and
+hurried across the chilly boards to ascertain if after all it had only
+been a relic of his dream. No active cause was visible; but the moss,
+the stonecrop and the tiles upon the penthouse had been clawed from top
+to bottom as if by some mighty tropical cat, and John for a brief
+instant savored that elated perplexity which generally occurs to heroes
+in the opening paragraphs of a sensational novel.
+
+"It's a very old house," he thought, hopefully, and began to grade his
+reason to a condition of sycophantic credulity. "And, of course,
+anything like a ghost at seven o'clock in the morning is rare--very
+rare. The evidence would be unassailable...."
+
+After toadying to the marvelous for a while, he sought a natural
+explanation of the phenomenon and honestly tried not to want it to prove
+inexplicable. The noise began again overhead; a fleeting object darkened
+the casement like the swift passage of a bird and struck the penthouse
+below; there was a slow grinding shriek, a clatter of broken tiles and
+leaden piping; a small figure stuck all over with feathers emerged from
+the herbaceous border and smiled up at him.
+
+"Good heavens, my boy, what in creation are you trying to do?" John
+shouted, sternly.
+
+"I'm learning to toboggan, Uncle John."
+
+"But didn't I explain to you that tobogganing can only be carried out
+after a heavy snowfall?"
+
+"Well, it hasn't snowed yet," Harold pointed out in an offended voice.
+
+"Listen to me. If it snows for a month without stopping, you're never to
+toboggan down a roof. What's the good of having all those jolly hills at
+the back of the house if you don't use them?"
+
+John spoke as if he had brought back the hills from America at the same
+time as he was supposed to have brought back the toboggan.
+
+"There's a river, too," Harold observed.
+
+"You can't toboggan down a river--unless, of course, it gets frozen
+over."
+
+"I don't want to toboggan down the river, but if I had a Canadian canoe
+for the river I could wait for the snow quite easily."
+
+John, after a brief vision of a canoe being towed across the Atlantic by
+the _Murmania_, felt that he was being subjected to the lawless
+exactions of a brigand, but could think of nothing more novel in the way
+of defiance than:
+
+"Go away now and be a good boy."
+
+"Can't I ..." Harold began.
+
+"No, you can't. If those chickens' feathers...."
+
+"They're pigeons' feathers," his nephew corrected him.
+
+"If those feathers stuck in your hair are intended to convey an
+impression that you're a Red Indian chief, go and sit in your wigwam
+till breakfast and smoke the pipe of peace."
+
+"Mother said I wasn't to smoke till I was twenty-one."
+
+"Not literally, you young ass. Why, good heavens, in my young days such
+an allusion to Mayne Reid would have been eagerly taken up by any boy."
+
+Something was going wrong with this conversation, John felt, and he
+added, lamely:
+
+"Anyway, go away now."
+
+"But, Uncle John, I...."
+
+"Don't Uncle John me. I don't feel like an uncle this morning. Suppose
+I'd been shaving when you started that fool's game. I might have cut my
+head off."
+
+"But, Uncle John, I've left my spectacles on one of the chimneys. Mother
+said that whenever I was playing a rough game I was to take off my
+spectacles first."
+
+"You'll have to do without your spectacles, that's all. The gardener
+will get them for you after breakfast. Anyway, a Red Indian chief in
+spectacles is unnatural."
+
+"Well, I'm not a Red Indian any longer."
+
+"You can't chop and change like that. You'll have to be a Red Indian now
+till after breakfast. Don't argue any more, because I'm standing here in
+bare feet. Go and do some weeding in the garden. You've pulled up all
+the plants on the roof."
+
+"I can't read without my spectacles."
+
+"Weed, not read!"
+
+"Well, I can't weed, either. I can't do anything without my spectacles."
+
+"Then go away and do nothing."
+
+Harold shuffled off disconsolately, and John rang for his shaving water.
+
+At breakfast Hilda asked anxiously after her son's whereabouts; and
+John, the last vestige of whose irritation had vanished in the smell of
+fried bacon and eggs, related the story of the morning's escapade as a
+good joke.
+
+"But he can't see anything without his spectacles," Hilda exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, he'll find his way to the breakfast table all right," John
+prophesied.
+
+"These bachelors," murmured Hilda, turning to her mother with a wry
+little laugh. "Hark! isn't that Harold calling?"
+
+"No, no, no, it's the pigeons," John laughed. "They're probably fretting
+for their feathers."
+
+"It's to be hoped," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that he's not fallen into
+the well by leaving off his spectacles like this. I never could abide
+wells. And I hate to think of people leaving things off suddenly. It's
+always a mistake. I remember little Hughie once left off his woollen
+vests in May and caught a most terrible cold that wouldn't go away--it
+simply wouldn't go."
+
+"How is Hugh, by the way?" John asked.
+
+"The same as ever," Hilda put in with cold disapproval. She was able to
+forget Harold's myopic wanderings in the pleasure of crabbing her
+youngest brother.
+
+"Ah, you're all very hard on poor Hughie," sighed the old lady. "But
+he's always been very fond of his poor mother."
+
+"He's very fond of what he can get out of you," Hilda sneered.
+
+"And it's little enough he can, poor boy. Goodness knows I've little
+enough to spare for him. I wish you could have seen your way to do
+something for Hughie, Johnnie," the old lady went on.
+
+"John has done quite enough for him," Hilda snapped, which was perfectly
+true.
+
+"He's had to leave his rooms in Earl's Court," Mrs. Touchwood lamented.
+
+"What for? Getting drunk, I suppose?" John inquired, sternly.
+
+"No, it was the drains. He's staying with his friend, Aubrey Fenton,
+whom I cannot pretend to like. He seems to me a sad scapegrace. Poor
+little Hughie. I wish everything wasn't against him. It's to be hoped he
+won't go and get married, poor boy, for I'm sure his wife wouldn't
+understand him."
+
+"Surely he's not thinking of getting married," exclaimed John in
+dismay.
+
+"Why no, of course not," said the old lady. "How you do take anybody up,
+Johnnie. I said it's to be hoped he won't get married."
+
+At this moment Emily came in to announce that Master Harold was up on
+the roof shouting for dear life. "Such a turn as it give Cook and I,
+mum," she said, "to hear that garshly voice coming down the chimney.
+Cook was nearly took with the convolsions, and if it had of been after
+dark, mum, she says she's shaw she doesn't know what she wouldn't of
+done, she wouldn't, she's that frightened of howls. That's the one thing
+she can't ever be really comfortable for in the country, she says, the
+howls and the hearwigs."
+
+"I'm under the impression," John declared, solemnly, "that I forbade
+Harold to go near the roof. If he has disobeyed my express commands he
+must suffer for it by the loss of his breakfast. He has chosen to go
+back on the roof: on the roof he shall stay."
+
+"But his breakfast?" Hilda almost whispered. She was so much awed by her
+brother's unusually pompous phraseology that he began to be impressed by
+it himself and to feel the first faint intimations of the pleasures of
+tyranny: he began to visualize himself as the unbending ruler of all his
+relations.
+
+"His breakfast can be sent up to him, and I hope it will attract every
+wasp in the neighborhood."
+
+This to John seemed the most savage aspiration he could have uttered:
+autumnal wasps disturbed him as much as dragons used to disturb
+princesses.
+
+"Harold likes wasps," said Hilda. "He observes their habits."
+
+This revelation of his nephew's tastes took away John's last belief in
+his humanity, and the only retort he could think of was a suggestion
+that he should go at once to a boarding-school.
+
+"Likes wasps?" he repeated. "The child must be mad. You'll tell me next
+that he likes black beetles."
+
+"He trained a black beetle once to eat something. I forget what it was
+now. But the poor boy was so happy about his little triumph. You ought
+to remember, John, that he takes after his father."
+
+John made up his mind at this moment that Daniel Curtis must have
+married Hilda in a spirit of the purest empirical science.
+
+"Well, he's not to go training insects in my house," John said, firmly.
+"And if I see any insects anywhere about Ambles that show the slightest
+sign of having been encouraged to suppose themselves on an equal with
+mankind I shall tread on them."
+
+"I'm afraid the crossing must have upset you, Johnnie," said old Mrs.
+Touchwood, sympathetically. "You seem quite out of sorts this morning.
+And I don't like the idea of poor little Harold's balancing himself all
+alone on a chimney. It was never any pleasure to me to watch tight-rope
+dancers or acrobats. Indeed, except for the clowns, I never could abide
+circuses."
+
+Hilda quickly took up the appeal and begged John to let the gardener
+rescue her son.
+
+"Oh, very well," he assented. "But, once for all, it must be clearly
+understood that I've come down to Ambles to write a new play and that
+some arrangement must be concluded by which I have my mornings
+completely undisturbed."
+
+"Of course," said Hilda, brightening at the prospect of Harold's
+release.
+
+"Of course," John echoed, sardonically, within himself. He did not feel
+that the sight of Harold's ravening after his breakfast would induce in
+him the right mood for Joan of Arc. So he left the breakfast table and
+went upstairs to his library. Here he found that some "illiterate oaf,"
+as he characterized the person responsible, had put in upside down upon
+the shelves the standard works he had hastily amassed. Instead of
+setting his ideas in order, he had to set his books in order: and after
+a hot and dusty morning with the rows of unreadable classics he came
+downstairs to find that the vicarage party had arrived just in time for
+lunch, bringing with them as the advance guard of their occupation a
+large clothes basket filled with what Laurence described as "necessary
+odds and ends that might be overlooked later."
+
+"It's my theory of moving," he added. "The small things first."
+
+He enunciated this theory so reverently that his action acquired from
+his tone a momentous gravity like the captain of a ship's when he orders
+the women and children into the boats first.
+
+The moving of the vicarage party lasted over a fortnight, during which
+John found it impossible to settle down to Joan of Arc. No sooner would
+he have worked himself up to a suitable frame of mind in which he might
+express dramatically and poetically the maid's reception of her heavenly
+visitants than a very hot man wearing a green baize apron would appear
+in the doorway of the library and announce that a chest of drawers had
+hopelessly involved some vital knot in the domestic communications. It
+was no good for John to ask Hilda to do anything: his sister had taken
+up the attitude that it was all John's fault, that she had done her best
+to preserve his peace, that her advice had been ignored, and that for
+the rest of her life she intended to efface herself.
+
+"I'm a mere cipher," she kept repeating.
+
+On one occasion when a bureau of sham ebony that looked like a blind
+man's dream of Cologne Cathedral had managed to wedge all its pinnacles
+into the lintel of the front door, John observed to Laurence he had
+understood that only such furniture from the vicarage as was required to
+supplement the Ambles furniture would be brought there.
+
+"I thought this bureau would appeal to you," Laurence replied. "It
+seemed to me in keeping with much of your work."
+
+John looked up sharply to see if he was being chaffed; but his
+brother-in-law's expression was earnest, and the intended compliment
+struck more hardly at John's self-confidence than the most malicious
+review.
+
+"Does my work really seem like gimcrack gothic?" he asked himself.
+
+In a fit of exasperation he threw himself so vigorously into the
+business of forcing the bureau into the house that when it was inside it
+looked like a ruined abbey on the afternoon of a Bank Holiday.
+
+"It had better be taken up into the garrets for the present," he said,
+grimly. "It can be mended later on."
+
+The comparison of his work to that bureau haunted John at his own
+writing-table for the rest of the morning; thinking of the Bishop of
+Silchester's objection to Laurence, he found it hard to make the various
+bishops in his play as unsympathetic as they ought to be for dramatic
+contrast; then he remembered that after all it had been due to the
+Bishop of Silchester's strong action that Laurence had come to Ambles:
+the stream of insulting epithets for bishops flowed as strongly as ever,
+and he worked in a justifiable pun upon the name of Pierre Cauchon, his
+chief episcopal villain.
+
+"I wonder, if I were allowed to, whether I would condemn Laurence to be
+burnt alive. Wasn't there a Saint Laurence who was grilled? I really
+believe I would almost grill him, I really do. There's something
+exceptionally irritating to me about that man's whole personality. And
+I'm not at all sure I approve of a clergyman's giving up his beliefs.
+One might get a line out of that, by the way--something about a
+weathercock and a church steeple. I don't think a clergyman ought to
+surrender so easily. It's his business not to be influenced by modern
+thought. This passion for realism is everywhere.... Thank goodness, I've
+been through it and got over it and put it behind me forever. It's a
+most unprofitable creed. What was my circulation as a realist? I once
+reached four thousand. What's four thousand? Why, it isn't half the
+population of Galton. And now Laurence Armitage takes up with it after
+being a vicar for ten years. Idiot! Religion isn't realistic: it never
+was realistic. Religion is the entertainment of man's spirituality just
+as the romantic drama is the entertainment of his mentality. I don't
+read Anatole France for my representation of Joan of Arc. What business
+has Laurence to muddle his head with--what's his name--Colonel
+Ingoldsby--Ingersoll--when he ought to be thinking about his Harvest
+Festival? And then he has the effrontery to compare my work with that
+bureau! If that's all his religion meant to him--that ridiculous piece
+of gimcrack gothic, no wonder it wouldn't hold together. Why, the green
+fumed oak of a sentimental rationalism would be better than that.
+Confound Laurence! I knew this would happen when he came. He's taken my
+mind completely off my own work. I can't write a word this morning."
+
+John rushed away from his manuscript and weeded furiously down a
+secluded border until the gardener told him he had weeded away the
+autumn-sown sweet-peas that were coming along nicely and standing the
+early frosts a treat.
+
+"I'm not even allowed to weed my own garden now," John thought, burking
+the point at issue; and his disillusionment became so profound that he
+actually invited Harold to go for a walk with him.
+
+"Can I bring my blow-pipe?" asked the young naturalist, gleefully.
+
+"You don't want to load yourself up with soap and water," said John.
+"Keep that till you come in."
+
+"My South American blow-pipe, Uncle John. It's a real one which father
+sent home. It belonged to a little Indian boy, but the darts aren't
+poisoned, father told mother."
+
+"Don't you be too sure," John advised him. "Explorers will say
+anything."
+
+"Well, can I bring it?"
+
+"No, we'll take a non-murderous walk for a change. I'm tired of being
+shunned by the common objects of the countryside."
+
+"Well, shall I bring _Ants_, _Bees_, and _Wasps_?"
+
+"Certainly not. We don't want to go trailing about Hampshire like two
+jam sandwiches."
+
+"I mean the book."
+
+"No, if you want to carry something, you can carry my cleek and six golf
+balls."
+
+"Oh, yes, and then I'll practice bringing eggs down in my mouth from
+very high trees."
+
+John liked this form of exercise, because at the trifling cost of making
+one ball intolerably sticky it kept Harold from asking questions; for
+about two hundred yards he enjoyed this walk more than any he had ever
+taken with his nephew.
+
+"But birds' nesting time won't come till the spring," Harold sighed.
+
+"No," said John, regretfully: there were many lofty trees round Ambles,
+and with his mouth full of eggs anything might happen to Harold.
+
+The transference of the vicarage family was at last complete, and John
+was penitently astonished to find that Laurence really did intend to pay
+for their board; in fact, the ex-vicar presented him with a check for
+two months on account calculated at a guinea a week each. John was so
+much moved by this event--the manner in which Laurence offered the check
+gave it the character of a testimonial and thereby added to John's sense
+of obligation--that he was even embarrassed by the notion of accepting
+it. At the same time a faint echo of his own realistic beginnings
+tinkled in his ear a warning not to refuse it, both for his own sake and
+for the sake of his brother-in-law. He therefore escaped from the
+imputation of avarice by suggesting that the check should be handed to
+Hilda, who, as housekeeper, would know how to employ it best. John
+secretly hoped that Hilda, through being able to extract what he thought
+of as "a little pin money for herself" out of it, might discard the
+martyr's halo that was at present pinching her brains tightly enough, if
+one might judge by her constricted expression.
+
+"There will undoubtedly be a small profit," he told himself, "for if
+Laurence has a rather monkish appetite, Edith and Frida eat very
+little."
+
+Perhaps Hilda did manage to make a small profit; at any rate, she seemed
+reconciled to the presence of the Armitages and gave up declaring that
+she was a cipher. The fatigue of moving in had made Laurence's company,
+while he was suffering from the reaction, almost bearable. Frida, apart
+from a habit she had of whispering at great length in her mother's ear,
+was a nice uninquisitive child, and Edith, when she was not whispering
+back to Frida or echoing Laurence, was still able to rouse in her
+brother's heart feelings of warm affection. Old Mrs. Touchwood had
+acquired from some caller a new game of Patience, which kept her gently
+simmering in the lamplight every evening; Harold had discovered among
+the odds and ends of salvage from the move a sixpenny encyclopedia that,
+though it made him unpleasantly informative, at any rate kept him from
+being interrogative, which John found, on the whole, a slight advantage.
+Janet Bond had written again most seriously about Joan of Arc, and the
+film company had given excellent terms for _The Fall of Babylon_.
+Really, except for two huffy letters from his sisters-in-law in London,
+John was able to contemplate with much less misgivings a prospect of
+spending all the winter at Ambles. Beside, he had secured his dog-cart
+with a dashing chestnut mare, and was negotiating for the twenty-acre
+field.
+
+Yes, everything was very jolly, and he might even aim at finishing the
+first draft of the second act before Christmas. It would be jolly to do
+that and jolly to invite James and Beatrice and George and Eleanor, but
+not Hugh--no, in no circumstances should Hugh be included in the
+yuletide armistice--down to Ambles for an uproarious jolly week. Then
+January should be devoted to the first draft of the third act--really it
+should be possible to write to Janet Bond presently and assure her of a
+production next autumn. John was feeling particularly optimistic. For
+three days in succession the feet of the first act had been moving as
+rhythmically and regularly toward the curtain as the feet of guardsmen
+move along the Buckingham Palace Road. It was a fine frosty morning, and
+even so early in the day John was tapping his second egg to the metrical
+apostrophes of Uncle Laxart's speech offering to take his niece, Joan,
+to interview Robert de Baudricourt. Suddenly he noticed that Laurence
+had not yet put in his appearance. This was strange behavior for one who
+still preserved from the habit of many early services an excited
+punctuality for his breakfast, and lightly he asked Edith what had
+become of her husband.
+
+"He hopes to begin working again at his play this morning. Seeing you
+working so hard makes him feel lazy." Edith laughed faintly and
+fearfully, as if she would deprecate her own profanity in referring to
+so gross a quality as laziness in connection with Laurence, and perhaps
+for the first time in her life she proclaimed that her opinion was only
+an echo of Laurence's own by adding, "_he_ says that it makes him feel
+lazy. So he's going to begin at once."
+
+John, whose mind kept reverting iambically and trochaically to the
+curtain of his first act, merely replied, without any trace of awe, that
+he was glad Laurence felt in the vein.
+
+"But he hasn't decided yet," Edith continued, "which room he's going to
+work in."
+
+For the first time a puff of apprehension twitched the little straw that
+might be going to break the camel's back.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't offer him the library," John said quickly. "_And you
+shall see the King of France to-day_," he went on composing in his head.
+"No--_And you shall see King Charles_--no--_and you shall see the King
+of France at once--no--and you shall see the King of France forthwith.
+Sensation among the villagers standing round. Forthwith is weak at the
+end of a line. I swear that you shall see the King of France.
+Sensation._ Yes, that's it."
+
+The top of John's egg was by this time so completely cracked by his
+metronomic spoon that a good deal of the shell was driven down into the
+egg: it did not matter, however, because appetite and inspiration were
+both disposed of by the arrival of Laurence.
+
+"I wish you could have managed to help me with some of these things," he
+was muttering reproachfully to his wife.
+
+The things consisted of six or seven books, a quantity of foolscap, an
+inkpot dangerously brimming, a paper-knife made of olive wood from
+Gethsemane, several pens and pencils, and a roll of blotting paper as
+white as the snow upon the summit of Mont Blanc, and so fat that John
+thought at first it was a tablecloth and wondered what his
+brother-in-law meant to do with it. He was even chilled by a brief and
+horrible suspicion that he was going to hold a communion service. Edith
+rose hastily from the table to help her husband unload himself.
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear, why didn't you ring?"
+
+"My dear, how could I ring without letting my materials drop?" Laurence
+asked, patiently.
+
+"Or call?"
+
+"My chin was too much occupied for calling. But it doesn't matter,
+Edith. As you see, I've managed to bring everything down quite safely."
+
+"I'm so sorry," Edith went on. "I'd no idea...."
+
+"I told you that I was going to begin work this morning."
+
+"Yes, how stupid of me ... I'm so sorry...."
+
+"Going to work, are you?" interrupted John, who was anxious to stop
+Edith's conjugal amenity. "That's capital."
+
+"Yes, I'm really only waiting now to choose my room."
+
+"I'm sorry I can't offer you mine ... but I must be alone. I find...."
+
+"Of course," Laurence agreed with a nod of sympathetic knowingness. "Of
+course, my dear fellow, I shouldn't dream of trespassing. I, though
+indeed I've no right to compare myself with you, also like to work
+alone. In fact I consider that a secure solitude provides the ideal
+setting for dramatic composition. I have a habit--perhaps it comes from
+preparing my sermons with my eye always upon the spoken rather than upon
+the written word--I have a habit of declaiming many of my pages aloud to
+myself. That necessitates my being alone--absolutely alone."
+
+"Yes, you see," Edith said, "if you're alone you're not disturbed."
+
+John who was still sensitive to Edith's truisms tried to cover her last
+by incorporating Hilda in the conversation with a "What room do you
+advise?"
+
+"Why not the dining-room? I'll tell Emily to clear away the breakfast
+things at once."
+
+"Clear away?" Laurence repeated.
+
+"And they won't be laying for lunch till a quarter-to-one."
+
+"Laying for lunch?" Laurence gasped. "My dear Hilda! I don't wish to
+attribute to my--ah--work an importance which perhaps as a hitherto
+unacted playwright I have no right to attribute, but I think John at any
+rate will appreciate my objection to working with--ah--the bread-knife
+suspended over my head like the proverbial sword of Damocles. No, I'm
+afraid I must rule out the dining-room as a practicable environment."
+
+"And Mama likes to sit in the drawing-room," said Hilda.
+
+"In any case," Laurence said, indulgently, "I shouldn't feel at ease in
+the drawing-room. So I shall not disturb Mama. I had thought of
+suggesting that the children should be given another room in which to
+play, but to tell the truth I'm tired of moving furniture about. The
+fact is I miss my vicarage study: it was my own."
+
+"Yes, nobody at the vicarage ever thought of interrupting him, you see,"
+Edith explained.
+
+"Well," said John, roused by the necessity of getting Joan started upon
+her journey to interview Robert de Baudricourt, "there are several empty
+bedrooms upstairs. One of them could be transformed into a study for
+Laurence."
+
+"That means more arranging of furniture," Laurence objected.
+
+"Then there's the garret," said John. "You'd find your bureau up there."
+
+Laurence smiled in order to show how well he understood that the
+suggestion was only playfulness on John's side and how little he minded
+the good-natured joke.
+
+"There is one room which might be made--ah--conducive to good work,
+though at present it is occupied by a quantity of apples; they, however,
+could easily be moved."
+
+"But I moved them in there from what is now your room," Hilda protested.
+
+"It is good for apples to be frequently moved," said Laurence, kindly.
+"In fact, the oftener they are moved, the better. And this holds good
+equally for pippins, codlins, and russets. On the other hand it means I
+shall lose half a day's work, because even if I _could_ make a temporary
+beginning anywhere else, I should have to superintend the arrangement of
+the furniture."
+
+"But I thought you didn't want to have any more furniture arranging to
+do," Hilda contested, acrimoniously. "There are two quite empty rooms at
+the other end of the passage."
+
+"Yes, but I like the room in which the apples are. John will appreciate
+my desire for a sympathetic milieu."
+
+"Come, come, we will move the apples," John promised, hurriedly.
+
+Better that the apples should roll from room to room eternally than that
+he should be driven into offering Laurence a corner of the library, for
+he suspected that notwithstanding the disclaimer this was his
+brother-in-law's real objective.
+
+"It doesn't say anything about apples in the encyclopedia," muttered
+Harold in an aggrieved voice. _"Apoplexy treatment of, Apothecaries
+measure, Appetite loss of. This may be due to general debility,
+irregularity in meals, overwork, want of exercise, constipation, and
+many other...."_
+
+"Goodness gracious me, whatever has the boy got hold of?" exclaimed his
+grandmother.
+
+"Grandmama, if you mix Lanoline with an equal quantity of Sulphur you
+can cure Itch," Harold went on with his spectacles glued to the page.
+"And, oh, Grandmama, you know you told me not to make a noise the other
+day because your heart was weak. Well, you're suffering from
+flatulence. The encyclopedia says that many people who are suffering
+from flatulence think they have heart disease."
+
+"Will no one stop the child?" Grandmama pleaded.
+
+Laurence snatched away the book from his nephew and put it in his
+pocket.
+
+"That book is mine, I believe, Harold," he said, firmly, and not even
+Hilda dared protest, so majestic was Laurence and so much fluttered was
+poor Grandmama.
+
+John seized the opportunity to make his escape; but when he was at last
+seated before his table the feet of the first act limped pitiably;
+Laurence had trodden with all his might upon their toes; his work that
+morning was chiropody, not composition, and bungling chiropody at that.
+After lunch Laurence was solemnly inducted to his new study, and he may
+have been conscious of an ecclesiastical parallel in the manner of his
+taking possession, for he made a grave joke about it.
+
+"Let us hope that I shall not be driven out of my new living by being
+too--ah--broad."
+
+His wife did not realize that he was being droll and had drawn down her
+lips to an expression of pained sympathy, when she saw the others all
+laughing and Laurence smiling his acknowledgments; her desperate effort
+to change the contours of her face before Laurence noticed her failure
+to respond sensibly gave the impression that she had nearly swallowed a
+loose tooth.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like me to bring up your tea, dear, so that you won't be
+disturbed?" she suggested.
+
+"Ah, tea ..." murmured Laurence. "Let me see. It's now a quarter-past
+two. Tea is at half-past four. I will come down for half an hour. That
+will give me a clear two hours before dinner. If I allow a quarter of an
+hour for arranging my table, that will give me four hours in all.
+Perhaps considering my strenuous morning four hours will be enough for
+the first day. I don't like the notion of working after dinner," he
+added to John.
+
+"No?" queried John, doubtfully. He had hoped that his brother-in-law
+would feel inspired by the port: it was easy enough to avoid him in the
+afternoon, especially since on the first occasion that he had been taken
+for a drive in the new dogcart he had evidently been imbued with a
+detestation of driving that would probably last for the remainder of his
+life; in fact he was talking already of wanting to sell Primrose and the
+vicarage chaise.
+
+"Though of course on some evenings I may not be able to help it," added
+Laurence. "I may _have_ to work."
+
+"Of course you may," John assented, encouragingly. "I dare say there'll
+be evenings when the mere idea of waiting even for coffee will make you
+fidgety. You mustn't lose the mood, you know."
+
+"No, of course, I appreciate that."
+
+"There's nothing so easily lost as the creative gift, Balzac said."
+
+"Did he?" Laurence murmured, anxiously. "But I promise you I shall let
+nothing interfere with me _if_--" the conjunction fizzed from his mouth
+like soda from a syphon, "_if_ I'm in the--ah--mood. The
+mood--yes--ah--precisely." His brow began to lower; the mood was upon
+him; and everybody stole quietly from the room. They had scarcely
+reached the head of the stairs when the door opened again and Laurence
+called after Edith: "I should prefer that whoever brings me news of tea
+merely knocks without coming in. I shall assume that a knock upon my
+door means tea. But I don't wish anybody to come in."
+
+Laurence disappeared. He seemed under the influence of a strong mental
+aphrodisiac and was evidently guaranteeing himself against being
+discovered in an embarrassing situation with his Muse.
+
+"This is very good for me," thought John. "It has taught me how easily a
+man may make a confounded ass of himself without anybody's raising a
+finger to warn him. I hope I didn't give that sort of impression to
+those two women on board. I shall have to watch myself very carefully in
+future."
+
+At this moment Emily announced that Lawyer Deacle was waiting to see Mr.
+Touchwood, which meant that the twenty-acre field was at last his. The
+legal formalities were complete; that very afternoon John had the
+pleasure of watching the fierce little Kerry cows munch the last grass
+they would ever munch in his field. But it was nearly dusk when they
+were driven home, and John lost five balls in celebrating his triumph
+with a brassy.
+
+Laurence appeared at tea in a velveteen coat, which probably provided
+the topic for the longest whisper that even Frida had ever been known to
+utter.
+
+"Come, come, Frida," said her father. "You won't disturb us by saying
+aloud what you want to say." He had leaned over majestically to
+emphasize his rebuke and in doing so brushed with his sleeve Grandmama's
+wrist.
+
+"Goodness, it's a cat," the old lady cried, with a shudder. "I shall
+have to go away from here, Johnnie, if you have a cat in the house. I'd
+rather have mice all over me than one of those horrid cats. Ugh! the
+nasty thing!"
+
+She was not at all convinced of her mistake even when persuaded to
+stroke her son-in-law's coat.
+
+"I hope it's been properly shooed out. Harold, please look well under
+all the chairs, there's a good boy."
+
+During the next few days John felt that he was being in some indefinable
+way ousted by Laurence from the spiritual mastery of his own house. John
+was averse from according to his brother-in-law a greater forcefulness
+of character than he could ascribe to himself; if he had to admit that
+he really was being supplanted somehow, he preferred to search for the
+explanation in the years of theocratic prestige that gave a background
+to the all-pervasiveness of that sacerdotal personality. Yet ultimately
+the impression of his own relegation to a secondary place remained
+elusive and incommunicable. He could not for instance grumble that the
+times of the meals were being altered nor complain that in the smallest
+detail the domestic mechanism was being geared up or down to suit
+Laurence; the whole sensation was essentially of a spiritual eviction,
+and the nearest he could get to formulating his resentment (though
+perhaps resentment was too definite a word for this vague uneasiness)
+was his own gradually growing opinion that of all those at present under
+the Ambles roof Laurence was the most important. This loss of importance
+was bad for John's work, upon which it soon began to exert a
+discouraging influence, because he became doubtful of his own position,
+hypercritical of his talent, and timid about his social ability. He
+began to meditate the long line of failures to dramatize the immortal
+tale of Joan of Arc immortally, to see himself dangling at the end of
+this long line of ineptitudes and to ask himself whether bearing in mind
+the vastness of even our own solar system it was really worth while
+writing at all. It could not be due to anything or anybody but Laurence,
+this sense of his own futility; not even when a few years ago he had
+reached the conclusion that as a realistic novelist he was a failure had
+he been so profoundly conscious of his own insignificance in time and
+space.
+
+"I shall have to go away if I'm ever to get on with this play," he told
+himself.
+
+Yet still so indefinite was his sense of subordinacy at Ambles that he
+accused his liver (an honest one that did not deserve the reproach) and
+bent over his table again with all the determination he could muster.
+The concrete fact was still missing; his capacity for self-deception was
+still robust enough to persuade him that it was all a passing fancy, and
+he might have gone plodding on at Ambles for the rest of the winter if
+one morning about a week after Laurence had begun to write, the door of
+his own library had not opened to the usurper, manuscript in hand.
+
+"I don't like to interrupt you, my dear fellow.... I know you have your
+own work to consider ... but I'm anxious for your opinion--in fact I
+should like to read you my first act."
+
+It was useless to resist: if it were not now, it would be later.
+
+"With pleasure," said John. Then he made one effort. "Though I prefer
+reading to myself."
+
+"That would involve waiting for the typewriter. Yes, my screed
+is--ah--difficult to make out. And I've indulged in a good many erasures
+and insertions. No, I think you'd better let me read it to you."
+
+John indicated a chair and looked out of the window longingly at the
+birds, as patients in the hands of a dentist regard longingly the
+sparrows in the dingy evergreens of the dentist's back garden.
+
+"When we had our little talk the other day," Laurence began, "you will
+remember that I spoke of a drama I had already written, of which the
+disciple Thomas was the protagonist. This drama notwithstanding the
+probably obstructive attitude of the Lord Chamberlain I have rewritten,
+or rather I have rewritten the first act. I call the play--ah--_Thomas_."
+
+"It sounds a little trivial for such a serious subject, don't you
+think?" John suggested. "I mean, Thomas has come to be associated in so
+many people's minds with footmen. Wouldn't _Saint Thomas_ be better, and
+really rather more respectful? Many people still have a great feeling of
+reverence for apostles."
+
+"No, no, _Thomas_ it is: _Thomas_ it must remain. You have forgotten
+perhaps that I told you he was the prototype of the man in the street.
+It is the simplicity, the unpretentiousness of the title that for me
+gives it a value. Well, to resume. _Thomas. A play in four acts. By
+Laurence Armytage._ By the way, I'm going to spell my name with a y in
+future. Poetic license. Ha-ha! I shall not advertise the change in the
+_Times_. But I think it looks more literary with a y. _Act the First.
+Scene the First. The shore of the Sea of Galilee._ I say nothing else. I
+don't attempt to describe it. That is what I have learnt from
+Shakespeare. This modern passion for description can only injure the
+greatness of the theme. _Enter from the left the Virgin Mary._"
+
+"Enter who?" asked John in amazement.
+
+"The Virgin Mary. The mother ..."
+
+"Yes, I know who she is, but ... well, I'm not a religious man,
+Laurence, in fact I've not been to church since I was a boy ... but ...
+no, no, you can't do that."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It will offend people."
+
+"I want to offend people," Laurence intoned. "If thy eye offend thee,
+pluck it out."
+
+"Well, you did," said John. "You put in a _y_ instead."
+
+"I'm not jesting, my dear fellow."
+
+"Nor am I," said John. "What I want you to understand is that you can't
+bring the Virgin Mary on the stage. Why, I'm even doubtful about Joan of
+Arc's vision of the Archangel Michael. Some people may object, though
+I'm counting on his being generally taken for St. George."
+
+"I know that you are writing a play about Joan of Arc, but--and I hope
+you'll not take unkindly what I'm going to say--but Joan of Arc can
+never be more than a pretty piece of medievalism, whereas Thomas ..."
+
+John gave up, and the next morning he told the household that he was
+called back to London on business.
+
+"Perhaps I shall have some peace here," he sighed, looking round at his
+dignified Church Row library.
+
+"Mrs. James called earlier this morning, sir, and said not to disturb
+you, but she hoped you'd had a comfortable journey and left these
+flowers, and Mrs. George has telephoned from the theater to say she'll
+be here almost directly."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Worfolk," John said. "Perhaps Mrs. George will be
+taking lunch."
+
+"Yes, sir, I expect she will," said his housekeeper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mrs. George Touchwood--or as she was known on the stage, Miss Eleanor
+Cartright--was big-boned, handsome, and hawklike, with the hungry look
+of the ambitious actress who is drawing near to forty--she was in fact
+thirty-seven--and realizes that the disappointed adventuresses of what
+are called strong plays are as near as she will ever get to the tragedy
+queens of youthful aspiration. Such an one accustomed to flash her dark
+eyes in defiance of a morally but not esthetically hostile gallery and
+to have the whole of a stage for the display of what well-disposed
+critics hailed as vitality and cavaliers condemned as lack of repose,
+such an one in John's tranquil library was, as Mrs. Worfolk put it,
+"rather too much of a good thing and no mistake"; and when Eleanor was
+there, John experienced as much malaise as he would have experienced
+from being shut up in a housemaid's closet with a large gramophone and
+the housemaid. This claustrophobia, however, was the smallest strain
+that his sister-in-law inflicted upon him; she affected his heart and
+his conscience more acutely, because he could never meet her without a
+sensation of guilt on account of his not yet having found a part for her
+in any of his plays, to which was added the fear he always felt in her
+presence that soon or late he should from sheer inability to hold out
+longer award her the leading part in his play. George had often
+seriously annoyed him by his unwillingness to help himself; but at the
+thought of being married for thirteen years to Eleanor he had always
+excused his brother's flaccid dependence.
+
+"George is a bit of a sponge," James had once said, "but Eleanor!
+Eleanor is the roughest and toughest loofah that was ever known. She is
+irritant and absorbent at the same time, and by gad, she has the
+appearance of a loofah."
+
+The prospect of Eleanor's company at lunch on the morning after his
+return to town gave John a sensation of having escaped the devil to fall
+into the deep sea, of having jumped from the frying-pan into the fire,
+in fact of illustrating every known proverbial attempt to express the
+distinction without the difference.
+
+"It's a great pity that Eleanor didn't marry Laurence," he thought.
+"Each would have kept the other well under, and she could have played
+Mary Magdalene in that insane play of his. And, by Jove, if they _had_
+married, neither of them would have been a relation! Moreover, if
+Laurence had been caught by Eleanor, Edith might never have married at
+all and could have kept house for me. And if Edith hadn't married, Hilda
+mightn't have married, and then Harold would never have been born."
+
+John's hard pruning of his family-tree was interrupted by a sense of the
+house's having been attacked by an angry mob--an illusion that he had
+learnt to connect with his sister-in-law's arrival. To make sure,
+however, he went out on the landing and called down to know if anything
+was the matter.
+
+"Mrs. George is having some trouble with the taxi-man, sir," explained
+Maud, who was holding the front-door open and looking apprehensively at
+the pictures that were clattering on the walls in the wind.
+
+"Why does she take taxis?" John muttered, irritably. "She can't afford
+them, and there's no excuse for such extravagance when the tube is so
+handy."
+
+At this moment Eleanor reached the door, on the threshold of which she
+turned like Medea upon Jason to have the last word with the taxi-driver
+before the curtain fell.
+
+"Did Mr. Touchwood get my message?" she was asking.
+
+"Yes, yes," John called down. "I'm expecting you to lunch."
+
+When he watched Eleanor all befurred coming upstairs, he felt not much
+less nervous than a hunter of big game face to face with his first
+tiger; the landing seemed to wobble like a howdah; now he had fired and
+missed, and she was embracing him as usual. How many times at how many
+meetings with Eleanor had he tried unsuccessfully to dodge that
+kiss--which always seemed improper whether because her lips were too
+red, or too full, he could never decide, though he always felt when he
+was released that he ought to beg her husband's pardon.
+
+"You were an old beast not to come and see us when you got back from
+America; but never mind, I'm awfully glad to see you, all the same."
+
+"Thank you very much, Eleanor. Why are you glad?"
+
+"Oh, you sarcastic old bear!"
+
+This perpetual suggestion of his senility was another trick of Eleanor's
+that he deplored; dash it, he was two years younger than George, whom
+she called Georgieboy.
+
+"No, seriously," Eleanor went on. "I was just going to wire and ask if I
+could send the kiddies down to the country. Lambton wants me for a six
+weeks' tour before Xmas, and I can't leave them with Georgie. You see,
+if this piece catches on, it means a good shop for me in the new year."
+
+"Yes, I quite understand your point of view," John said. "But what I
+don't understand is why Bertram and Viola can't stay with their father."
+
+"But George is ill. Surely you got my letter?"
+
+"I didn't realize that the presence of his children might prove fatal.
+However, send them down to Ambles by all means."
+
+"Oh, but I'd much rather not after the way Hilda wrote to me, and now
+that you've come back there's no need."
+
+"I don't quite understand."
+
+"Well, you won't mind having them here for a short visit? Then they can
+go down to Ambles for the Christmas holidays."
+
+"But the Christmas holidays won't begin for at least six weeks."
+
+"I know."
+
+"But you don't propose that Bertram and Viola should spend six weeks
+here?"
+
+"They'll be no bother, you old crosspatch. Bertram will be at school all
+day, and I suppose that Maud or Elsa will always be available to take
+Viola to her dancing-lessons. You remember the dancing-lessons you
+arranged for?"
+
+"I remember that I accepted the arrangement," said John.
+
+"Well, she's getting on divinely, and it would be a shame to interrupt
+them just now, especially as she's in the middle of a Spanish series.
+Her _cachucha_ is ..." Eleanor could only blow a kiss to express what
+Viola's _cachucha_ was. "But then, of course, I had a Spanish
+grandmother."
+
+When John regarded her barbaric personality he could have credited her
+with being the granddaughter of a cannibal queen.
+
+"So I thought that her governess could come here every morning just as
+easily as to Earl's Court. In fact, it will be more convenient, or at
+any rate, equally convenient for her, because she lives at Kilburn."
+
+"I dare say it will be equally convenient for the governess," said John,
+sardonically.
+
+"And I thought," Eleanor continued, "that it would be a good opportunity
+for Viola to have French lessons every afternoon. You won't want to have
+her all the time with you, and the French governess can give the
+children their tea. That will be good for Bertram's accent."
+
+"I don't doubt that it will be superb for Bertram's accent, but I
+absolutely decline to have a French governess bobbing in and out of my
+house. It's bound to make trouble with the servants who always think
+that French governesses are designing and licentious, and I don't want
+to create a false impression."
+
+"Well, aren't you an old prude? Who would ever think that you had any
+sort of connection with the stage? By the way, you haven't told me if
+there'll be anything for me in your next."
+
+"Well, at present the subject of my next play is a secret ... and as for
+the cast...."
+
+John was so nearly on the verge of offering Eleanor the part of Mary of
+Anjou, for which she would be as suitable as a giraffe, that in order to
+effect an immediate diversion he asked her when the children were to
+arrive.
+
+"Let me see, to-day's Saturday. To-morrow I go down to Bristol, where we
+open. They'd better come to-night, because to-morrow being Sunday
+they'll have no lessons, which will give them time to settle down.
+Georgie will be glad to know they're with you."
+
+"I've no doubt he'll be enchanted," John agreed.
+
+The bell sounded for lunch, and they went downstairs.
+
+"I've got to be back at the theater by two," Eleanor announced, looking
+at the horridly distorted watch upon her wrist. "I wonder if we mightn't
+ask Maud to open half-a-bottle of champagne? I'm dreadfully tired."
+
+John ordered a bottle to be opened; he felt rather tired himself.
+
+"Let us be quite clear about this arrangement," he began, when after
+three glasses of wine he felt less appalled by the prospect, and had
+concluded that after all Bertram and Viola would not together be as bad
+as Laurence with his play, not to mention Harold with his spectacles and
+entomology, his interrogativeness and his greed. "The English governess
+will arrive every morning for Viola. What is her name?"
+
+"Miss Coldwell."
+
+"Miss Coldwell then will be responsible for Viola all the morning. The
+French governess is canceled, and I shall come to an arrangement with
+Miss Coldwell by which she will add to her salary by undertaking all
+responsibility for Viola until Viola is in bed. Bertram will go to
+school, and I shall rely upon Miss Coldwell to keep an eye on his
+behavior at home."
+
+"And don't forget the dancing-lessons."
+
+"No, I had Madame What's-her-name's account last week."
+
+"I mean, don't forget to arrange for Viola to go."
+
+"That pilgrimage will, I hope, form a part of what Miss Coldwell would
+probably call 'extras.' And after all perhaps George will soon be fit."
+
+"The poor old boy has been awfully seedy all the summer."
+
+"What's he suffering from? Infantile paralysis?"
+
+"It's all very well for you to joke about it, but you don't live in a
+wretched boarding-house in Earl's Court. You mustn't let success spoil
+you, John. It's so easy when everything comes your way to forget the
+less fortunate people. Look at me. I'm thirty-four, you know."
+
+"Are you really? I should never have thought it."
+
+"I don't mind your laughing at me, you old crab. But I don't like you to
+laugh at Georgie."
+
+"I never do," John said. "I don't suppose that there's anybody alive who
+takes George as seriously as I do."
+
+Eleanor brushed away a tear and said she must get back to the rehearsal.
+
+When she was gone John felt that he had been unkind, and he reproached
+himself for letting Laurence make him cynical.
+
+"The fact is," he told himself, "that ever since I heard Doris Hamilton
+make that remark in the saloon of the _Murmania_, I've become suspicious
+of my family. She began it, and then by ill luck I was thrown too much
+with Laurence, who clinched it. Eleanor is right: I _am_ letting myself
+be spoilt by success. After all, there's no reason why those two
+children shouldn't come here. _They_ won't be writing plays about
+apostles. I'll send George a box of cigars to show that I didn't mean to
+sneer at him. And why didn't I offer to pay for Eleanor's taxi? Yes, I
+am getting spoilt. I must watch myself. And I ought not to have joked
+about Eleanor's age."
+
+Luckily his sister-in-law had finished the champagne, for if John had
+drunk another glass he might have offered her the part of the Maid
+herself.
+
+The actual arrival of Bertram and Viola passed off more successfully.
+They were both presentable, and John was almost flattered when Mrs.
+Worfolk commented on their likeness to him, remembering what a nightmare
+it had always seemed when Hilda used to excavate points of resemblance
+between him and Harold. Mrs. Worfolk herself was so much pleased to have
+him back from Ambles that she was in the best of good humours, and even
+the statuesque Maud flushed with life like some Galatea.
+
+"I think Maud's a darling, don't you, Uncle John?" exclaimed Viola.
+
+"We all appreciate Maud's--er--capabilities," John hemmed.
+
+He felt that it was a silly answer, but inasmuch as Maud was present at
+the time he could not, either for his sake or for hers give an
+unconditional affirmative.
+
+"I swopped four blood-allys for an Indian in the break," Bertram
+announced.
+
+"With an Indian, my boy, I suppose you mean."
+
+"No, I don't. I mean for an Indian--an Indian marble. And I swopped four
+Guatemalas for two Nicaraguas."
+
+"You ought to be at the Foreign Office."
+
+"But the ripping thing is, Uncle John, that two of the Guatemalas are
+fudges."
+
+"Such a doubtful coup would not debar you from a diplomatic career."
+
+"And I say, what is the Foreign Office? We've got a French chap in my
+class."
+
+"You ask for an explanation of the Foreign Office. That, my boy, might
+puzzle the omniscience of the Creator."
+
+"I say, I don't twig very well what you're talking about."
+
+"The attributes of the Foreign Office, my boy, are rigidity where there
+should be suppleness, weakness where there should be firmness, and for
+intelligence the substitution of hair brushed back from the forehead."
+
+"I say, you're ragging me, aren't you? No, really, what is the Foreign
+Office?"
+
+"It is the ultimate preserve of a privileged imbecility."
+
+Bertram surrendered, and John congratulated himself upon the possession
+of a nephew whose perseverance and curiosity had been sapped by a
+scholastic education.
+
+"Harold would have tackled me word by word during one of our walks. I
+shall enter into negotiations with Hilda at Christmas to provide for his
+mental training on condition that I choose the school. Perhaps I shall
+hear of a good one in the Shetland Islands."
+
+When Mrs. Worfolk visited John as usual at ten o'clock to wish him
+good-night, she was enthusiastic about Bertram and Viola.
+
+"Well, really, sir, if yaul pardon the liberty, I must say I wouldn't
+never of believed that Mrs. George's children _could_ be so quiet and
+nice-behaved. They haven't given a bit of trouble, and I've never heard
+Maud speak so highly of anyone as of Miss Viola. 'That child's a regular
+little angel, Mrs. Worfolk,' she said to me. Well, sir, I'm bound to say
+that children does brighten up a house. I'm sure I've done my best what
+with putting flowers in all the vawses and one thing and another, but
+really, well I'm quite taken with your little nephew and niece, and I've
+had some experience of them, I mean to say, what with my poor sister's
+Herbert and all. I _have_ put the tantalus ready. Good-night, sir."
+
+"The fact of the matter is," John assured himself, "that when I'm alone
+with them I can manage children perfectly. I only hope that Miss
+Coldwell will fall in with my ideas. If she does, I see no reason why we
+shouldn't spend an extremely pleasant time all together."
+
+Unfortunately for John's hope of a satisfactory coalition with the
+governess he received a hurried note by messenger from his sister-in-law
+next morning to say that Miss Coldwell was laid up: the precise disease
+was illegible in Eleanor's communication, but it was serious enough to
+keep Miss Coldwell at home for three weeks. "_Meanwhile_," Eleanor
+wrote, "_she is trying to get her sister to come down from_"--the abode
+of the sister was equally illegible. "_But the most important thing
+is," Eleanor went on, "that little V. shouldn't miss her
+dancing-lessons. So will you arrange for Maud to take her every Tuesday
+and Friday? And, of course, if there's anything you want to know,
+there's always George._"
+
+Of George's eternal being John had no doubts; of his knowledge he was
+less sanguine: the only thing that George had ever known really well was
+the moment to lead trumps.
+
+"However," said John, in consultation with his housekeeper, "I dare say
+we shall get along."
+
+"Oh, certainly we shall, sir," Mrs. Worfolk confidently proclaimed,
+"well, I mean to say, I've been married myself."
+
+John bowed his appreciation of this fact.
+
+"And though I never had the happiness to have any little toddlers of my
+own, anyone being married gets used to the idea of having children.
+There's always the chance, as you might say. It isn't like as if I was
+an old maid, though, of course, my husband died in Jubilee year."
+
+"Did he, Mrs. Worfolk, did he?"
+
+"Yes, sir, he planed off his thumb when he was working on one of the
+benches for the stands through him looking round at a black fellow in a
+turban covered in jewelry who was driving to Buckingham Palace. One of
+the new arrivals, it was; and his arm got blood poisoning. That's how I
+remember it was Jubilee year, though usually I'm a terror for knowing
+when anything did occur. He wouldn't of minded so much, he said, only he
+was told it was the Char of Persia and that made him mad."
+
+"Why? What had he got against the Shah?"
+
+"He hadn't got nothing against the Char. But it wasn't the Char; and if
+he'd of known it wasn't the Char he never wouldn't of turned round so
+quick, and there's no saying he wouldn't of been alive to this day. No,
+sir, don't you worry about this governess. I dare say if she'd of come
+she'd only of caused a bit of unpleasantness all round."
+
+At the same time, John thought, when he sent for the children in order
+to make the announcement of Miss Coldwell's desertion, notwithstanding
+Mrs. Worfolk's optimism it was a pity that the first day of their visit
+should be a Sunday.
+
+"I'm sorry to say, Viola, and, of course, Bertram, this applies equally
+to you, that poor Miss Coldwell has been taken very ill."
+
+That strange expression upon the children's faces might be an awkward
+attempt to express their youthful sympathy, but it more ominously
+resembled a kind of gloating ecstacy, as they stood like two cherubs
+outside the gates of paradise, or two children outside a bunshop.
+
+"Very ill," John went on, "so ill indeed that it is feared she will not
+be able to come for a few days, and so...."
+
+Whatever more John would have said was lost in the riotous acclamations
+with which Bertram and Viola greeted the sad news. After the first cries
+and leaps of joy had subsided to a chanted duet, which ran somehow like
+this:
+
+"Oh, oh, Miss Coldwell,
+
+She can't come to Hampstead,
+
+Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,
+
+Miss Coldwell's not coming:"
+
+John ventured to rebuke the singers for their insensibility to human
+suffering.
+
+"For she may be dangerously ill," he protested.
+
+"How _fizzing_," Bertram shouted.
+
+"She might die."
+
+The prospect that this opened before Bertram was apparently too
+beautiful for any verbal utterance, and he remained open-mouthed in a
+mute and exquisite anticipation of liberty.
+
+"What and never come to us ever again?" Viola breathed, her blue eyes
+aglow with visions of a larger life.
+
+John shook his head, gravely.
+
+"Oh, Uncle John," she cried, "wouldn't that be glorious?"
+
+Bertram's heart was too full for words: he simply turned head over
+heels.
+
+"But you hard-hearted little beasts," their uncle expostulated.
+
+"She's most frightfully strict," Viola explained.
+
+"Yes, we shouldn't have been able to do anything decent if she'd come,"
+Bertram added.
+
+A poignant regret for that unknown governess suffering from her
+illegible complaint pierced John's mind. But perhaps she would recover,
+in which case she should spend her convalescence at Ambles with Harold;
+for if when in good health she was strict, after a severe illness she
+might be ferocious.
+
+"Well, I'm not at all pleased with your attitude," John declared. "And
+you'll find me twice as strict as Miss Coldwell."
+
+"Oh, no, we shan't," said Bertram with a smile of jovial incredulity.
+
+John let this contradiction pass: it seemed an imprudent subject for
+debate. "And now, to-day being Sunday, you'd better get ready for
+church."
+
+"Oh, but we always dress up on Sunday," Viola said.
+
+"So does everybody," John replied. "Go and get ready."
+
+The children left the room, and he rang for Mrs. Worfolk.
+
+"Master Bertram and Miss Viola will shortly be going to church, and I
+want you to arrange for somebody to take them."
+
+Mrs. Worfolk hesitated.
+
+"Who was you thinking of, sir?"
+
+"I wasn't thinking of anybody in particular, but I suppose Maud could
+go."
+
+"Maud has her rooms to do."
+
+"Well, Elsa."
+
+"Elsa has her dinner to get."
+
+"Well, then, perhaps you would ..."
+
+"Yaul pardon the liberty, sir, but I never go to church except of an
+evening _some_times; I never could abide being stared at."
+
+"Oh, very well," said John, fretfully, as Mrs. Worfolk retired. "Though
+I'm hanged if _I'm_ going to take them," he added to himself, "at any
+rate without a rehearsal."
+
+The two children soon came back in a condition of complete preparation
+and insisted so loudly upon their uncle's company that he yielded;
+though when he found himself with a child on either side of him in the
+sabbath calm of the Hampstead streets footfall-haunted, he was appalled
+at his rashness. There was a church close to his own house, but with an
+instinct to avoid anything like a domestic scandal he had told his
+nephew and niece that it was not a suitable church for children, and had
+led them further afield through the ghostly November sunlight.
+
+"But look here," Bertram objected, "we can't go through any slums, you
+know, because the cads will bung things at my topper."
+
+"Not if you're with me," John argued. "I am wearing a top-hat myself."
+
+"Well, they did when I went for a walk with Father once on Sunday."
+
+"The slums round Earl's Court are probably much fiercer than the slums
+round Hampstead," John suggested. "And anyway here we are."
+
+He had caught a glimpse of an ecclesiastical building, which
+unfortunately turned out to be a Jewish tabernacle and not open: a few
+minutes later, however, an indubitably Anglican place of worship invited
+their attendance, and John trying not to look as bewildered as he felt
+let himself be conducted by a sidesman to the very front pew.
+
+"I wonder if he thinks I'm a member of parliament. But I wish to
+goodness he'd put us in the second row. I shall be absolutely lost where
+I am."
+
+John looked round to catch the sidesman's eye and plead for a less
+conspicuous position, but even as he turned his head a terrific crash
+from the organ proclaimed that it was too late and that the service had
+begun.
+
+By relying upon the memories of youthful worship John might have been
+able to cope successfully with Morning Prayer, even with that florid
+variation of it which is generally known as Mattins. Unluckily the
+church he had chosen for the spiritual encouragement of his nephew and
+niece was to the church of his recollections as Mount Everest to a
+molehill. As a simple spectator without encumbrances he might have
+enjoyed the service and derived considerable inspiration from it for the
+decorative ecclesiasticism of his new play; as an uncle it alarmed and
+confused him. The lace-hung acolytes, the candles, the chrysanthemums,
+the purple vestments and the ticking of the thurible affected him
+neither with Protestant disgust nor with Catholic devoutness, but much
+more deeply as nothing but incentives to the unanswerable inquiries of
+Bertram and Viola.
+
+"What are they doing?" whispered his nephew.
+
+"Hush!" he whispered back in what he tried to feel was the right
+intonation of pious reproof.
+
+"What's that little boy doing with a spoon?" whispered his niece.
+
+"Hush!" John blew forth again. "Attend to the service."
+
+"But it isn't a real service, is it?" she persisted.
+
+Luckily the congregation knelt at this point, and John plunged down with
+a delighted sense of taking cover. Presently he began to be afraid that
+his attitude of devotional self-abasement might be seeming a little
+ostentatious, and he peered cautiously round over the top of the pew; to
+his dismay he perceived that Bertram and Viola were still standing up.
+
+"Kneel down at once," he commanded in what he hoped would be an
+authoritative whisper, but which was in the result an agonized croak.
+
+"I want to see what they're doing," both children protested.
+
+Bertram's Etons appeared too much attentuated for a sharp tug, nor did
+John feel courageous enough in the front row to jerk Viola down upon her
+knees by pulling her petticoats, which might come off. He therefore
+covered his face with his hands in what was intended to look like a
+spasm of acute reverence and growled at them both to kneel down, unless
+they wanted to be sent back instantly to Earl's Court. Evidently
+impressed by this threat the children knelt down; but they were no
+sooner upon their knees than the perverse congregation rose to its feet,
+the concerted movement taking John so completely unawares that he was
+left below and felt when he did rise like a naughty boy who has been
+discovered hiding under a table. He was not put at ease by Viola's
+asking him to find her place in the prayer-book; it seemed to him
+terrible to discern the signs of a vindictive spirit in one so young.
+
+"Hush," he whispered. "You must remember that we're in the front row and
+must be careful not to disturb the--" he hesitated at the word
+"performers" and decided to envelop whatever they were in a cough.
+
+There were no more questions for a while, nothing indeed but tiptoe
+fidgetings until two acolytes advanced with lighted candles to a
+position on each side of the deacon who was preparing to read the
+gospel.
+
+"Why can't he see to read?" Bertram asked. "It's not dark."
+
+"Hush," John whispered. "This is the gospel"
+
+He knew he was safe in affirming so much, because the announcement that
+he was about to read the gospel had been audibly given out by the
+deacon. At this point the congregation crossed its innumerable features
+three times, and Bertram began to giggle; immediately afterward fumes
+poured from the swung censer, and Viola began to choke. John felt that
+it was impossible to interrupt what was presumably considered the _piece
+de resistance_ of the service by leading the two children out along the
+whole length of the church; yet he was convinced that if he did not lead
+them out their gigglings and snortings would have a disastrous effect
+upon the soloist. Then he had a brilliant idea: Viola was obviously much
+upset by the incense and he would escort her out into fresh air with
+the solicitude that one gives to a sick person: Bertram he should leave
+behind to giggle alone. He watched his nephew bending lower and lower to
+contain his mirth; then with a quick propulsive gesture he hurried Viola
+into the aisle. Unfortunately when with a sigh of relief he stood upon
+the steps outside and put on his hat he found that in his confusion he
+had brought out Bertram's hat, which on his intellectual head felt like
+a precariously balanced inkpot; and though he longed to abandon Bertram
+to his well merited fate he could not bring himself to walk up
+Fitzjohn's Avenue in Bertram's hat, nor could he even contemplate with
+equanimity the notion of Bertram's walking up under his. Had it been a
+week-day either of them might have passed for an eccentric
+advertisement, but on a Sunday....
+
+"And if I stand on the steps of a church holding this minute hat in my
+hand," he thought, "people will think I'm collecting for some charity.
+Confound that boy! And I can't pretend that I'm feeling too hot in the
+middle of November. Dash that boy! And I certainly can't wear it. A
+Japanese juggler wouldn't be able to wear it. Damn that boy!"
+
+Yet John would rather have gone home in a baby's bonnet than enter the
+church again, and the best that could be hoped was that Bertram dismayed
+at finding himself alone would soon emerge. Bertram, however, did not
+emerge, and John had a sudden fear lest in his embarrassment he might
+have escaped by another door and was even now rushing blindly home.
+Blindly was the right adverb indeed, for he would certainly be unable to
+see anything from under his uncle's hat. Viola, having recovered from
+her choking fit, began to cry at this point, and an old lady who must
+have noted with tender approval John's exit came out with a bottle of
+smelling-salts, which she begged him to make use of. Before he could
+decline she had gone back inside the church leaving him with the bottle.
+If he could have forced the contents down Viola's throat without
+attracting more attention he would have done so, but by this time one
+or two passers-by had stopped to stare at the scene, and he heard one of
+them tell his companion that it was a street conjurer just going to
+perform.
+
+"Will anything make you stop crying?" he asked his niece in despair.
+
+"I want Bertram," she wailed.
+
+And at that moment Bertram appeared, led out by two sidesmen.
+
+"Your little boy doesn't know how to behave himself in church," one of
+them informed John, severely.
+
+"I was only looking for my hat," Bertram explained. "I thought it had
+rolled into the next pew. Let go of my arm. I slipped off the hassock. I
+couldn't help making a little noise, Uncle John."
+
+John was grateful to Bertram for thus exonerating him publicly from the
+responsibility of having begotten him, and he inquired almost kindly
+what had happened.
+
+"The hassock slipped, and I fell into the next pew."
+
+"I'm sorry my nephew made a noise," said John to the sidesman. "My niece
+was taken ill, and he was left behind by accident. Thank you for showing
+him the way out, yes. Come along, Bertram, I've got your hat. Where's
+mine?" Bertram looked blankly at his uncle.
+
+"Do you mean to say--" John began, and then he saw a passing taxi to
+which he shouted.
+
+"Those smelling-salts belong to an old lady," he explained hurriedly and
+quite inadequately to the bewildered sidesman into whose hands he had
+thrust the bottle. "Come along," he urged the children, and when they
+were scrambling into the taxi he called back to the sidesmen, "You can
+give to the jumble sale any hat that is swept up after the service."
+
+Inside the taxi John turned to the children.
+
+"One would think you'd never been inside a church before," he said,
+reproachfully.
+
+"Bertram," said Viola, in bland oblivion of all that her uncle had
+endured, "when we dress up to-day shall we act going to church, or
+finish Robinson Crusoe?"
+
+"Wait till we see what we can find for dressing up," Bertram advised.
+
+John displayed a little anxiety.
+
+"Dressing up?" he repeated.
+
+"We always dress up every Sunday," the children burst forth in unison.
+
+"Oh, I see--it's a kind of habit. Well, I dare say Mrs. Worfolk will be
+able to find you an old duster or something."
+
+"Duster," echoed Viola, scornfully. "That's not enough for dressing up."
+
+"I didn't suggest a duster as anything but a supplement to your ordinary
+costume. I didn't anticipate that you were going to rely entirely upon
+the duster."
+
+"I say, V, can you twig what Uncle John says?"
+
+Viola shook her head.
+
+"Nor more can I," said Bertram, sympathetically.
+
+Before the taxi reached Church Row, John found himself adopting a
+positively deferential manner towards his nephew and his niece, and when
+they were once again back in the quiet house, the hall of which was
+faintly savoury with the maturing lunch he asked them if they would mind
+amusing themselves for an hour while he wrote some letters.
+
+"For I take it you won't want to dress up immediately," he added as an
+excuse for attending to his own business.
+
+The children confirmed his supposition, but went on to inform him that
+the domenical regime at Earl's Court prescribed a walk after church.
+
+"Owing to the accident to my hat I'm afraid I must ask you to let me off
+this morning."
+
+"Right-o," Bertram agreed, cheerfully. "But I vote we come up and sit
+with you while you write your letters. I think letters are a beastly
+fag, don't you?"
+
+John felt that the boy was proffering his own and his sister's company
+in a spirit of altruism, and he could not muster enough gracelessness
+to decline the proposal. So upstairs they all went.
+
+"I think this is rather a ripping room, don't you, V?"
+
+"The carpet's very old," said Viola.
+
+"Have you got any decent books?" Bertram inquired, looking round at the
+shelves. "Any Henty's, I mean, or anything?"
+
+"No, I'm afraid I haven't," said John, apologetically.
+
+"Or bound up Boys Own Papers?"
+
+John shook his head.
+
+"But I'll tell you what I have got," he added with a sudden inspiration.
+"Kingsley's _Heroes_."
+
+"Is that a pi book?" asked Bertram, suspiciously.
+
+"Not at all. It's about Greek gods and goddesses, essentially
+broad-minded divinities."
+
+"Right-o. I'll have a squint at it, if you like," Bertram volunteered.
+"Come on, V, don't start showing off your rotten dancing. Come and look
+at this book. It's got some spiffing pictures."
+
+"Lunch won't be very long," John announced in order to propitiate any
+impatience at what they might consider the boring entertainment he was
+offering.
+
+Presently the two children left their uncle alone, and he observed with
+pride that they took with them the book. He little thought that so mild
+a dose of romance as could be extracted from Kingsley's _Heroes_ would
+before the twilight of that November day run through 36 Church Row like
+fire. But then John did not know that there was a calf's head for dinner
+that night; he had not realized the scenic capacity of the cistern
+cupboard at the top of the house; and most of all he had not associated
+with dressing up on Sunday afternoon the histrionic force that Bertram
+and Viola inherited from their mother.
+
+"Is it Androm[e]da or Andr[o]meda?" Bertram asked at lunch.
+
+"Andr[o]meda, my boy," John answered. "Perseus and Andromeda."
+
+"I think it would make a jolly good play, don't you?" Bertram went on.
+
+Really, thought John, this nephew was a great improvement upon that
+spectacled inquisitor at Ambles.
+
+"A capital play," he agreed, heartily. "Are you thinking of writing it?"
+
+"V and I thought we'd do it instead of finishing Robinson Crusoe. Well,
+you see, you haven't got any decent fur rugs, and V's awfully stupid
+about having her face blacked."
+
+"It's my turn not to be a savage," Viola pleaded in defense of her
+squeamishness.
+
+"I said you could be Will Atkins as well. I know I'd jolly well like to
+be Will Atkins myself."
+
+"All right," Viola offered. "You can, and I'll be Robinson."
+
+"You can't change like that in the middle of a play," her brother
+argued.
+
+John, who appreciated both Viola's dislike of burnt-cork and Bertram's
+esthetic objection to changing parts in the middle of a piece, strongly
+recommended Perseus and Andromeda.
+
+"Of course, you got the idea from Kingsley? Bravo, Bertram," he said,
+beaming with cordial patronage.
+
+"And I suppose," his nephew went on, "that you'd rather we played at the
+top of the house. I expect it would be quieter, if you're writing
+letters. Mother said you often liked to be quiet." He alluded to this
+desire rather shamefully, as if it were a secret vice of his uncle, who
+hurriedly approved the choice of the top landing for the scene of the
+classic drama.
+
+"Then would you please tell Mrs. Worfolk that we can have the calf's
+head?"
+
+"The what?"
+
+"V found a calf's head in the larder, and it would make a fizzing
+Gorgon's head, but Mrs. Worfolk wouldn't let us have it."
+
+John was so much delighted with the trend of Bertram's ingenuity that
+he sent for Mrs. Worfolk and told her that the calf's head might be
+borrowed for the play.
+
+"I'll take no responsibility for your dinner," said his housekeeper,
+warningly.
+
+"That's all right, Mrs. Worfolk. If anything happens to the head I
+shan't grumble. There'll always be the cold beef, won't there?"
+
+Mrs. Worfolk turned up her eyes to heaven and left the room.
+
+"Well, I think I've arranged that for you successfully."
+
+"Thank you, Uncle John," said Bertram.
+
+"Thank you, Uncle John," said Viola.
+
+What nice quiet well-mannered children they were, after all; and he by
+no means ought to blame them for the fiasco of the churchgoing; the
+setting had of course been utterly unfamiliar; these ritualistic places
+of worship were a mistake in an unexcitable country like England. John
+retired to his library and lit a Corona with a sense that he thoroughly
+deserved a good cigar.
+
+"Children are not difficult," he said to himself, "if one tries to put
+oneself in their place. That request for the calf's head undoubtedly
+showed a rare combination of adaptiveness with for a schoolboy what was
+almost a poetic fancy. Harold would have wanted to know how much the
+head weighed, and whether in life it preferred to browse on buttercups
+or daisies; but when finally it was cooked he would have eaten twice as
+much as anybody else. I prefer Bertram's attitude; though naturally I
+can appreciate a housekeeper's feelings. These cigars are in capital
+condition. Really, Bertram's example is infectious, and by gad, I feel
+quite like a couple of hours with Joan. Yes, it's a pity Laurence hasn't
+got Bertram's dramatic sense. A great pity."
+
+The sabbath afternoon wore on, and though John did not accumulate enough
+energy to seat himself at his table, he dreamed a good deal of wonderful
+situations in the fourth act, puffing away at his cigar and hearing from
+time to time distant shouts and scamperings; these, however, did not
+keep him from falling into a gentle doze, from which he was abruptly
+wakened by the opening of the library door.
+
+"Ah, is that tea?" he asked cheerfully in that tone with which the
+roused sleeper always implies his uninterrupted attention to time and
+space.
+
+"No, sir, it's me," a grim voice replied. "And if you don't want us all
+to be drowned where we stand, it being a Sunday afternoon, and not a
+plumber to be got, and Maud in the hysterics, and those two young
+Tartars screaming like Bedlamites, and your dinner ruined and done for,
+and the feathers gone from Elsa's new hat, per-raps you could come
+upstairs, Mr. Touchwood. Gordon's head indeed, and the boy as naked as a
+stitch!"
+
+John jumped to his feet and hurried out on the landing; at the same
+moment Bertram with nothing to cover him except a pudding-shape on his
+head, a tea-tray on his arm, a Turkish scimitar at his waist, and the
+pinions of a blue and green bird tied round his ankles leapt six stairs
+of the flight above and alighting at his uncle's feet, thrust the calf's
+head into his face.
+
+"You're turned to stone, Phineus," he yelled. "You can't move. You've
+seen the Gorgon."
+
+"There he goes again with his Gordon and his Gladstone," said Mrs.
+Worfolk. "How dare you be so daring?"
+
+"The Gorgon's sister," cried Bertram lunging at her with the scimitar.
+"Beware, I am invisible."
+
+Whereupon he enveloped the calf's head in a napkin, held the tea-tray
+before his face, and darted away upstairs.
+
+"I'm afraid he's a little over-excited," said John, doubtfully.
+
+At this moment a stream of water began to flow past his feet and pour
+down upon him from the landing above.
+
+"Why, the house is full of water," he gasped.
+
+"It's what I'm trying to tell you, sir," Mrs. Worfolk fumed. "He's done
+something with that there cistern and burst it. I can't stop the
+water."
+
+John followed Perseus on his wild flight up the stairs down which every
+moment water was flowing more freely. When he reached the cistern
+cupboard he discovered Maud bound fast to the disordered cistern, while
+Viola holding in her mouth a large ivory paper-knife and wearing what
+looked like Mrs. Worfolk's sealskin jacket that John had given her last
+Christmas was splashing at full length in a puddle on the floor and
+clawing at Maud's skirts with ferocious growls and grunts.
+
+"You dare try to undress me again, Master Bertram," the statuesque Maud
+was screaming.
+
+"Well, Andromeda's got practically nothing on in the book, and you said
+you'd rather not be the sea-monster," Bertram was arguing. "Andromeda,"
+he cried seeing by the manner of his uncle's advance that the curtain
+must now be rung down upon the play, "I have turned the monster to
+stone. Go on, V, you can't move from now on."
+
+Viola stiffened and without a twitch let the stream of water pour down
+upon her, while Bertram planting his foot in the small of her back waved
+triumphantly the Gorgon's head, both of whose ears gave way under the
+strain, so that John's dinner was soon as wet as he was.
+
+The cistern emptied itself at last; Maud was released; Bertram and Viola
+were led downstairs to be dried and on Mrs. Worfolk's recommendation
+sent instantly to bed.
+
+"I told you," said Bertram, "that if Miss Coldwell had come, we couldn't
+have done anything decent."
+
+What woman, John wondered, might serve as a comparable deterrent? The
+fantastic idea of appealing for aid to Doris Hamilton flashed through
+his mind, but on second thoughts he felt that there would be something
+undignified in asking her to come at such a moment. Then he remembered
+how often he had heard his sister-in-law Beatrice lament her
+childlessness. Why should he not visit James and Beatrice this very
+evening? He owed them a visit, and his domestics were all obviously too
+much agitated even to contemplate the preparation of dinner. Mrs.
+Worfolk would perhaps be in a better temper when he got back and he
+would explain to her that the seal was a marine animal, the skin of
+which would not be injured by water.
+
+"I think I'll ask Mrs. James to give us a helping hand this week," John
+suggested. "I shall be rather busy myself."
+
+"Yes, sir, and so shall I, trying to get the house straight again which
+it looks more like Shooting the Chutes at Earl's Court than a
+gentleman's house, I'm bound to say."
+
+"Still it might have been worse, Mrs. Worfolk. They might have played
+with another element. Fire, for instance. That would have been much more
+awkward."
+
+"And it's thanks to me the house isn't on fire as well," Mrs. Worfolk
+shrilled in her indignation. "For if that young Turk didn't come
+charging down into the kitchen and trying to tell me that the
+kitchen-fire was a serpent and start attacking it tooth and nail. And
+there was poor Elsa shut up in the coal-cellar and hollering fit to
+break anyone's heart. 'She's Daniel in a tower of brass,' he says as
+bold as a tower of brass himself."
+
+"And what were you, Mrs. Worfolk?" John asked.
+
+"Oh, his lordship had the nerve to say I was an atlas. 'Yes,' I said,
+'my lord, you let me catch hold of you and I'll make your behind look
+like an atlas before I've done with it.'"
+
+"Do you think that Mrs. James could control them?" John asked.
+
+"I wouldn't say as the Lord Mayor himself could control them, but it's
+not for me to give advice when good food can be turned into Gordon's
+heads. And whatever give them the idea, I don't know, for I'm sure
+General Gordon was a very handsome man to look at. Yaul excuse me, sir,
+but if you don't want to catch your death, you'd better change your
+things."
+
+John followed Mrs. Worfolk's advice, and an hour later he was walking
+through the misty November night in the direction of St. John's Wood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+If a taxi had lurked in any of the melancholy streets through which John
+was making his way to Hill Road he would have taken refuge in it
+gratefully, for there was no atmosphere that preyed upon his mind with
+such a sense of desolation as the hour of evening prayer in a
+respectable Northern suburb. The occasional footsteps of uninspired
+lovers dying away into by-streets; the occasional sounds of stuffy
+worship proceeding from church or chapel; the occasional bark of a dog
+trying to obtain admittance to an empty house; the occasional tread of a
+morose policeman; the occasional hoot of a distant motor-horn; the
+occasional whiff of privet-shrubberies and of damp rusty railings; the
+occasional effusions of chlorotic gaslight upon the raw air, half fog,
+half drizzle; the occasional shadows that quivered upon the dimly
+luminous blinds of upper windows; the occasional mutterings of
+housemaids in basements--not even John's buoyant spirit could rise above
+such a weight of depressing adjuncts to the influential Sabbath gloom.
+He began to accuse himself of having been too hasty in his treatment of
+Bertram and Viola; the scene at Church Row viewed in retrospect seemed
+to him cheerful and, if the water had not reached his Aubusson rug,
+perfectly harmless. No doubt, in the boarding-house at Earl's Court such
+behavior had been considered impossible. Had not the children talked of
+finishing Robinson Crusoe and alluded to his own lack of suitable fur
+rugs? Evidently last week the drama had been interrupted by the landlady
+because they had been spoiling her fur rugs. John was on the point of
+going back to Church Row and inviting the children to celebrate his
+return in a jolly impromptu supper, when he remembered that there were
+at least five more Sundays before Christmas. Next Sunday they would
+probably decide to revive the Argonauts, a story that, so far as he
+could recall the incidents, offered many opportunities for destructive
+ingenuity. Then, the Sunday after, there would be Theseus and the
+Minotaur; if there were another calf's head in the larder, Bertram might
+easily try to compel Mrs. Worfolk to be the Minotaur and wear it, which
+might mean Mrs. Worfolk's resignation from his service, a prospect that
+could not be faced with equanimity. But would the presence of Beatrice
+exercise an effective control upon this dressing up, and could he stand
+Beatrice for six weeks at a stretch? He might, of course, engage her to
+protect him and his property during the first few days, and after that
+to come for every week end. Suppose he did invite Doris Hamilton, but,
+of course, that was absurd--suppose he did invite Beatrice, would Doris
+Hamilton--would Beatrice come? Could it possibly be held to be one of
+the duties of a confidential secretary to assist her employer in
+checking the exuberance of his juvenile relations? Would not Miss
+Hamilton decide that her post approximated too nearly to that of a
+governess? Obviously such a woman had never contemplated the notion of
+becoming a governess. But had she ever contemplated the notion of
+becoming a confidential secretary? No, no, the plan was fantastic,
+unreal ... he must trust to Beatrice and hope that Miss Coldwell would
+presently recover, or that Eleanor's tour would come to a sudden end, or
+that George would have paid what he owed his landlady and feel better
+able to withstand her criticism of his children. If all these hopes
+proved unfounded, a schoolboy, like the rest of human nature, had his
+price--his noiselessness could be bought in youth like his silence later
+on. John was turning into Hill Road when he made this reflection; he was
+within the area of James' cynical operations.
+
+John's eldest brother was at forty-six an outwardly rather improved, an
+inwardly much debased replica of their father. The old man had not
+possessed a winning personality, but his energy and genuine powers of
+accomplishment had made him a successful general practitioner, because
+people overlooked his rudeness in the confidence he gave them and
+forgave his lack of sympathy on account of his obvious devotion to their
+welfare. He with his skeptical and curious mind, his passion for
+mathematics and hatred of idealism, and his unaffected contempt for the
+human race could not conceive a worse hell in eternity than a general
+practice offered him in life; but having married a vain, beautiful, lazy
+and conventional woman, he could not bring himself to spoil his honesty
+by blaming for the foolish act anything more tangible than the scheme of
+creation; and having made himself a damned uncomfortable bed with a
+pretty quilt, as he used to say, he had decided that he must lie on it.
+No doubt, many general practitioners go through life with the conviction
+that they were intended to devote themselves to original research; but
+Dr. Robert Touchwood from what those who were qualified to judge used to
+say of him had reason to feel angry with his fate.
+
+James, who as a boy had shown considerable talent, was chosen by his
+father to inherit the practice. It was typical of the old gentleman that
+he did not assume this succession as the right of the eldest son, but
+that he deliberately awarded it to James as the most apparently adequate
+of his offspring. Unfortunately James, who was dyspeptic even at school,
+chose to imitate his father's mannerisms while he was still a student at
+Guy's and helping at odd hours in the dispensary. Soon after he had
+taken his finals and had seen his name engraved upon the brass plate
+underneath his father's, old Dr. Touchwood fell ill of an incurable
+disease and James found himself in full charge of the practice, which he
+proceeded to ruin, so that not long after his father's death he was
+compelled to sell it for a much smaller sum than it would have fetched a
+few years before. For a time he played alternately with the plan of
+setting up as a specialist in Harley Street or of burying himself in the
+country to write a monograph on British dragon-flies--for some reason
+these fierce and brilliant insects touched a responsive chord in James.
+He finally decided upon the dragon-flies and went down to Ockham Common
+in Surrey to search for _Sympetrum Fonscolombii_, a rare migrant that
+was reported from that locality in 1892. He could not prove that it was
+any more indigenous than himself to the sophisticated county, but in the
+course of his observations he met Beatrice Pyrke, the daughter of a
+prosperous inn-keeper in a neighboring town, and married her.
+Notwithstanding such a catch--he used to vow that she was more
+resplendent than even _Anax Imperator_--he continued to take an interest
+in dragon-flies, until his monograph was unluckily forestalled a few
+years later. It was owing to an article of his in one of the
+entomological journals that he encountered Daniel Curtis--a meeting
+which led to Hilda's marriage. In those days--John had not yet made a
+financial success of literature--this result had seemed to the
+embittered odonatist a complete justification of the many hours he had
+wasted in preparing for his never-to-be written monograph, because his
+sister's future had for some time been presenting a disagreeable and
+insoluble problem. Besides observing dragon-flies, James spent one year
+in making a clock out of fishbones, and another year in perfecting a
+method of applying gold lacquer to poker-work.
+
+A more important hobby, however, that finally displaced all the others
+was foreign literature, in the criticism of which he frequently occupied
+pages in the expensive reviews, pages that gradually grew numerous
+enough to make first one book and then another. James' articles on
+foreign literature were always signed; but he also wrote many criticisms
+of English literature that were not signed. This hack-work exasperated
+him so much that he gradually came to despising the whole of English
+literature after the eighteenth century with the exception of the novels
+of George Meredith. These he used to read aloud to his wife when he was
+feeling particularly bilious and derive from her nervous bewilderment a
+savage satisfaction. In her the critic possessed a perpetual incarnation
+of the British public that he so deeply scorned, and he treated his
+wife in the same way as he fancied he treated the larger entity: without
+either of them he would have been intellectually at a loose end. For all
+his admiration of French literature James spoke the language with a
+hideous British accent. Once on a joint holiday John, who for the whole
+of a channel-crossing had been listening to his brother's tirades
+against the rottenness of modern English literature and his paeans on
+behalf of modern French literature, had been much consoled when they
+reached Calais to find that James could not make himself intelligible
+even to a porter.
+
+"But," as John had said with a chuckle, "perhaps Meredith couldn't have
+made himself intelligible to an English porter."
+
+"It's the porter's fault," James had replied, sourly.
+
+For some years now the critic with his wife and a fawn-coloured bulldog
+had lived in furnished apartments at 65 Hill Road, a creeper-matted
+house of the early 'seventies which James characterized as quiet and
+Beatrice as handy; in point of fact it was neither, being exposed to
+barrel-organs and remote from busses. A good deal of the original
+furniture still incommoded the rooms; but James had his own chair,
+Beatrice had her own footstool, and Henri Beyle the bulldog his own
+basket. The fire-place was crowned by an overmantel of six decorative
+panels, all that was left of James' method of applying gold lacquer to
+poker-work. There were also three or four family portraits, which John
+for some reason coveted for his own library, and a drawer-cabinet of
+faded and decrepit dragon-flies. Some bookshelves filled with yellow
+French novels gave an exotic look to the drab room, which, whenever
+James was not smoking his unusually foul pipes, smelt of gravy and malt
+vinegar except near the window, where the predominant perfume was of
+ferns and oilcloth. Between the living-room and the bedroom were
+double-doors hidden by brown plush curtains, which if opened quickly
+revealed nothing but a bleak expanse of bed and a gray window fringed
+with ragged creepers. When a visitor entered this room to wash his
+hands he used to look at James' fishbone clock under its bell-glass on a
+high chest of drawers and shiver in the dampness; the fireplace was
+covered by a large wardrobe, and one of Beatrice's hats was often on the
+bed, the counterpane of which was stenciled with Beyle's paws. John, who
+loathed this bedroom, always said he did not want to wash his hands,
+when he took a meal at Hill Road.
+
+The depression of his Sunday evening walk had made John less critical
+than he usually was of James' rooms, and he heard the gate of the
+front-garden swing back behind him with a sense of pleasurable
+expectation.
+
+"There will be cold mutton for supper," he said to himself, thinking
+rather guiltily of the calf's head that he might have eaten and to
+partake of which he had not invited his brother and Beatrice. "Cold
+mutton and a very wet salad, with either tinned pears or tinned
+pineapple to follow--or perhaps stewed figs."
+
+When John entered, James was deep in his armchair with Beyle snoring on
+his lap, where he served as a rest for the large book that his master
+was reading.
+
+"Hullo," the critic exclaimed without attempting to rise. "You are back
+in town then?"
+
+"Yes, I came back on Friday."
+
+"I thought you wouldn't be able to stand the country for long. Remember
+what Horry Walpole said about the country?"
+
+"Yes," said John, quickly. He had not the least idea really, but he had
+long ago ceased to have any scruples about preventing James first of all
+from trying to remember a quotation, secondly from trying to find it,
+thirdly from asking Beatrice where she had hidden the book in which it
+was to be found, and finally from not only reading it when the book was
+found, but also from reading page after page of irrelevant matter in the
+context. "Though Ambles is really very jolly," he added. "I'm expecting
+you and Beatrice to spend Christmas with me, you know."
+
+James grunted.
+
+"Well, we'll see about that. I don't belong to the Dickens Fellowship
+and I shall be pretty busy. You popular authors soon forget what it
+means to be busy. So you've had another success? Who was it this
+time--Lucretia Borgia, eh?" he laughed, bitterly. "Good lord, it's
+incredible, isn't it? But the English drama's in a sick state--a very
+sick state."
+
+"All contemporary art is in a sick state according to the critics," John
+observed. "Critics are like doctors; they are not prejudiced in favor of
+general good-health."
+
+"Well, isn't it in a sick state?" James demanded, truculently.
+
+"I don't know that I think it is. However, don't let's begin an argument
+before supper. Where's Beatrice?"
+
+"She bought a new hat yesterday and has gone to demonstrate its
+becomingness to God and woman."
+
+"I suppose you mean she's gone to church? I went to church myself this
+morning."
+
+"What for? Copy?"
+
+"No, no, no. I took George's children."
+
+"You don't mean to say that you've got _them_ with you?"
+
+John nodded, and his brother exploded with an uproarious laugh.
+
+"Well, I was fool enough to marry before I was thirty," he bellowed.
+"But at any rate I wasn't fool enough to have any children. So you're
+going to sup with us. I ought to warn you it's cold mutton to-night."
+
+"Really? Capital! There's nothing I like better than cold mutton."
+
+"Upon my soul, Johnnie, I'll say this for you. You may write stale
+romantic plays about the past, but you manage to keep plenty of romantic
+sauce for the present. Yes, you're a born optimist. Look at your
+skin--pink as a baby's. Look at mine--yellow as a horse's tooth. Have
+you heard my new name for your habit of mind? Rosification. Rather good,
+eh? And you can rosify anything from Lucretia Borgia to cold mutton.
+Now don't look angry with me, Johnnie; you must rosify my ill-humor.
+With so many roses you can't expect not to have a few thorns as well,
+and I'm one of them. No, seriously, I congratulate you on your success.
+And I always try to remember that you write with your tongue in your
+cheek."
+
+"On the contrary I believe I write as well as I can," said John,
+earnestly. "I admit that I gave up writing realistic novels, but that
+was because they didn't suit my temperament."
+
+"No, by gad, they didn't! And, anyway, no Englishman can write a
+realistic novel--or any other kind of a novel if it comes to that. My
+lord, the English novel!"
+
+"Look here," John protested. "I do not want to argue about either plays
+or novels to-night. But if you must talk about books, talk about your
+own, not mine. Beatrice wrote to me that you had something coming along
+about the French Symbolists. I shouldn't have thought that they would
+have appealed to you."
+
+"They don't. I hate them."
+
+"Well, why write a book about them? Their day has been over a long
+time."
+
+"To smash them. To prove that they were a pretentious set of epileptic
+humbugs."
+
+"Sort of Max Nordau business?"
+
+"Max Nordau! I hope you aren't going to compare me with that flat-footed
+bus-conductor. No, no, Johnnie, the rascals took themselves seriously
+and I'm going to smash them on their own estimate of their own
+importance. I'm going to prove that they were on the wrong track and led
+nowhere."
+
+"It's consoling to learn that even French literature can go off the
+lines sometimes."
+
+"Of course it can, because it runs on lines. English literature on the
+contrary never had any lines on which to run, though in the eighteenth
+century it followed a fairly decent coaching-road. Modern English
+literature, however, is like a rogue elephant trampling down the jungle
+that its predecessors made some attempt to cultivate."
+
+"I never knew that even moral elephants had taken up agriculture
+seriously."
+
+James blew all the ashes of his pipe over Beyle in a gust of contempt,
+and rose from his chair.
+
+"The smirk!" he cried. "The traditional British smirk! The gerumky-gerum
+horse-laugh! British humor! Ha-ha! Begotten by Punch out of Mrs. Grundy
+with the Spectator for godfather. '_Go to, you have made me mad._'"
+
+"It's a pity you can't tell me about your new book without flying into a
+rage," John said, mildly. "You haven't told me yet when it's to appear."
+
+"My fourteen readers aren't languishing. But to repay politeness by
+politeness, my book will come out in March."
+
+"I'm looking forward to it," John declared. "Have you got good terms
+from Worrall?"
+
+"As good terms as a consumptive bankrupt might expect from Shylock. What
+does the British public care for criticism? You should hear me reading
+the proofs to Beatrice. You should really have the pleasure of watching
+her face, and listening to her comments. Do you know why Beatrice goes
+to church? I'll tell you. She goes to indulge in a debauch of the
+accumulated yawns of the week."
+
+"Hush, here she is," John warned him.
+
+James laughed again.
+
+"Johnnie, you're _impayable_. Your sensitiveness to Beatrice betrays the
+fount of your success. You treat the British public with just the same
+gentlemanly gurgle. And above all you're a good salesman. That's where
+George failed when he tried whisky on commission."
+
+"I don't believe you're half the misanthropist you make yourself out."
+
+"Of course, I'm not. I love human nature. Didn't I marry Beatrice, and
+didn't I spend a year in making a clock out of fishbones to amuse my
+landlady's children, and wasn't I a doctor of medicine without once
+using my knowledge of poisons? I love mankind--but dragon-flies were
+more complex and dogs are more admirable. Well, Beatrice, did you enjoy
+the sermon?"
+
+His wife had come in and was greeting John broadly and effusively, for
+when she was excited her loud contralto voice recaptured many rustic
+inflections of her youth. She was a tall woman, gaudily handsome,
+conserving in clothes and coiffure the fashions of her prime as queens
+do and barmaids who become the wives of publicans. On Sundays she wore a
+lilac broadcloth with a floriated bodice cut close to the figure; but
+she was just as proud of her waist on weekdays and discreet about her
+legs, which she wrapped up in a number of petticoats. She was as real or
+as unreal as a cabinet-photograph of the last decade of the nineteenth
+century: it depended on the attitude of the observer. Although there was
+too much of her for the apartments, it could not be said that she
+appeared out of place in them; in fact she was rather like a daughter of
+the house who had come home for the holidays.
+
+"Why, it's John," she expanded in a voice rich with welcome. "How are
+you, little stranger?"
+
+"Thank you very much for the flowers, Beatrice. They were much
+appreciated."
+
+"I wanted you to know that we were still in the land of the livin'.
+You're goin' to stay to supper, of course? But you'll have to be content
+with cold mutton, don't you know."
+
+There was a tradition among novelists that well-bred people leave out
+their final "g's"; so Beatrice saved on these consonants what she
+squandered upon aspirates.
+
+"And how do you think Jimmie's lookin'?" she went on. "I suppose he's
+told you about his new book. Comin' out in March, don't you know. I feel
+awfully up in French poitry since he read it out to me. Don't light
+another pipe now, dear. The girl's gettin' the supper at once. I think
+you're lookin' very well, Johnnie, I do indeed. Don't you think he's
+lookin' very well, Jimmie? Has Bill Bailey been out for his run?" This
+was Beatrice's affectionate diminutive for Henri Beyle, the dog.
+
+"No, I won't bother about my hands," John put in hastily to forestall
+Beatrice's next suggestion.
+
+"We had such a dull sermon," she sighed.
+
+Her husband grunted a request to spare them the details.
+
+"Well, don't you know, it's a dull time for sermons now before
+Christmas. But it didn't matter, as what I really wanted was a puff of
+fresh air. Yes, I'd begun to think you'd forgotten all about us," she
+rambled on, turning archly to John. "I know we must be dull company, but
+all work and no play, don't you know ... yours is all plays and no work.
+Jimmie, I made a joke," she laughed, twitching her husband's sleeve to
+secure his attention. "Did you hear?"
+
+"Yes, I heard," he growled.
+
+"I thought it was rather good, didn't you, Johnnie?"
+
+"Very good indeed," he assented, warmly. "Though I do work
+occasionally."
+
+"Oh, of course, you silly thing, I wasn't bein' serious. I told you it
+was a joke. I know you must work a bit. Here comes the girl with supper.
+You'll excuse me, Johnnie, while I go and titivate myself. I sha'n't be
+a minute."
+
+Beatrice retired to the bedroom whence she could be heard humming over
+her beautification.
+
+"You're not meditating marriage, are you?" James mocked.
+
+The bachelor shook his head.
+
+"At the same time," he protested, stoutly, "I don't think you're
+entitled to sneer at Beatrice. Considering--" he was about to say
+"everything," but feeling that this would include his brother too
+pointedly he substituted, "the weather, she's wonderfully cheerful. And
+you know I've always insisted that these rooms are cramped."
+
+"Yes, well, when a popular success oils my palm, John, we'll move next
+door to you in Church Row."
+
+John wished that James would not always harp upon their respective
+fortunes: it made him feel uncomfortable, especially when he was
+sitting down to cold mutton. Besides, it was unfair; had he not once
+advised James to abandon criticism and take up--he had been going to
+suggest "anything except literature," but he had noticed James' angry
+dismay and had substituted "creative work." What had been the result? An
+outburst of contemptuous abuse, a violent renunciation of anything that
+approximated to his own work. If James despised his romantic plays, why
+could he not be consistent and despise equally the wealth they brought
+him? He honored his brother's intellectual sincerity, why could not his
+brother do as much for his?
+
+"What beats me," James had once exclaimed, "is how a man like you who
+professes to admire--no, I believe you're honest--who does admire
+Stendhal, Turgenev, Flaubert and Merimee, who recognizes the perfection
+of _Manon Lescaut_ and _Adolphe_, who in a word has taste, can bring
+himself to eructate the _Fall of Babylon_."
+
+"It's all a matter of knowing one's own limitations," John had replied.
+"I tried to write realistic novels. But my temperament is not
+realistic."
+
+"No, if it were," James had murmured, "you wouldn't stand my affectation
+of superiority."
+
+It was this way James had of once in a very long while putting himself
+in the wrong that used always to heal John's wounded generosity. But
+these occasional lapses--as he supposed his cynical brother would call
+them--were becoming less and less frequent, and John had no longer much
+excuse for clinging to his romantic reverence for the unlucky head of
+his family.
+
+During the first half of supper Beatrice delivered a kind of lecture on
+housekeeping in London on two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a
+week, including bones for the dog; by the time that the stewed figs were
+put on the table this monologue had reduced both brothers to such a
+state of gloom by striking at James' experience and John's imagination,
+that the sourness of the cream came as a natural corollary; anything but
+sour cream would have seemed an obtrusive reminder of housekeeping on
+more than two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week, including
+bones for the dog. John was convinced by his sister-in-law's mood that
+she would enjoy a short rest from speculating upon the comparative
+versatility of mutton and beef, and by James' reception of her remarks
+that he would appreciate her housekeeping all the more after being
+compelled to regard for a while the long procession of chops that his
+landlady would inevitably marshal for him while his wife was away. The
+moment seemed propitious to the unfolding of his plan.
+
+"I want to ask you both a favor," he began. "No, no, Beatrice, I
+disagree with you. I don't think the cream is really sour. I find it
+delicious, but I daren't ever eat more than a few figs. The cream,
+however, is particularly delicious. In fact I was on the point of
+inquiring the name of your dairy."
+
+"If we have cream on Sundays," Beatrice explained, "Jimmie has to put up
+with custard-powder on Wednesdays. But if we don't have cream on
+Sundays, I can spare enough eggs on Wednesdays for real custard."
+
+"That's very ingenious of you," John declared. "But you didn't hear what
+I was saying when I broke off in defense of the cream, _which_ is
+delicious. I said that I wanted to ask a favor of you both."
+
+"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," James chuckled. "Or were you going
+to suggest to Beatrice that next time you have supper with us she should
+experiment not only with fresh cream, but also with some rare dish like
+nightingales' tongues--or even veal, for instance?"
+
+"Now, Jimmie, you're always puttin' hits in at me about veal; but if I
+get veal, it throws me out for the whole week."
+
+John made another effort to wrench the conversation free from the topic
+of food:
+
+"No, no, James. I was going to ask you to let Beatrice come and give me
+a hand with our nephew and our niece." He slightly accentuated the
+pronoun of plural possession. "Of course, that is to say, if Beatrice
+would be so kind."
+
+"What do you want her to do? Beat them?" James asked.
+
+"No, no, no, James. I'm not joking. As I explained to you, I've got
+these two children--er--staying with me. It appears that George is too
+overstrained, too ill, that is, to manage them during the few weeks that
+Eleanor will be away on tour, and I thought that if Beatrice could be my
+guest for a week or two until the governess has re-created her nervous
+system, which I understand will take about a month, I should feel a
+great weight off my mind. A bachelor household, you know, is not
+primarily constructed to withstand an invasion by children. You'd find
+them very difficult here, James, if you hadn't got Beatrice."
+
+"Oh, Johnnie, I should love it," his sister-in-law cried. "That is if
+Jimmie could spare me."
+
+"Of course, I could. You'd better take her back with you to-night."
+
+"No, really?" said John. "Why that would be splendid. I'm immensely
+obliged to you both."
+
+"He's quite anxious to get rid of me," Beatrice laughed, happily. "I
+sha'n't be long packin'. Fancy lookin' after Eleanor's two youngsters.
+I've often thought I _would_ rather like to see if I couldn't bring up
+children."
+
+"Now's your chance," John jovially offered.
+
+"Jimmie didn't ever care much for youngsters," Beatrice explained.
+
+Her husband laughed bitterly.
+
+"Quite enough people hate me, as it is," he sneered, "without
+deliberately creating a child of my own to add to the number."
+
+"Oh, no, of course, dear, I know we're better off as we are," Beatrice
+said with a soothing pat for her husband's round shoulders. "Only the
+idea comes into my head now and again that I'd just like to see if I
+couldn't manage them, that's all, dear. I'm not complaining."
+
+"I don't want to hurry you away," James muttered. "But I've got some
+work to do."
+
+"We'd better send the servant out to look for a taxi at once," John
+suggested. "It's Sunday night, you know."
+
+Twenty minutes later, Beatrice looking quite fashionable now in her
+excitement--so many years had it obliterated--was seated in the taxi;
+John was half-way along the garden path on his way to join her, when his
+brother called him back.
+
+"Oh, by the way, Johnnie," he said in gruff embarrassment, "I've got an
+article on Alfred de Vigny coming out soon in _The Nineteenth Century_.
+It can't bring me in less than fifteen guineas, but it might not be
+published for another three months. I can show you the editor's letter,
+if you like. I wonder if you could advance me ten guineas? I'm a little
+bothered just at the moment. There was a vet's bill for the dog and...."
+
+"Of course, of course, my dear fellow. I'll send you a check to-night.
+Thanks very much for--er--releasing Beatrice, I mean--helping me out of
+a difficulty with Beatrice. Very good of you. Good-night. I'll send the
+check at once."
+
+"Don't cross it," said James.
+
+On the way back to Hampstead in the dank murkiness of the cab, Beatrice
+became confidential.
+
+"Jimmie always hated me to pass remarks about havin' children, don't you
+know, but it's my belief that he feels it as much as anyone. Look at the
+fuss he makes of poor old Bill Bailey. And bein' the eldest son and
+havin' the pictures of his grandfather and grandmother, I'm sure there
+are times when he'd give a lot to explain to a youngster of his own who
+they really were. It isn't so interestin' to explain to me, don't you
+know, because they aren't my relations, except, of course, by marriage.
+I always feel myself that Jimmie for an eldest son has been very
+unlucky. Well, there's you, for instance. I don't mean to say he's
+jealous, because he's not; but still I dare say he sometimes thinks that
+he ought to be where you are, though, of course, that doesn't mean to
+say that he'd like you to be where he is. But a person can't help
+feelin' that there's no reason why you shouldn't both have been where
+you are. The trouble with Jimmie was that he wasted a lot of time when
+he was young, and sometimes, though I wouldn't say this to anybody but
+you, sometimes I do wonder if he doesn't think he married too much in a
+hurry. Then there were his dragon-flies. There they all are falling to
+pieces from want of interest. I don't suppose anybody in England has
+taken so much trouble as Jimmie over dragon-flies, but what is a
+dragon-fly? They'll never be popular with the general public, because
+though they don't sting, people think they do. And then that fellow--who
+is it--it begins with an M--oh dear, my memory is something chronic!
+Well, anyway, he wrote a book about bees, and it's tremendously popular.
+Why? Because a bee is well-known. Certainly they sting too, but then
+they have honey and people keep them. If people kept dragon-flies, it
+would be different. No, my opinion is that for an eldest son Jimmie has
+been very unlucky."
+
+The next day Bertram disappeared to school at an hour of the morning
+which John remembered did exist in his youth, but which he had for long
+regarded as a portion of the great backward and abysm of time. Beatrice
+tactfully removed his niece immediately after breakfast, not the auroral
+breakfast of Bertram, but the comfortable meal of ten o'clock; and
+except for a rehearsal of the _bolero_ in the room over the library John
+was able to put in a morning of undisturbed diligence. Beatrice took
+Viola for a walk in the afternoon, and when Bertram arrived back from
+school about six o'clock she nearly spoilt her own dinner by the
+assistance she gave him with his tea. John had a couple of quiet hours
+with _Joan of Arc_ before dinner, when he was only once interrupted by
+Beatrice's coming as her nephew's ambassador to ask what was the past
+participle of some Latin verb, which cost him five minutes' search for a
+dictionary. After dinner John played two sets of piquet with his
+sister-in-law and having won both began to feel that there was a good
+deal to be said for a woman's presence in the house.
+
+But about eleven o'clock on the morning of the next day James arrived,
+and not only James but Beyle the bulldog, who had, if one might judge by
+his behavior, as profound a contempt as his master for John's library,
+and a much more unpleasant way of showing it.
+
+"I wish you'd leave your dog in the hall," John protested. "Look at him
+now; he's upset the paper-basket. Get down off that chair! I say, do
+look at him!"
+
+Beyle was coursing round the room, steering himself with the kinked blob
+that served him for a tail.
+
+"He likes the soft carpet," his master explained. "He thinks it's
+grass."
+
+"What an idiotic dog," John scoffed. "And I suppose he thinks my
+Aubusson is an herbaceous border. Drop it, you brute, will you. I say,
+do put him downstairs. He's going to worry it in a minute, and all agree
+that bulldogs can't be induced to let go of anything they've once fairly
+gripped. Lie down, will you!"
+
+James roared with laughter at his brother's disgust, but finally he
+turned the dog out of the room, and John heard what he fancied was a
+panic-stricken descent of the stairs by Maud or....
+
+"I say, I hope he isn't chasing Mrs. Worfolk up and down the house," he
+ejaculated as he hurried out on the landing. What ever Beyle had been
+doing, he was at rest now and smiling up at John from the front-door
+mat. "I hope it wasn't Mrs. Worfolk," he said, coming back. "She's in a
+very delicate state just at present."
+
+"What?" James shouted, incredulously.
+
+"Oh, not in that way, my dear fellow, not in that way. But she's not
+used to having so many visitors in the house."
+
+"I'm going to take one of them away with me, if that'll be any
+consolation to her," James announced.
+
+"Not Beatrice?" his brother stammered.
+
+James nodded grimly.
+
+"It's all very fine for you with a mob of servants to look after you:
+but I can't spare Beatrice any more easily than you could spare Mrs.
+Worfolk. I've been confoundedly uncomfortable for nearly two days, and
+my wife must come back."
+
+"Oh, but look here," John protested. "She's been managing the children
+magnificently. I've hardly known they were in the house. You can't take
+Beatrice away."
+
+"Sorry, Johnnie, but my existence is not so richly endowed with comforts
+as yours. You'd better get a wife for yourself. You can afford one."
+
+"But can't we arrive at a compromise?" John pleaded. "Why don't you come
+and camp out with me, too?"
+
+"Camp out, you hypocrite!" the critic jeered. "No, no, you can't bribe
+me with your luxuries. Do you think that I could work with two children
+careering all over the place? I dare say they don't disturb your plays.
+I dare say you can't hear them above the clash of swords and the rolling
+of thunder, but for critical work I want absolute quiet. Sorry, but I'm
+afraid I must carry off Beatrice."
+
+"Well, of course, if you must...." John murmured, despondently. And it
+was very little consolation to think, while Viola practised the
+_fandango_ in the library preparatory to dislocating the household by
+removing Maud from her work to escort her to the dancing-class, that
+Beatrice herself would have liked to stay.
+
+"However," John sternly resolved, "the next time that James tries to
+scoff at married life I shall tell him pretty plainly what I think of
+his affectation."
+
+He decided ultimately to keep the children at Church Row for a week, to
+give them some kind of treat on Saturday, and on Saturday evening,
+before dinner, to take them back to their father and insist upon his
+being responsible for them. If by chance George proved to be really ill,
+which he did not suppose for a moment that he would, he should take
+matters firmly into his hands and export the children to Ambles until
+their mother came home: Viola could practise every known variety of
+Spanish dance over Laurence's head, or even in Laurence's room; and as
+for Bertram he could corrupt Harold to his heart's content.
+
+On the whole, the week passed off well. Although Viola had fallen like
+Lucifer from being an angel in Maud's mind, she won back her esteem by
+behaving like a human little girl when they went to the dancing-class
+together and did not try to assume diabolic attributes in exchange for
+the angelic position she had forfeited. John was allowed to gather that
+Viola's chief claim to Maud's forgiveness was founded upon her
+encouragement of the advances made to her escort by a handsome young
+sergeant of the Line whom they had encountered in the tube.
+
+"Miss Viola behaved herself like a little lady," Maud had informed John
+when they came home.
+
+"You enjoyed taking her?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, sir, it's a pleasure to go about with anyone so lady-like.
+Several very nice people turned round to admire her."
+
+"Did they, Maud, did they?"
+
+Later, when Viola's account of the afternoon reached him he wondered if
+the sergeant was one of those nice people.
+
+Mrs. Worfolk, too, was reconciled to Bertram by the profound respect he
+accorded to her tales and by his appreciation of an album of family
+photographs she brought out for him from the bottom of her trunk.
+
+"The boy can be as quiet as a mouse," she assured John, "as long as he
+isn't encouraged to make a hullabaloo."
+
+"You think I encourage him, Mrs. Worfolk?"
+
+"Well, sir, it's not my place to offer an opinion about managing
+children, but giving them a calf's head is as good as telling them to
+misbehave theirselves. It's asking for trouble. There he is now, doing
+what he calls his home work with a little plate of toffee I made for
+him--as good as gold. But what I do ask is where's the use in filling up
+a child's head with Latin and Greece. Teach a child to be a heathen
+goddess and a heathen goddess he'll be. Teach him the story of the
+Infant Samuel and he'll behave like the Infant Samuel, though I must say
+that one child who I told about God's voice, in the family to which I
+was nursemaid, had a regular fit and woke up screaming in the middle of
+the night that he could hear God routing about for him under the bed.
+But then he was a child with very old-fashioned notions and took the
+whole story for gospel, and his mother said after that no one wasn't to
+read him nothing except stories about animals."
+
+"What happened to him when he grew up?" John asked.
+
+"Well, sir, I lost sight of the whole family, but I dare say he became a
+clergyman, for he never lost this habit of thinking God was dodging him
+all the time. It was God here, and God there, till I fairly got the
+jumps myself and might have taken up with the Wesleans if I hadn't gone
+as third housemaid to a family where the master kept race-horses which
+gave me something else to think about, and I never had anything more to
+do with children until my poor sister's Herbert."
+
+"That must have been a great change, Mrs. Worfolk."
+
+"Yes, sir, so it was; but life's only one long changing about, though
+they do say there's nothing new under the sun. But good gracious me,
+fellows who make up mottoes always exaggerate a bit: they've got to, so
+as to keep up with one another."
+
+When Friday evening arrived John nearly emphasized Mrs. Worfolk's
+agreement with Heraclitus by keeping the children at Church Row. But by
+the last post there came a letter from Janet Bond to beg an earlier
+production of _Joan of Arc_ if it was by any means possible, and John
+looking at the infinitesimal amount he had written during the week
+resolved that he must stick to his intention of taking the children back
+to their father on the following day.
+
+"What would you like to do to-morrow?" he inquired. "I happen to have a
+free afternoon, and--er--I'm afraid your father wants you back in Earl's
+Court, so it will be your last opportunity of enjoying yourselves for
+some time--I mean of our enjoying ourselves for some time, in fact,
+until we all meet at Ambles for Christmas."
+
+"Oh, I say," Bertram protested. "Have we got to go back to rotten old
+Earl's Court? What a sell!"
+
+"I thought we were going to live here always," Viola exclaimed.
+
+"But don't you want to go back to your father?" John demanded in what he
+hoped was a voice brimming with reproaches for their lack of filial
+piety, but which he could not help feeling was bubbling over with
+something very near elation.
+
+"Oh, no," both children affirmed, "we like being with you much best."
+
+John's gratification was suddenly darkened by the suspicion that perhaps
+Eleanor had told them to flatter him like this; he turned swiftly aside
+to hide the chagrin that such a thought gave him, and when he spoke
+again it was almost roughly, because in addition to being suspicious of
+their sincerity he was vexed with himself for displaying a spirit of
+competitive affection. It occurred to him that it was jealousy rather
+than love which made the world go round--a dangerous reflection for a
+romantic playwright.
+
+"I'm afraid it can't be helped," he said. "To-morrow is definitely our
+last day. So choose your own method of celebrating it without dressing
+up."
+
+"Oh, we only dress up on Sundays," Viola said, loftily.
+
+"I vote we go to the Zoo," Bertram opinionated after a weighty pause.
+
+Had his nephew Harold suggested a visit to the Zoo, John would have
+shunned the proposal with horror; but with Bertram and Viola the
+prospect of such an expedition was positively enticing.
+
+"I must beware of favoritism," John warned himself. "Yes, and I must
+beware of being blarneyed." Then aloud he added:
+
+"Very well, we will visit the Zoo immediately after lunch to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, but we must go in the morning," Bertram cried. "There won't be
+nearly time to see everything in the afternoon."
+
+"What about our food?"
+
+"We can eat there."
+
+"But, my dear boy," John said. "You are confusing us with the lions. I
+much doubt if a human being _can_ eat at the Zoo, unless he has a
+passion for peanuts and stale buns, which I have not."
+
+"I swear you can," Bertram maintained. "Anyhow, I know you can get ices
+there in the summer."
+
+"We'll risk it," John declared, adventurously; and the children echoed
+his enthusiasm with joy.
+
+"We must see the toucans this time," Bertram announced in a grave voice,
+"and last time we missed the zebu."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought that possible," John demurred, "with all those
+stripes."
+
+"Not the zebra," Bertram severely corrected him. "The zebu."
+
+"Never heard of the beast," John said.
+
+"I say, V," Bertram exclaimed, incredulously. "He's never heard of the
+zebu."
+
+Viola was too much shocked by her uncle's ignorance to do more than
+smile sadly.
+
+"We'll show it you to-morrow," Bertram promised.
+
+"Thanks very much. I shall enjoy meeting the zebu," John admitted,
+humbly. "And any other friends of yours in the animal world whose names
+begin with Z."
+
+"And we also missed the ichneumon," Viola reminded her brother.
+
+"Your last visit seems to have been full of broken appointments. It's
+just as well you're going again to-morrow. You'll be able to explain
+that it wasn't your fault."
+
+"No, it wasn't," said Bertram, bitterly. "It was Miss Coldwell's."
+
+"Yes," said Viola. "She simply tore past everything. And when Bertram
+gave the chimpanzee a brown marble instead of a nut and he nearly broke
+one of his teeth, she said it was cruel."
+
+"Yes, fancy thinking _that_ was cruel," Bertram scoffed. "He was in an
+awful wax, though; he bunged it back at me like anything. But I swopped
+the marble on Monday with Higginbotham Minor for two green commonys: at
+least I said it was the marble; only really I dropped it while we were
+waiting for the bus."
+
+"You're a kind of juvenile Lord Elgin," John declared.
+
+"What did he do?"
+
+"He did the Greek nation over marbles, just as you did the chimpanzee
+and Higginbotham Minor."
+
+Next morning John made arrangements to send the children's luggage to
+Earl's Court so that he should be able when the Zoological Gardens were
+closed to take them directly home and not be tempted to swerve from his
+determination: then under the nearest approach to a blue sky that London
+can produce in November they set out for Regent's Park.
+
+John with his nephew and niece for guides spent a pleasant if exhausting
+day. Remembering the criticism leveled against Miss Coldwell's rapidity
+of transit, he loitered earnestly by every cage, although he had really
+had no previous conception of how many animals the Zoo included and
+began to dread a long list of uninvited occupants at the day's end. He
+had a charming triumph in the discovery of two more animals beginning
+with Z, to wit, the zibet and the zoril, which was the sweeter for the
+fact that they were both new beasts to the children. There was an
+argument with the keeper of the snake's house, because Bertram nearly
+blinded a lethargic alligator with his sister's umbrella, and another
+with the keeper of the giraffes, because in despite of an earnest plea
+not to feed them, Viola succeeded in tempting one to sniff moistly a
+piece of raspberry noyau. If some animals were inevitably missed, there
+were several welcome surprises such as seeing much more of the
+hippopotamus than the tips of his nostrils floating like two bits of
+mud on the surface of the water; others included the alleged visibility
+of a beaver's tail, a conjugal scene between the polar-bears, a truly
+demoniac exhibition of rage by the Tasmanian-devil, some wonderful
+gymnastics by a baby snow-leopard, a successful attempt to touch a
+kangaroo's nose, an indisputable wriggle of vitality from the anaconda,
+and the sudden scratching of its ear by a somnolent fruit-eating bat.
+
+About ten minutes before the Gardens closed John, who was tired out and
+had somehow got his cigar-case full of peanuts, declared it was time to
+go home.
+
+"Oh, but we must just have a squint at the Small Cats' House," Bertram
+cried, and Viola clasped her hands in apprehension at the bare idea of
+not doing so.
+
+"All right," John agreed. "I'll wait for you three minutes, and then I'm
+going slowly along towards the exit."
+
+The three minutes passed, and since the children still lingered he
+walked on as he had promised. When they did not catch him up as soon as
+he expected, he waited for a while and then with an exclamation of
+annoyance turned back.
+
+"What on earth can they find to enjoy in this awful smell?" he wondered,
+when he entered the Small Cats' House to drag them out. The house was
+empty except for a bored keeper thinking of his tea.
+
+"Have you seen two children?" John asked, anxiously.
+
+"No, sir, this is the Small Cats' House," replied the keeper.
+
+"Children," repeated John, irritably.
+
+"No, sir. Or, yes, I believe there _was_ a little boy and a little girl
+in here, but they've been gone some minutes now. It's closing time," he
+added, significantly.
+
+John rushed miserably along deserted paths through the dusk, looking
+everywhere for Bertram and Viola without success.
+
+"All out," was being shouted from every direction.
+
+"Two children," he panted to a keeper by the exit.
+
+"All out"
+
+"But two children are lost in the Gardens."
+
+"Closing time, sir. They must have gone out by another gate."
+
+He herded John through the turnstile into the street as he would have
+herded a recalcitrant gnu into its inclosure.
+
+"But this is terrible," John lamented. "This is appalling. I've lost
+George's children."
+
+He hailed a taxi, drove to the nearest police-station, left their
+descriptions, and directed the driver to Halma House, Earl's Court
+Square.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+John came to the conclusion while he was driving to Earl's Court that
+the distinctive anxiety in losing two children was to be sought for in
+an acute consciousness of their mobility. He had often enough lost such
+articles as sovereigns, and matchboxes, and income-tax demands; but in
+the disappearance of these he had always been consoled by the knowledge
+that they were stationary in some place or another at any given moment,
+and that somebody or another must find them at some time or another,
+with profit or disappointment to himself. But Bertram and Viola might be
+anywhere; if at this moment they were somewhere, before the taxi had
+turned the next corner they might be somewhere else. The only kind of
+loss comparable to this was the loss of a train, in which case also the
+victim was dismayed by the thought of its mobility. Moreover, was it
+logically possible to find two children, any more than it was possible
+to find a lost train? They could be caught like a train by somebody
+else; but except among gipsies, who were practically extinct, the sport
+of catching children was nowadays unknown. The classic instance of two
+lost children--and by the way an uncle came into that--was _The Babes in
+the Wood_, in which story they were neither caught nor found, though
+certainly their bodies were found owing to the eccentric behavior of
+some birds in the vicinity. It would be distressing to read in the paper
+to-morrow of two children's having been found under a drift of
+paper-bags in the bear-pit at the Zoo, hugged to death not by each
+other, but by the bears. Or they might have hidden themselves in the
+Reptile House--Bertram had displayed a dreadful curiosity about the
+effect of standing upon one of the alligators--and their fate might
+remain for ever a matter of conjecture. Yet even supposing that they
+were not at this moment regarding with amazed absorption--absorption was
+too ominous a word--with amazed interest the nocturnal gambols of the
+great cats, were they on that account to be considered safe? If it was a
+question of being crunched up, it made little difference whether one was
+crunched up by the wheels of an omnibus or by the jaws of a panther. To
+be sure, Bertram was accustomed to go to school by tube every morning,
+and obviously he must know by this time how to ask the way to any given
+spot....
+
+The driver of the taxi was taking no risks with the traffic, and John's
+tightly strung nerves were relaxed; he began to perceive that he was
+agitating himself foolishly. The wide smoothness of Cromwell Road was
+all that was needed to persuade him that the shock had deprived him for
+a short time of common sense. How absurd he had been! Of course the
+children would be all right; but he should take good care to administer
+no less sharp a shock to George than he had experienced himself. He did
+not approve of George's attitude, and if the temporary loss of Bertram
+and Viola could rouse him to a sense of his paternal responsibilities,
+this disturbing climax of a jolly day would not have been led up to in
+vain. No, George's moral, mental, and physical laziness must no longer
+be encouraged.
+
+"I shall make the whole business out to be as bad as possible," he
+decided. "Though, now that I have had time to think the situation out, I
+realize that there is really not the least likelihood of anything's
+serious having happened to them."
+
+For James even when he was most exasperating John always felt an
+involuntary deference that stood quite apart from the sentimental regard
+which he always tried to owe him as head of the family; for his second
+brother George he had nothing but contempt. James might be wrongheaded;
+but George was fatheaded. James kept something of their father's fallen
+day about him; George was a kind of gross caricature of his own self.
+Every feature in this brother's face reproduced the corresponding
+feature in his own with such compelling suggestiveness of a potentially
+similar degeneration that John could never escape from the reproach of
+George's insistent kinship. Many times he had been seized by a strong
+impulse to cut George ruthlessly out of his life; but as soon as he
+perceived that gibbous development of his own aquiline nose, that
+reduplication of his own rounded chin, that bull-like thickening of his
+own sanguine neck, and that saurian accentuation of the eloquent pouches
+beneath his own eyes, John surrendered to the claims of fraternity and
+lent George as much as he required at the moment. If Daniel Curtis's
+desire to marry Hilda had always puzzled him, Eleanor's willingness to
+be tied for life to George was even more incomprehensible. Still, it was
+lucky that she had been taken with such a whim, because she was all that
+stood between George and absolute dependence upon his family, in other
+words upon his younger brother. Whatever Eleanor's faults, however
+aggressive her personality, John recognized that she was a hard worker
+and that the incubus of a husband like George (to whom she seemed
+curiously and inexplicably devoted) entitled her to a great deal of
+indulgence.
+
+It was strange to look back now to the time when he and George were both
+in the city, himself in dog-biscuits and George in wool, and to remember
+that except their father everybody in the family had foretold a
+prosperous commercial career for George. Beyond his skill at Solo Whist
+and a combination of luck with judgment in betting through July and
+August on weight for age selling-plates and avoiding the big autumn
+handicaps, John could not recall that George had ever shown a glimmer of
+financial intelligence. Once or twice when he had visited his brother in
+the wool-warehouse he had watched an interview between George and a bale
+of wool, and he had often chuckled at the reflection that the
+protagonists were well matched--there had always been something woolly
+about George in mind and body; and when one day he rolled stolidly forth
+from the warehouse for the last time in order to enter into partnership
+with a deluded friend to act as the British agents for a society of
+colonial housewives, John felt that the deluded friend would have been
+equally well served by a bale of wool. When George and his deluded
+friend had tried the patience of the colonial housewives for a year by
+never once succeeding in procuring for them what they required, the
+partnership was dissolved, and George processed from undertaking to
+undertaking till he became the business manager of a theatrical touring
+company. Although as a business manager he reached the nadir of his
+incompetence he emerged from the post with Eleanor for wife, which
+perhaps gave rise to a family legend that George had never been so
+successful as when he was a business manager. This legend he never
+dispelled by a second exhibition of himself in the part, although he
+often spoke regretfully of the long Sundays in the train, playing nap
+for penny points. After he married Eleanor he was commission-agent for a
+variety of gentlemanly commodities like whisky and cigars; but he drank
+and smoked much more than he sold, and when bridge was introduced and
+popularized, having decided that it was the best investment for his
+share of Eleanor's salary, he abandoned everything else. Moreover,
+John's increasing prosperity gave his play a fine stability and
+confidence; he used to feel that his wife's current account merely
+lapped the base of a solid cliff of capital. A bad week at Bridge came
+to be known as another financial disappointment; but he used to say
+cheerfully when he signed the I.O.U. that one must not expect everybody
+in the family to be always lucky, and that it was dear old John's turn
+this week. John himself sometimes became quite giddy in watching the
+swift revolutions of the wheel of fortune as spun by George. The effect
+of sitting up late at cards usually made George wake with a headache,
+which he called "feeling overworked"; he was at his best in the dusky
+hours before dinner, in fact just at the time when John was on his way
+to explode in his ear the news of the children's disappearance; it was
+then that among the attenuated spinsters of Halma House his grossness
+seemed nothing more than a ruddy well-being and that his utter
+indifference to any kind of responsibility acquired the characteristics
+of a ripe geniality.
+
+Halma House, Earl's Court Square, was a very large boarding-house, so
+large that Miss Moxley, the most attenuated spinster who lived in it,
+once declared that it was more like a residential hotel than a
+boarding-house, a theory that was eagerly supported by all the other
+attenuated spinsters who clung to its overstuffed furniture or like
+dusty cobwebs floated about its garish saloons. Halma House was indeed
+two houses squeezed or knocked (or whatever other uncomfortable verb can
+be found to express the welding) into one. Above the front-door of
+number 198 were the large gilt letters that composed HALMA: above the
+front-door of what was once number 200 the equally large gilt letters
+that made up HOUSE. The division between the front-door steps had been
+removed so as to give an almost Medician grandeur to the entrance, at
+the top of which beneath a folded awning a curved garden-seat against
+the disused door of number 20 suggested that it was the resort for the
+intimate gayety of the boarders at the close of a fine summer day; as
+Miss Moxley used to vow, it was really quite an oasis, with the
+plane-trees of the square for contemplation not to mention the noising
+of the sparrows and the distant tinkling of milk-cans, quite an oasis in
+dingy old London. But then Miss Moxley had the early symptoms of
+exophthalmus, a malady that often accompanies the poetic temperament;
+Miss Moxley, fluttering out for five minutes' fresh air before dinner on
+a gentle eve in early June, was capable of idealizing to the semblance
+of a careless pastoral group the spectacle of a half-pay major, a portly
+widow or two up from the country, and George Touchwood, all brushing the
+smuts from their noses while they gossiped together on that seat: this
+was by no means too much for her exophthalmic vision.
+
+John's arrival at Halma House in raw November was not greeted by such
+evidence of communal felicity; on the contrary, when he walked up the
+steps, the garden-seat looked most defiantly uninviting; nor did the
+entrance hall with its writhing gilt furniture symbolize anything more
+romantic than the competitive pretentiousness of life in a
+boarding-house that was almost a residential hotel. A blond waiter whose
+hair would have been dishevelled but for the uses of perspiration
+informed him that Mr. Tooshvood was in his sitting-room, and led him to
+a door at the end of the hall opposite another door that gave descent to
+the dungeons of supply, the inmates of which seemed to spend their time
+in throwing dishes at one another.
+
+The possession of this sitting-room was the outstanding advantage that
+George always claimed for Halma House, whenever it was suggested that he
+should change his quarters: Adam discoursing to his youngest descendant
+upon the glories of Eden could hardly have outbragged George on the
+subject of that sitting-room. John on the other hand disliked it and
+took pleasure in pointing out the impossibility of knowing whether it
+was a conservatory half transformed into a box-room or a box-room nearly
+turned into a conservatory. He used to call it George's amphibious
+apartment, with justice indeed, for Bertram and Viola with true
+appreciation had once selected it as the appropriate setting in which to
+reproduce Jules Verne's _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_. The
+wallpaper of dark blue flock was smeared with the glistening pattern as
+of seaweed upon rocks at low tide; the window was of ground-glass tinted
+to the hue of water in a swimming-bath on Saturday afternoon, and was
+surrounded by an elaborate arrangement of cork that masked a number of
+flower pots filled with unexacting plants; while as if the atmosphere
+was not already sufficiently aqueous, a stage of disheartened
+aspidistras cast a deep-sea twilight upon the recesses of the room, in
+the middle of which was a jagged table of particolored marble, and upon
+the walls of which were hung cases of stuffed fish. Mrs. Easton, the
+proprietress of Halma House, only lent the room to George as a favor: it
+was not really his own, and while he lay in bed of a morning she used
+to quarrel there with all the servants in turn. Moreover, any of the
+boarders who had bicycles stabled them in this advantageous apartment,
+the fireplace of which smoked. Nevertheless, George liked it and used to
+knit there for an hour after lunch, sitting in an armchair that smelt
+like the cushions of a third-class smoker and looking with his knitting
+needles and opaque eyes like a large lobster preening his antennae in the
+corner of a tank.
+
+When John visited him now, he was reading an evening paper by the light
+of a rugged mantle of incandescent gas and calculating how much he would
+have won if he had backed the second favorite for every steeplechase of
+the day.
+
+"Hullo, is that you, John?" he inquired with a yawn, and one hand swam
+vaguely in his brother's direction while the other kept its fingers
+spread out upon the second favorites like a stranded starfish.
+
+"Yes, I'm afraid I've got very bad news for you, George."
+
+George's opaque eyes rolled slowly away from the races and fixed his
+brother's in dull interrogation.
+
+"Bertram and Viola are lost," John proclaimed.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," George sighed with relief. "I thought you were
+serious for a minute. Crested Grebe at 4 to 1--yes, my theory that you
+ought to back second favorites works out right for the ninth time in
+succession. I should have been six pounds up to-day, betting with level
+sovereigns. Tut-tut-tut!"
+
+John felt that his announcement had not made quite the splash it ought
+to have made in George's deep and stagnant pool.
+
+"I don't think you heard what I said," he repeated. "Bertram and
+Viola--_your_ children--are definitely lost."
+
+"I don't expect they are really," said George, soothingly. "No, no, not
+really. The trouble is that not one single bookie will take on this
+second-favorite system. Ha-ha--they daren't, the cowards! Don't you
+bother about the kids; no, no, they'll be all right. They're probably
+hanging on behind a van--they often do that when I'm out with them, but
+they always turn up in the end. Yes, I should have made twenty-nine
+pounds this week."
+
+"Look here," said John, severely, "I want you clearly to understand that
+this is not a simple question of losing them for a few minutes or so.
+They have been lost now since the Zoo was closed this afternoon, and I
+am not yet convinced that they are not shut up inside for the night."
+
+"Ah, very likely," said George. "That's just the kind of place they
+might get to."
+
+"The prospect of your children's passing the night in the Zoo leaves you
+unaffected?" John demanded in the tone of an examining counsel.
+
+"Oh, they'll have been cleared out by now," said George. "You really
+mustn't bother yourself about them, old boy."
+
+"You have no qualms, George, at the notion of their wandering for hours
+upon the outskirts of Regent's Park?"
+
+"Now don't you worry, John. I'm not going to worry, and I don't want you
+to worry. Why worry? Depend upon it, you'll find them safe and sound in
+Church Row when you get back. By the way, is your taxi waiting?"
+
+"No, I dismissed it."
+
+"I was afraid it might be piling up the twopences. Though I dare say a
+pyramid of twopences wouldn't bother you, you old plutocrat. Yes, these
+second favorites...."
+
+"Confound the second favorites," John exclaimed. "I want to discuss your
+children."
+
+"You wouldn't, if you were their father. They involve me in far too many
+discussions. You see, you're not used to children. I am."
+
+John's eyes flashed as much as the melancholy illumination permitted;
+this was the cue for which he had been waiting.
+
+"Just so, my dear George. You are used to children: I am not. And that
+is why I have come to tell you that the police have been instructed to
+return them, when found, to _you_ and not to me."
+
+George blinked in a puzzled way.
+
+"To me?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes, to you. To their father. Hasn't their luggage arrived? I had it
+sent back here this morning."
+
+"Ah, yes," George said. "Of course! I was rather late getting up this
+morning. I've been overworking a bit lately, and Karl did mutter
+something about luggage. Didn't it come in a taxi?"
+
+John nodded.
+
+"Yes, I remember now, in a prepaid taxi; but as I couldn't remember that
+I was expecting any luggage, I told Karl to send it back where it came
+from."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you sent their luggage back after I'd taken the
+trouble to...."
+
+"That's all right, old boy. I was feeling too tired to deal with any
+problems this morning. The morning is the only opportunity I get for a
+little peace. It never occurred to me whose luggage it was. It might
+have been a mistake; in fact I thought it was a mistake. But in any case
+it's very lucky I did send it back, because they'll want it to-night."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't keep them with me any longer."
+
+Though irony might be lost on George's cold blood, the plain fact might
+wake him up to the actuality of the situation and so it did.
+
+"Oh, but look here, old boy," he expostulated, "Eleanor won't be home
+for another five weeks. She'll be at Cardiff next week."
+
+"And Bertram and Viola will be at Earl's Court," said John, firmly.
+
+"But the doctor strongly recommended me to rest. I've been very seedy
+while you were in America. Stomachic, old boy. Yes, that's the trouble.
+And then my nerves are not as strong as yours. I've had a lot of worry
+lately."
+
+"I'm sorry," John insisted. "But I've been called away on urgent
+business, and I can't leave the children at Church Row. I'm sorry,
+George, but as soon as they are found, I must hand them over to you."
+
+"I shall send them down to the country," George threatened.
+
+"When they are once more safely in your keeping, you can do what you
+like with them."
+
+"To your place, I mean."
+
+Normally John would have given a ready assent to such a proposal; but
+George's attitude had by now aroused his bitter disapproval, and he was
+determined that Bertram and Viola should be planted upon their father
+without option.
+
+"Ambles is impossible," he said, decidedly. "Besides, Eleanor is anxious
+that Viola shouldn't miss her series of Spanish dances. She attends the
+dancing-class every Tuesday and Friday. No doubt your landlady will lend
+you Karl to escort her."
+
+"Children are very difficult in a boarding-house," George argued.
+"They're apt to disturb the other guests. In fact, there was a little
+trouble only last week over some game--"
+
+"Robinson Crusoe," John put in.
+
+"Ah, they told you?"
+
+"No, no, go on. I'm curious to know exactly what we missed at Church
+Row."
+
+"Well, they have a habit, which Eleanor most imprudently encourages, of
+dressing up on Sundays, and as I've had to make it an understood thing
+that _none_ of _my_ clothes are to be used, they are apt to borrow other
+people's. I must admit that generally people have been very kind about
+lending their clothes; but latterly this dressing up has taken a more
+ambitious form, and on Sunday week--I think it was--"
+
+"Yes, it would have been a Sunday," John agreed.
+
+"On Sunday week they borrowed Miss Moxley's parrot for Robinson Crusoe.
+You remember poor Miss Moxley, John?"
+
+"Yes, she lent you five pounds once," said John, sternly.
+
+"Precisely. Oh yes, she did. Yes, yes, that was why I was so vexed about
+her lending her parrot."
+
+"Why shouldn't she lend her parrot?"
+
+"No reason at all why she shouldn't lend it; but apparently parrots are
+very excitable birds, and this particular one went mad under the strain
+of the children's performance, bit Major Downman's finger, and escaped
+by an upper window. Poor Miss Moxley was extremely upset, and the bird
+has never been seen since. So you see, as I told you, children are apt
+to be rather a nuisance to the other guests."
+
+"None of the guests at Halma House keeps a tame calf?"
+
+George looked frightened.
+
+"Oh no, I don't think so. There's certainly never been the least sign of
+mooing in the garden. Besides, I'm sure Mrs. Easton would object to a
+calf. She even objects to dogs, as I had to tell James the other day
+when he came to see me _very_ early about signing some deed or other.
+But what made you ask about a calf? Do you want one?"
+
+"No, I don't want one: I hate cows and calves. Bertram and Viola,
+however, are likely to want one next week."
+
+"You've been spoiling them, old chap. They'd never dare ask me for a
+calf. Why, it's preposterous. Yes, you've been spoiling them. Ah, well,
+you can afford it; that's one thing."
+
+"Yes, I dare say I have been spoiling them, George; but you'll be able
+to correct that when they're once again in your sole charge."
+
+George looked doubtful.
+
+"I'm very strict with them," he admitted. "I had to be after they lost
+the parrot and burned Mrs. Easton's rug. It was most annoying."
+
+"Yes, luckily I hadn't got any suitable fur rugs," John chuckled. "So
+they actually burnt Mrs. Easton's?"
+
+"Yes, and--er--she was so much upset," George went on, "that
+she's--well--the fact is, they _can't_ come back, John, because she's
+let their room."
+
+"How much do you owe her?" John demanded.
+
+"Oh, very little. I think only from last September. Well, you see,
+Eleanor was out of an engagement all the summer and had a wretched
+salary at the Parthenon while she was understudying--these
+actress-managers are awful harpies--do you know Janet Bond?"
+
+"Yes, I'm writing a tragedy for her now."
+
+"Make her pay, old boy, make her pay. That's my advice. And I know the
+business side of the profession. But to come back to Mrs. Easton--I was
+really very angry with her, but you see, I've got my own room here and
+it's uncommonly difficult to find a private room in a boarding-house, so
+I thought we'd stay on here till Eleanor's tour was over. She intends to
+save three pounds a week, and if I have a little luck over the sticks
+this winter, we shall be quite straight with Mrs. Easton, and then the
+children will be able to come back in the New Year."
+
+"How much do you owe her?" John demanded for the second time.
+
+"Oh, I think it's about twenty pounds--it may be a little more."
+
+John knew how much the little more always was in George's calculations,
+and rang the bell, which fetched his brother out of the armchair almost
+in a bound.
+
+"Old boy, I never ring the bell here," he expostulated. "You see, I
+never consider that my private room is included in the attendance."
+
+George moved nervously in the direction of the door to make his peace
+with whoever should answer the unwonted summons; but John firmly
+interposed himself and explained that he had rung for Mrs. Easton
+herself.
+
+"Rung for Mrs. Easton?" George repeated in terrified amazement. "But she
+may come!"
+
+"I hope she will," replied John, becoming more divinely calm every
+moment in the presence of his brother's agitation.
+
+A tangled head flung itself round the door like one of the minor
+characters in a Punch and Judy show.
+
+"Jew ring?" it asked, hoarsely.
+
+"Please ask Mrs. Easton to come down to Mr. Touchwood's sitting-room,"
+said John, seriously.
+
+The head sniffed and vanished.
+
+"I wish you could realize, old chap, that in a boarding-house far more
+tact is required than anywhere else in the world," George muttered in
+melancholy apprehension. "An embassy isn't in it with a boarding-house.
+For instance, if I hadn't got the most marvelous tact, I should never
+have kept this room. However," he added more cheerfully, "I don't
+suppose for a moment that she'll come--unless of course she thinks that
+the chimney is on fire. Dash it, John, I wish you could understand some
+of the difficulties of my life. That's why I took up knitting. My nerves
+are all to pieces. If I were a rich man I should go for a long
+sea-voyage."
+
+George fell into a silent brooding upon his misfortunes and ill-health
+and frustrated ambitions; John examined the stuffed fish upon the walls,
+which made him think of wet days upon the river and waiting drearily in
+hotel smoking-rooms for the weather to clear up. Then suddenly Mrs.
+Easton filled the room. Positive details of this lady's past were
+lacking, although the gossip of a long line of attenuated spinsters had
+evolved a rich apocrypha. It was generally accepted, however, that Halma
+House was founded partly upon settlements made in her favor long ago by
+a generous stockbroker and partly upon an insurance-policy taken out by
+her late husband Dr. Easton, almost on the vigil of his death, the only
+successful operation he ever performed. The mixed derivation of her
+prosperity was significantly set forth in her personal appearance: she
+either wore widow's black and powdered her face with pink talcum or she
+wore bright satins with plumed hats and let her nose shine: so that
+although she never looked perfectly respectable, on the other hand she
+never looked really fast.
+
+"Good evening, ma'am," John began at once, assuming an air of
+Grandisonian courtesy. "My brother is anxious to settle his account."
+
+The clouds rolled away from Mrs. Easton's brow; the old Eve glimmered
+for a moment in her fierce eye; if he had been alone with her, John
+would have thought that she was about to wink at him.
+
+"I hear my nephew and niece have been taking liberties with your rug,"
+he went on, but feeling that he might have expressed the last sentence
+better, he hurriedly blotted the check and with a bow handed it to the
+proprietress. "No doubt," he added, "you will overlook it this time? I
+am having a new rug sent to you immediately. What--er--skin do you
+prefer? Bear? I mean to say, the rug."
+
+He tried to think of any other animal whose personality survived in
+rugs, but could think of none except a rabbit, and condemning the
+ambiguity of the English language waited in some embarrassment for Mrs.
+Easton to reply. She was by this time so surely convinced of John's
+interest in her that she opened to him with a trilling flutter of
+complacency like a turkey's tail.
+
+"It happened to be a bearskin," she murmured. "But children will be
+children. We oughtn't to forget that we were all children once, Mr.
+Touchwood."
+
+"So no doubt," John nervously continued, "you will be glad to see them
+when they come back to-night. Their room...."
+
+"I shall give orders at once, Mr. Touchwood."
+
+He wished that she would not harp upon the Mr. Touchwood; he seemed to
+detect in it a kind of reproachful formality; but he thanked her and
+hoped nervously she would now leave him to George.
+
+"Oh dear me, why the girl hasn't lit the fire," Mrs. Easton exclaimed,
+evidently searching for a gracious action.
+
+George eying his brother with a glance between admiration and
+disquietude told his landlady that he thought the fire smoked a little.
+
+"I shall have the chimney swept to-morrow," she answered as grandly as
+if she had conferred a dukedom upon John and an earldom upon George.
+
+Then with a special smile that was directed not so much toward the
+successful author as toward the gallant male she tucked away the check
+in her bodice, where it looked as forlorn as a skiff upon the tumultuous
+billows of the Atlantic, and went off to put on her green satin for
+dinner.
+
+"We shall all hope to see you at half-past seven," she paused in the
+doorway to assure John.
+
+"You know, I'll tell you what it is, old chap," said George when they
+were alone again. "_You_ ought to have taken up the commission business
+and _I_ ought to have written plays. But thanks very much for tiding me
+over this difficult time."
+
+"Yes," said John, a little sharply. "Your wife's current account wasn't
+flowing quite strongly enough, was it?"
+
+"Wonderful woman, Mrs. Easton," George declared. "She has a keen eye for
+business."
+
+"And for pleasure too, I should imagine," said John, austerely. "But get
+on your coat, George," he added, "because we must go out and inquire at
+all the police stations in turn for news of Bertram and Viola. We can't
+stop here discussing that woman."
+
+"I tell you the kids will be all right. You mustn't get fussy, John.
+It's absurd to go out now," George protested. "In fact I daren't. I must
+think of my health. Dr. Burnham who's staying here for a congress of
+medical men has given me a lot of advice, and as he has refused to
+charge me a penny for it, the least I can do is to pay attention to what
+he says. Besides, what are we going to do?"
+
+"Visit all the police stations in London."
+
+"What shall we gain by doing that? Have you ever been to a police
+station? They're most uncomfortable places to hang about in before
+dinner."
+
+"Get on your coat," John repeated.
+
+George sighed.
+
+"Well, if you insist, I suppose you have the right to insist; but in my
+opinion it's a waste of time. And if the kids are in a police station, I
+think it would teach them a dashed good lesson to keep them there for
+awhile. You don't want to encourage them to lose themselves every day. I
+wish _you_ had half a dozen kids."
+
+John, however, was inflexible; the sight of his brother sitting in that
+aqueous room and pondering the might-have-beens of the race course had
+kindled in his breast the fire of a reformer; George must be taught
+that he could not bring children into the world without being prepared
+to look after them. He must and should be taught.
+
+"Why, you'd take more trouble," he declared, "if you'd lost a fox
+terrier."
+
+"Of course I should," George agreed. "I should have to."
+
+John reddened with indignation.
+
+"Don't be angry, old chap. I didn't mean that I should think more of a
+fox terrier. But, don't you see, a dog is dependent upon its collar,
+whereas Bertram and Viola can explain where they come from. Is it very
+cold out?"
+
+"You'd better wear your heavy coat."
+
+"That means I shall have to go all the way upstairs," groaned George.
+
+The two brothers walked along the hall, and John longed to prod George
+with a heavy, spiked pole.
+
+"Going out, Touchwood?" inquired an elderly man of military appearance,
+who was practicing golf putts from one cabbage rose to another on the
+Brussels carpet.
+
+"Yes, I'm going out, Major. You know my brother, don't you? You remember
+Major Downman, John?"
+
+George left his brother with the major and toiled listlessly upstairs.
+
+"I think I once saw a play of yours, Mr. Touchwood."
+
+John smiled as mechanically as the major might have returned a salute.
+
+"_The Fall of Nineveh_, wasn't it?"
+
+The author bowed an affirmative: it was hardly worth while
+differentiating between Nineveh and Babylon when he was just going out.
+
+"Yes," the major persisted. "Wasn't there a good deal of talk about the
+scantness of some of the ladies' dresses?"
+
+"There may have been," John said. "We had to save on the dresses what we
+spent on the hanging gardens."
+
+"Quite," agreed the major, wisely. "But I'm not a puritan myself."
+
+John bowed again to show his appreciation of the admission.
+
+"Oh, no. Rather the reverse, in fact. I play golf every Sunday, and if
+it's wet I play bridge."
+
+John wished that George would be quick with his coat.
+
+"But I don't go in much for the theater nowadays."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+"No, though I used to when I was a subaltern. By gad, yes! But it was
+better, I think, in my young days. No offense to you, Mr. Touchwood."
+
+"Distance does lend enchantment," John assented.
+
+"Quite, quite. I suppose you don't remember a piece at the old Prince of
+Wales? What was it called? Upon my soul, I've forgotten. It was a
+capital piece, though. I remember there was a scene in which the
+uncle--or it may not have been the uncle--no, I'm wrong. It was at the
+Strand. Or was it? God bless my soul, I don't know which it was. You
+don't remember the piece? It was either at the Prince of Wales or the
+Strand, or, by Jove, was it Toole's?"
+
+Was George never coming? Every moment would bring Major Downman nearer
+to the heart of his reminiscence, and unless he escaped soon he might
+have to submit to a narrative of the whole plot.
+
+"Do you know what I'm doing?" the Major began again. "I'm confusing two
+pieces. That's what I'm doing. But I know an uncle arrived suddenly."
+
+"Yes, uncles are often rather fidgety," John agreed. "Ah, excuse me,
+Major. I see my brother coming downstairs. Good-by, Major, good-by. I
+should like to have a chat with you one of these days about the
+mid-Victorian theater."
+
+"Delighted," the Major said, fervently. "I shall think of that play
+before to-night. Don't you be afraid. Yes, it's on the tip of my tongue.
+On the very tip. But I'm confusing two theaters. I see where I've gone
+wrong."
+
+At that moment there was the sound of a taxi's arrival at Halma House;
+the bell rang; when George opened the door for John and himself to pass
+out, they were met by Mrs. Worfolk holding Viola and Bertram tightly,
+one in each hand.
+
+"I told you they'd turn up," George said, and immediately took off his
+overcoat with a sigh of relief. "Well, you've given us a nice hunt," he
+went on with an indignant scowl at the children. "Come along to my room
+and explain where you've been. Good evening, Mrs. Worfolk."
+
+In their father's sitting-room Bertram and Viola stood up to take their
+trial.
+
+"Yes," opened Mrs. Worfolk, on whom lay the burden of narrating the
+malefactors' behavior. "Yes, I've brought back the infant prodigals, and
+a nice job I've had to persuade them to come quiet. In fact, I never had
+such a job since I took my poor sister's Herbert hollering to the
+hospital with a penny as he'd nearly choked himself with, all through
+him sucking it to get at some sweet stuff which was stuck to the edge.
+He _didn't_ choke, though, because I patted him all down the street the
+same as if I'd been bowling a hoop, and several people looked at me in a
+very inquisitive way. Not that I ever pay attention to how people looks,
+except in church. To begin with, the nerve they've got. Well, I mean to
+say, when any one packs up some luggage and sends it off in a taxi,
+whoever expects to see it come back again almost at once? It came
+bouncing back, I do declare, as if it had been India rubber. 'Well,' as
+I said to Maud, 'It just shows how deep they are, and Mr. Touchwood'll
+have trouble with them before the day's done. You mark my words.' And,
+sure enough, just as I'd made up my mind that you wouldn't be in to tea,
+rat-a-tat-tat on the front door, and up drives my lord and my lady as
+grand as you like in a taxi. Of course, it give me a bit of a turn, not
+seeing you, sir, and I was just going to ask if you'd had an accident or
+something, when my lord starts in to argue with the driver that he'd
+only got to pay half fare for himself and his sister, the same as his
+father does when they travel by train. Oh, yes; he was going to pay the
+man himself. Any one would of thought it was the Juke of Wellington, to
+hear him arguing with that driver. Well, anyway, in the end, of course I
+had to pay the difference out of my housekeeping money, which you'll
+find entered in the book. And then, without so much as a blink, my lord
+starts in to tell how they'd gone into the Small Rat's House--"
+
+"Cats," interrupted Viola, solemnly.
+
+"Well, rats or cats, what does it matter, you naughty girl? It wasn't of
+rats or cats you were thinking, but running away from your poor uncle,
+as you perfeckly well know. Yes, indeed, sir, they went into this small
+house and dodged you like two pickpockets and then went careering out of
+the Zoo in the opposite direction. The first taxi that came along they
+caught hold of and drove back to Church Row. 'But your uncle intended
+for you to go back to your father, Mr. George, in Earl's Court,' I
+remarked very severely. 'We know,' they says to me, laughing like two
+hyenas. 'But we don't want to go back to Earl's Court,' putting in a
+great deal of rudeness about Earl's Court, which, not wanting to get
+them into worse trouble than what they will get into as it is, I won't
+repeat. 'And we won't go back to Earl's Court,' they said, what's more.
+'We _won't_ go back.' Well, sir, when I've had my orders given me, I
+know where I am, and the policeman at the corner being a friend of
+Elsa's, he helped; for, believe me or not, they struggled like two
+convicks with Maud and I. Well, to cut a long story short, here they
+are, and just about fit to be put to bed on the instant."
+
+John could not fancy that Eleanor had contrived such an elaborate
+display of preference for his company, and with every wish to support
+Mrs. Worfolk by an exhibition of avuncular sternness he could only smile
+at his nephew and niece. Indeed, it cost him a great effort not to take
+them back with him at once to Hampstead. He hardened himself, however,
+and tried to look shocked.
+
+"We wanted to stay with you," said Bertram.
+
+"We wanted to stay with you," echoed Viola.
+
+"We didn't _want_ to dodge you in the Small Cats' House. But we had to,"
+said Bertram.
+
+"Yes, we had to," echoed Viola.
+
+"Their luggage _'as_ come back with them," interrupted Mrs. Worfolk,
+grimly.
+
+"Oh, of course, they must stay here," John agreed. "Oh, unquestionably!
+I wasn't thinking of anything else."
+
+He beckoned to Bertram and Viola to follow him out of the room.
+
+"Look here," he whispered to them in the passage, "be good children and
+stay quietly at home. We shall meet at Christmas." He pressed a
+sovereign into each hand.
+
+"Good lummy," Bertram gasped. "I wish I'd had this on the fifth of
+November. I'd have made old Major Downman much more waxy than he was
+when I tied a squib to his coat."
+
+"Did you, Bertram, did you? You oughtn't to have done that. Though I can
+understand the temptation. But don't waste this on fireworks."
+
+"Oh no," said Bertram. "I'm going to buy Miss Moxley a parrot, because
+we lost hers."
+
+"Are you, Bertram?" John exclaimed with some emotion. "That shows a fine
+spirit, my boy. I'm very pleased with you."
+
+"Yes," said Bertram, "because then with what you gave V we'll buy a
+monkey at the same time."
+
+"Good heavens," cried John, turning pale. "A monkey?"
+
+"That will be nice, won't it, Uncle John?" Viola asked, tenderly.
+
+But perhaps it would escape from an upper window like the parrot, John
+thought, before Christmas.
+
+When the children had been sent upstairs and Mrs. Worfolk had gone back
+to Hampstead, John told his brother that he should not stop to dinner
+after all.
+
+"Oh, all right," George said. "But I had something to talk over with
+you. Those confounded children put it clean out of my mind. I had a
+strange letter from Mama this week. It seems that Hugh has got into
+rather a nasty fix. She doesn't say what it is, and I don't know why she
+wrote to me of all people. But she's evidently frightened about Hugh and
+asks me to approach you on his behalf."
+
+"What on earth has he been doing now?" asked John, gloomily.
+
+"I should think it was probably money," said George. "Well, I told you
+I'd had a lot of worry lately, and I _have_ been very worried about this
+news of Hugh. Very worried. I'm afraid it may be serious this time. But
+if I were you, old chap, I should refuse to do anything about it. Why
+should he come to you to get him out of a scrape? You've done enough for
+him, in my opinion. You mustn't let people take advantage of your good
+nature, even if they are relations. I'm sorry my kids have been a bit of
+a nuisance, but, after all, they are still only kids, and Hugh isn't.
+He's old enough to know better. Mama says something about the police,
+but that may only be Hugh's bluff. I shouldn't worry myself if I were
+you. It's no good for us all to worry."
+
+"I shall go and see Hugh at once," John decided. "You're not keeping
+anything from me, George? He's not actually under arrest?"
+
+"Oh, no, you won't have to visit any more police stations to-night,"
+George promised. "Hugh is living with his friend, Aubrey Fenton, at 22
+Carlington Road, West Kensington."
+
+"I shall go there to-night," John declared.
+
+He had almost reached the front door when George called him back.
+
+"I've been trying to work out a riddle," he said, earnestly. "You know
+there's a medicine called Easton's Syrup? Well, I thought ... don't be
+in such a hurry; you'll muddle me up ... and I shall spoil it...."
+
+"Try it on Major Downman," John advised, crossly, slamming the door of
+Halma House behind him. "Fatuous, that's what George is, utterly
+fatuous," he assured himself as he hurried down the steps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+John decided to walk from Earl's Court to West Kensington. Being still
+in complete ignorance of what Hugh had done, he had a presentiment that
+this time it was something really grave, and he was now beginning to
+believe that George knew how grave it was. Perhaps his decision to go on
+foot was not altogether wise, for he was tired out by a convulsive day,
+and he had never experienced before such a fathomless sinking of the
+stomach on the verge of being mixed up in a disagreeable family
+complication, which was prolonged by the opportunity that the walk
+afforded him for dismal meditation. While he hurried with bowed head
+along one ill-lighted road after another a temptation assailed him to
+follow George's advice and abandon Hugh, and not merely Hugh, but all
+the rest of his relations, a temptation that elaborated itself into
+going back to Church Row, packing up, and escaping to Arizona or British
+East Africa or Samoa. In the first place, he had already several times
+vowed never more to have anything to do with his youngest brother;
+secondly, he was justified in resenting strongly the tortuous road by
+which he had been approached on his behalf; thirdly, it might benefit
+Hugh's morals to spend a week or two in fear of the ubiquitous police,
+instead of a few stay-at-home tradesmen; fourthly, if anything serious
+did happen to Hugh, it would serve as a warning to the rest of his
+relations, particularly to George; finally, it was his dinner hour, and
+if he waited to eat his dinner before tackling Hugh, he should
+undoubtedly tackle him afterward in much too generous a frame of mind.
+Yes, it would be wiser to go home at once, have a good dinner, and start
+for Arizona to-morrow morning. The longer he contemplated it, the less
+he liked the way he had been beguiled into visiting Hugh. If the--the
+young bounder--no, really bounder was not too strong a word--if the
+young bounder was in trouble, why could he not have come forward openly
+and courageously to the one relation who could help him? Why had he
+again relied upon his mother's fondness, and why had she, as always,
+chosen the indirect channel by writing to George rather than to himself?
+The fact of the matter was that his mother and George and Hugh possessed
+similar loose conceptions of integrity, and now that it was become a
+question of facing the music they had instinctively joined hands. Yet
+George had advised him to have nothing more to do with Hugh, which
+looked as if his latest game was a bit too strong even for George to
+relish, for John declined to believe that George possessed enough of the
+spirit of competitive sponging to bother about trying to poach in Hugh's
+waters; Hilda or Eleanor might, but George.... George was frightened,
+that was it; obviously he knew more than he had told, and he did not
+want to be exposed ... it would not astonish him to learn that George
+was in the business with Hugh and had invented that letter from Mama to
+invoke his intervention before it was too late to save himself. What
+could it all be about? Curiosity turned the scale against Arizona, and
+John pressed forward to West Kensington.
+
+The houses in Carlington Road looked like an over-crowded row of tall,
+thin men watching a football match on a cold day; each red-faced house
+had a tree in front of it like an umbrella and trim, white steps like
+spats; in a fantastic mood the comparison might be prolonged
+indefinitely, even so far as to say that, however outwardly
+uncomfortable they might appear, like enthusiastic spectators, they were
+probably all aglow within. If John had been asked whether he liked an
+interior of pink lampshades and brass gongs, he would have replied
+emphatically in the negative; but on this chill November night he found
+the inside of number 22 rather pleasant after the street. The maid
+looked doubtful over admitting him, which was not surprising, because
+an odor of hot soup in the hall and the chink of plates behind a closed
+door on the right proclaimed that the family was at dinner.
+
+"Will you wait in the drawing-room, sir?" she inquired. "I'll inform Mr.
+Touchwood that you're here."
+
+John felt a grim satisfaction in thus breaking in upon Hugh's dinner;
+there was nothing so well calculated to disturb even a tranquil
+conscience as an unexpected visit at such an hour; but the effect upon
+guilt would be....
+
+"Just say that a gentleman wishes to speak to him for a minute. No
+name," he replied.
+
+The walk through the dim streets, coupled with speculations upon the
+various crimes that his brother might have committed, had perhaps
+invested John's rosy personality with an unusual portentousness, for the
+maid accepted his instructions fearfully and was so much flustered by
+them that she forgot to turn up the gas in the drawing-room, of which
+John was glad; he assured himself that the heavily draped room in the
+subdued light gave the final touch to the atmosphere of horror which he
+aimed at creating; and he could not resist opening the door to enjoy the
+consternation in the dining-room just beyond.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+A murmur from the maid.
+
+"Well, you'd better finish your soup first. I wouldn't let my soup get
+cold for anybody."
+
+There followed a general buzz from the midst of which Hugh emerged, his
+long, sallow face seeming longer than usual in his anxiety, his long,
+thin neck craning forward like an apprehensive bird's, and his bony
+fingers clutching a napkin with which he dusted his legs nervously.
+
+"Like a flag of truce," John thought, and almost simultaneously felt a
+sharp twinge of resentment at Hugh's daring to sport a dinner jacket
+with as much effrontery as if his life had been as white as that expanse
+of shirt.
+
+"Good Lord," Hugh exclaimed when he recognized his brother. "I thought
+you were a detective, at least. Come in and have some grub, won't you?
+Mrs. Fenton will be awfully glad to see you."
+
+John demurred at the invitation. Judging by what he had been told about
+Mrs. Fenton's attitude toward Hugh, he did not think that Touchwood was
+a welcome name in 22 Carlington Road.
+
+"Aubrey!" Hugh was shouting. "One of my brothers has just blown in."
+
+John felt sure that the rapid feminine voice he could faintly hear had a
+distinct note of expostulation in it; but, however earnest the
+objection, it was at once drowned in the boisterous hospitality of
+Aubrey, who came beaming into the hall--a well set up young man of about
+twenty-five with a fresh complexion, glasses, an opal solitaire in his
+shirt, and a waxy white flower in his buttonhole.
+
+"Do come in," he begged, with an encouraging wave of his napkin. "We've
+only just begun."
+
+Although John felt that by dining in this house he was making himself an
+accessory after the still undivulged fact, he was really so hungry by
+now that he could not bring himself to refuse. He knew that he was
+displaying weakness, but he compounded with his austere self by arguing
+that he was more likely to arrive at the truth if he avoided anything in
+the nature of precipitate action.
+
+Mrs. Fenton did not receive her guest as cordially as her son; in fact,
+she showed plainly that she resented extremely his having been invited
+to dinner. She was a well-preserved woman and reminded John of a pink
+crystallized pear; her frosted transformation glistened like encrusted
+sugar round the stalk, which was represented by a tubular head ornament
+on the apex of the carefully tended pyramid; her greeting was sticky.
+
+"My son's friend has spoken of you," Mrs. Fenton was saying, coldly, in
+reply to John's apologies for intruding upon her like this. He for his
+part was envying her ability to refer to Hugh without admitting his
+individual existence, when somebody kicked him under the table, and,
+looking up, he saw that Hugh was frowning at him in a cautionary
+manner.
+
+"I've already met your brother, the writer," his hostess continued.
+
+"My brother, James?" asked John in amazement. He could not envisage
+James in these surroundings.
+
+"No, I have not had the pleasure of meeting him _yet_. I was referring
+to the dramatist, who has dined with me several times."
+
+"But," John began, when another kick under the table silenced him.
+
+"Pass the salt, will you, George, old boy?" Hugh said loudly.
+
+John's soup was cold, but in the heat of his suppressed indignation he
+did not notice it. So George had been masquerading in this house as
+himself; no wonder he had not encouraged the idea of an interview with
+Hugh. Evidently a dishonest outrage had been perpetrated in his name,
+and though Hugh might kick him under the table, he should soon obtain
+his revenge by having Hugh kicked out of the house. John took as much
+pleasure in his dinner that evening as a sandbag might have taken in
+being stuffed with sand. He felt full when it was over, but it was a
+soulless affair; and when Mrs. Fenton, who had done nothing except look
+down her nose all through the meal, left the table, he turned furiously
+upon Hugh.
+
+"What does this gross impersonation mean?" he demanded.
+
+Aubrey threw himself figuratively between the brothers, which only
+seemed to increase John's irritation.
+
+"We wanted to jolly the mater along," he explained. "No harm was
+intended, but Hughie was keen to prove his respectability; so, as you
+and he weren't on the most cordial terms, we introduced your brother,
+George, as yourself. It was a compliment, really, to your public
+character; but old George rather enjoyed dining here, and I'm bound to
+say he sold the mater some very decent port. In fact, you're drinking it
+now."
+
+"And I suppose," said John, angrily, "that between you all you've
+perpetrated some discreditable fraud, what? I suppose you've been
+ordering shirts in my name as well as selling port, eh? I'll disown the
+bill. You understand me? I won't have you masquerading as a gentleman,
+Hugh, when you can't behave like one. It's obtaining money under false
+pretenses, and you can write to your mother till you're as blue in the
+face as the ink in your bottle--it won't help you. I can put up with
+laziness; I can tolerate stupidity; I can endure dissipation; but I'm
+damned if I'll stand being introduced as George. Port, indeed! Don't try
+to argue with me. You must take the consequences. Mr. Fenton, I'm sorry
+I allowed myself to be inveigled like this into your mother's house. I
+shall write to her when I get home, and I hope she will take steps to
+clear that impostor out. No, I won't have a cigar--though I've no doubt
+I shall presently receive the bill for them, unless I've also been
+passed off as a tobacconist's agent by George. As for him, I've done
+with him, too. I shall advertise in the _Times_ that neither he nor Hugh
+has any business to order things in my name. I came here to-night in
+response to an urgent appeal; I find that I've been made a fool of; I
+find myself in a most undignified position. No, I will not have another
+glass of port. I don't know how much George exacted for it, but let me
+tell you that it isn't even good port: it's turbid and fiery."
+
+John rose from the table and was making for the door, when Hugh took
+hold of his arm.
+
+"Look here, old chap," he began.
+
+"Don't attempt to soften me with pothouse endearments," said John,
+fiercely. "I will not be called 'old chap.'"
+
+"All right, old chap, I won't," said Hugh. "But before you go jumping
+into the street like a lighted cracker, please listen. Nobody has been
+ordering anything in your name. You're absolutely off the lines there.
+Why, I exhausted your credit years ago. And I don't see why you should
+grudge poor old George a few dinners."
+
+"You rascal," John stammered. "You impudent rascal!"
+
+"Don't annoy him, Hughie," Aubrey advised. "I can see his point."
+
+"Oh, you can, sir, can you?" John snapped. "You can understand, can you,
+how it affects me to be saddled with brothers like these and port like
+this?"
+
+John was so furious that he could not bring himself to mention George or
+Hugh by name: they merely represented maddening abstractions of
+relationship, and he longed for some phrase like "my son's friend" with
+which he might disown them forever.
+
+"You mustn't blame your brother George, Mr. Touchwood," urged Aubrey.
+"He's not involved in this latest affair. I'm sorry we told the mater
+that he was you, but the mater required jollying along, as I explained.
+She can't appreciate Hugh. He's too modern for her."
+
+"I sympathize with Mrs. Fenton."
+
+"You must forgive a ruse. It's just the kind of ruse I should think a
+playwright would appreciate. You know. Charley's Aunt and all that."
+
+John clenched his fist: "Don't you mutter to me about a sense of humor,"
+he said to Hugh, wrathfully.
+
+"I wasn't muttering," replied Hugh. "I merely observed that a little
+sense of humor wouldn't be a bad thing. I'm sorry that George has been
+dragged like a red herring across the business, because it's a much more
+serious matter than simply introducing George to Mrs. Fenton as you and
+selling her some port which personally I think is not at all bad, eh,
+Aubrey?"
+
+He poured himself out another glass to prove his conviction.
+
+"You may think all this a joke," John retorted. "But I don't. I consider
+it a gross exhibition of bad taste."
+
+"All right. Granted. Let's leave it at that," sighed Hugh, wearily. "But
+you don't give a fellow much encouragement to own up when he really is
+in a tight corner. However, personally I've got past minding. If I'm
+sentenced to penal servitude, it'll be your fault for not listening.
+Only don't say I disgraced the family name."
+
+"Hugh's right," Aubrey put in. "We really are in a deuce of a hole."
+
+"Disgrace the family name?" John repeated. "Allow me to tell you that
+when you hawk George round London as your brother, the playwright, I
+consider _that_ is disgracing the family name."
+
+"So that if I'm arrested for forgery," Hugh asked, "you won't mind?"
+
+"Forgery?" John gasped.
+
+Hugh nodded.
+
+"Yes, we had bad luck in the straight," he murmured, tossing off two
+more glasses of port. "Cleared every hurdle like a bird and ... however,
+it's no good grumbling. We just didn't pull it off."
+
+"No," sighed Aubrey. "We were beaten by a short head."
+
+John sat down unsteadily, filled up half a glass of Burgundy with
+sherry, and drank it straight off without realizing that George's port
+was even worse than he had supposed.
+
+"Whose name have you forged?" he brought himself to ask at last.
+
+"Stephen Crutchley's."
+
+"Good heavens!" he groaned. "But this is horrible. And has he found out?
+Does he know who did it?"
+
+It was characteristic of John that he did not ask for how much his
+friend's name had been forged.
+
+"He has his suspicions," Hugh admitted. "And he's bound to know pretty
+soon. In fact, I think the only thing to do is for you to explain
+matters. After all, in a way it was a joke."
+
+"Yes, a kind of experimental joke," Aubrey agreed.
+
+"But it has proved to me how easy it is to cash a forged check," Hugh
+continued, hopefully. "And, of course, if you talk to Crutchley he'll be
+all right. He's not likely to be very severe on the brother of an old
+friend. That was one of the reasons we experimented on him--that, and
+also partly because I found an old check book of his. He's awfully
+careless, you know, is Stephen--very much the high-brow architect and
+all that, though he doesn't forget to charge. In fact, so many people
+have had to pay for his name that it serves him right to find himself
+doing the same for once."
+
+"Does Mrs. Fenton know anything of this?" John asked.
+
+"Why, no," Aubrey answered, quickly. "Well, women don't understand about
+money, do they? And the mater has less idea of the wicked world than
+most. My father was always a bit of a recluse, don't you see?"
+
+"Was he?" John said, sarcastically. "I should think his son will be a
+bit of a recluse, too, before he's done. But forgery! No, it's
+incredible--incredible!"
+
+"Don't worry, Johnnie," Hugh insisted. "Don't worry. I'm not worrying at
+all, now that you've come along. Nobody knows anything for certain yet.
+George doesn't know. Mama doesn't know. Mrs. Fenton doesn't know. And
+Stevie only guesses."
+
+"How do you know that he guesses?" John demanded.
+
+"Well, that's part of the story, eh, Aubrey?" said Hugh, turning to his
+accomplice, who nodded sagely.
+
+"Which I suppose one ought to tell in full, eh, Aubrey?" he went on.
+
+"I think it would interest your brother--I mean--quite apart from his
+being your brother, it would interest him as a playwright," Aubrey
+agreed.
+
+"Glasses round, then," called Hugh, cheerfully.
+
+"There's a vacant armchair by the fireplace," Aubrey pointed out to
+John.
+
+"Thanks," said John, stiffly. "I don't suppose that the comfort of an
+armchair will alleviate my feelings. Begin, sir," he commanded Hugh.
+"Begin, and get it finished quickly, for heaven's sake, so that I can
+leave this house and think out my course of action in solitude."
+
+"Do you know what it is, Johnnie?" Hugh said, craning his neck and
+examining his brother with an air of suddenly aroused curiosity. "You're
+beginning to dramatize yourself. I suppose it's inevitable, but I wish
+you wouldn't. It gives me the same kind of embarrassed feeling that I
+get when a woman starts reciting. You're not subjective. That's the
+curse of all romantic writers. You want to get an objective viewpoint.
+You're not the only person on in this scene. I'm on. Aubrey's on. Mrs.
+Fenton and Stevie Crutchley are waiting in the wings, as it were. And,
+for all I know, the police may be waiting there, too, by this time. Get
+an objective viewpoint, Johnnie. Subjectivity went out with Rousseau."
+
+"Confound your impudence," John spluttered.
+
+"Yes, that's much better than talking about thinking out a course of
+action in solitude," Hugh approved. "But don't run away with the idea
+that I'm trying to annoy you. I'm not. I've every reason to encourage
+the romantic side of you, because finally it will be the romantic side
+of you that will shudder to behold your youngest brother in the dock. In
+fact, I'm going the limit on your romance. At the same time I don't like
+to see you laying it on too thick. I'll give you your fine feelings and
+all that. I'll grant you your natural mortification, etcetera, etcetera.
+But try to see my point of view as well as your own. When you're
+thinking out a course of action in solitude, you'll light a cigar with a
+good old paunch on it, and you'll put your legs up on the mantelpiece,
+unless you've grown old-maidish and afraid of scratching the furniture,
+and you'll pat your passbook, which is probably suffering from fatty
+degeneration. That's a good phrase, Aubrey?"
+
+"Devilish good," the accomplice allowed. "But, look here, Hugh,
+steady--the mater gets rather bored if we keep the servants out of the
+dining-room too long, and I think your brother is anxious to have the
+story. So fire ahead, there's a good fellow."
+
+Hugh looked hurt at the lack of appreciation which greeted the subtler
+shades of his discourse, but, observing that John looked still more hurt
+at being kept waiting, he made haste to begin without further reference
+to style.
+
+"Well, you see, Johnnie, I've always been unlucky."
+
+John made a gesture of impatience; but Hugh raised a sedative hand.
+
+"I know there's nothing that riles lucky people so much as when unlucky
+people claim the prerogatives of their bad luck. I'm perfectly willing
+to admit that I'm lazier than you. But remember that energy is a gift,
+not an attainment. And I was born tired. The first stunning blow I had
+was when the old man died. You remember he always regarded me as a bit
+of an infant prodigy? So I was from his point of view, for he was over
+sixty when he begot me, and he used to look at me just as some people
+look at the silver cups they've won for races. But when he died, all the
+advantages of being the youngest son died with him, and I realized that
+I was an encumbrance. I'm willing to grant that I was a nuisance, too,
+but ... however, it's no use raking up old scores.... I'm equally
+willing to admit that you've always treated me very decently and that
+I've always behaved very rottenly. I'll admit also that my taste in
+clothes was beyond my powers of gratification; that I liked wine and
+women--or to put a nicer point upon it--whisky and waitresses. I did.
+And what of it? You'll observe that I'm not going to try to justify
+myself. Have another glass of port? No? Right-o; well, I will. I repeat
+I'm not going to attempt to justify myself, even if I couldn't, which I
+can, but in vino veritas, which I think you'll admit is Latin. Latin, I
+said. Precisely. Where was I?"
+
+"Hugh, old boy, buck up," his friend prompted, anxiously.
+
+"Come, sir," John said, trembling visibly with indignation. "Get on with
+your story while you can. I don't want to waste my time listening to the
+meanderings of a drunkard."
+
+Hugh's eyes were glazing over like a puddle in frost, but he knitted his
+brows and regarded his brother with intense concentration.
+
+"Don't try to take any literary advantage of me, Johnnie. You can dig
+out the longest word in the dictionary, but I've got a longer.
+Metempsychosis! Hear that? I'm willing to admit that I don't like having
+to say it, but you find me another man who can say it at all after
+George's port. Metempsychosis! And it's not a disease. No, no, no, no,
+don't you run away with the idea that it's a disease. Not at all. It's a
+religion. And for three years I've been wasting valuable knowledge like
+that on an architect's office. Do you think Stevie wants to hear about
+metempsychosis--that's the third time I've cleared it--of course he
+doesn't. Stephen Crutchley is a Goth. What am I? I'm a Palladian. There
+you have it. Am I right, Aubrey?"
+
+"Quite right, old boy, only come to the point."
+
+"That's all right, Aubrey, don't you be afraid. I'm nursing her along by
+the rails. You can lay a hundred pounds to a box of George's cigars bar
+one. And that one's me. Where was I? Ah, yes. Well, I'm not going to say
+a word against Stephen, Johnnie. He's a friend of yours. He's my boss.
+He's one of England's leading ecclesiastical architects. But that
+doesn't help me when I find myself in a Somersetshire village seven
+miles from the nearest station arguing with a deaf parson about the
+restoration of his moldy church. Does it? Of course not. It doesn't help
+me when I find myself sleeping in damp sheets and woken up at seven
+o'clock by a cross between a gardener and a charwoman for early service.
+Does it? Of course not. Architecture like everything else is a good job
+when you're waving the flag on top of the tower; but when you're digging
+the foundations it's rotten. Stevie and I have had our little
+differences, but when he's sober--I mean when I'm sober--he'll tell you
+that there's not one of his juniors he thinks better of than me. I'm
+against Gothic. I consider Gothic the muddle-headed expression of a
+muddle-headed period. But I've been loyal to Stevie, only...."
+
+Hugh paused solemnly, while his friend regarded him with nervous
+solicitude.
+
+"Only," Hugh repeated in a loud voice. "Metempsychosis," he murmured,
+and drinking two more glasses of wine, he sat back in his chair and
+shook his head in mute despair of human speech.
+
+Aubrey took John aside.
+
+"I'm afraid Hugh's too far gone to explain all the details to-night," he
+whispered. "But it's really very serious. You see he found an old check
+book of Mr. Crutchley's, and more from a joke than anything else he
+tried to see if it was difficult to cash a check. It wasn't. He
+succeeded. But he's suspected. I helped him indirectly, but of course I
+don't come into the business except as an accessory. Only, if you take
+my advice, you'll call on Mr. Crutchley as soon as you can, and I'm sure
+you'll be able to square things up. You'll know how to manage him; but
+Hugh has a way of exasperating him."
+
+All the bland, the almost infantine simplicity of Aubrey Fenton's
+demeanor did not avail to propitiate John's rage; and when the maid came
+in with a message from his hostess to ask if it would soon be convenient
+to allow the table to be cleared, he announced that he should not remain
+another minute in the house.
+
+"But can Hugh count on your support?" Aubrey persisted. He spoke like an
+election agent who is growing rapidly doubtful of his candidate's
+prospects.
+
+"He can count on nothing," said John, violently. "He can count on
+nothing at all. On absolutely nothing at all."
+
+Anybody who had seen Hugh's condition at this moment would have agreed
+with John. His eyes had already lost even as much life as might have
+been discerned in the slow freezing of a puddle, and had now assumed the
+glassy fixity and perfect roundness of two bottle-stoppers.
+
+"He can count on nothing," John asseverated.
+
+"I see," said Aubrey, tactfully. "I'll try and get that across to him.
+Must you really be going?"
+
+"Immediately."
+
+"You'll trot in and say ta-ta to the mater?"
+
+John had no wish ever again to meet this crystallized lady, but his
+politeness rose superior to his indignation, and he followed the son of
+the house into the drawing-room. His last glimpse of Hugh was of a
+mechanical figure, the only gesture of which was awkwardly to rescue
+every glass in turn that the maid endeavored to include in her clearance
+of the table.
+
+"It's scandalous," muttered John. "It's--it's abominable! Mrs. Fenton,"
+he said with a courtly bow for her hospitality, "I regret that your son
+has encouraged my brother to impose himself upon your good-nature. I
+shall take steps to insure that he shall do so no longer. I beg your
+pardon, Mrs. Fenton, I apologize. Good-night."
+
+"I've always spoilt Aubrey," she said. "And he always had a mania for
+dangerous toys which he never could learn to work properly. Never!" she
+repeated, passionately.
+
+For an instant the musty sugar in which she was inclosed cracked and
+allowed John a glimpse of the feminine humanity underneath; but in the
+same instant the crystallization was more complete than ever, and when
+John released her hand he nearly took out his handkerchief to wipe away
+the stickiness.
+
+"I say, what steps _are_ you going to take to-morrow?" Aubrey asked.
+
+"Never mind," John growled. Inasmuch as he himself had no more idea of
+what he intended to do than Aubrey, the reply was a good one.
+
+Where Carlington Road flows into Hammersmith Road John waited for a
+passing taxi, apostrophizing meanwhile the befogged stars in the London
+sky.
+
+"I shall not forget to-night. No, I certainly sha'n't. I doubt if any
+dramatist ever spent such another. A glimpse at all the animals of the
+globe, a lunch that would have made a jackal vomit, a search for two
+lost children, an interview with a fatuous brother, a loan of over
+thirty pounds, a winking landlady, a narrow escape from being bored to
+death by a Major, a dinner that gave me the sensation of being slowly
+buried alive, a glass of George's port, and for climax the news that my
+brother has committed a forgery. How can I think about Joan of Arc? A
+few more days like this and I shall never be able to think or write
+again--however, please God, there'll always be the cinema."
+
+Whirring home to Hampstead John fell asleep, and when he had
+supplemented that amount of repose in the taxi by eight hours in his own
+bed, he woke next morning with his mind made up to square matters with
+Stephen Crutchley, to withdraw Hugh from architecture, to intern him
+until Christmas at Ambles, and in the New Year to transport him to
+British Honduras as a mahogany-planter. He had met on board the
+_Murmania_ a mahogany-planter who was visiting England for the first
+time in thirteen years: the profession must be an enthralling one.
+
+It was only when John reached the offices of Stephen Crutchley in Staple
+Inn that he discovered it was Sunday, which meant another whole day's
+idleness and suspense, and he almost fell to wishing that he was in
+church again with Bertram and Viola. But there was a sweet sadness in
+this old paved court, where a few sparrows chirped their plaintive
+monotone from an overarching tree, the branches of which fretted a sky
+of pearly blue, and where several dreary men were sitting upon the
+benches regarding their frayed boots. John could not remain
+unsusceptible to the antique charm of the scene, and finding an
+unoccupied bench he rested there in the timid sunlight.
+
+"What a place to choose for a forgery," he murmured, reproachfully, and
+tried to change the direction of his thoughts by remembering that Dr.
+Johnson had lived here for a time. He had no sooner concentrated upon
+fancies of that great man than he began to wonder if he was not mistaken
+in supposing that he had lived here, and he looked round for some one
+who could inform him. The dreary men with frayed boots were only
+counting the slow minutes of divine service before the public-houses
+could open: they knew nothing of the lexicographer. But the subject of
+forgery was not to be driven away by memories of Dr. Johnson, because
+his friend, Dr. Dodd, suddenly jumped into the train of thought, and it
+was impossible not to conjure up that poor and learned gentleman's last
+journey to Tyburn nor to reflect how the latticed dormers on the Holborn
+side of the Inn were the same now as then and had actually seen Dr. Dodd
+go jolting past. John had often thought how incomprehensible it was that
+scarcely a century ago people should have been hanged for such crimes as
+forgery; but not it seemed rather more comprehensible. Of course, he
+should not like to know that his brother was going to be hanged; but for
+the sake of his future it would be an excellent thing to revive capital
+punishment for minor crimes. He should like when all this dreadful
+business was settled to say to his brother, "Oh, by the way, Hugh, I
+hear they've just passed a bill making forgery a capital offense once
+more. I think you'll like mahogany-planting."
+
+But would the fear of death act as a deterrent upon such an one as Hugh,
+who after committing so dishonorable a crime had lacked even the grace
+to make his confession of it soberly? It was doubtful: Hugh was without
+shame. From boyhood his career had been undistinguished by a single
+decent action; but on the contrary it had been steadily marred by vice
+and folly from the time when he had stolen an unused set of British
+North Borneo stamps from the locker of his best friend at school to this
+monstrous climax. Forgery! Great heavens, had he ever yet envisaged Hugh
+listening abjectly (or worse impudently) to the strictures of a scornful
+judge? Had he yet imagined the headlines in the press? _Brother of
+distinguished dramatist sent to penal servitude. Judge's scathing
+comments._ Mr. Touchwood breaks down in court. _Miss Janet Bond's
+production indefinitely postponed._ Surely Stephen would not proceed to
+extreme measures, but for the sake of their lifelong sympathy spare his
+old friend this humiliation; yet even as John reached this conclusion
+the chink-chink of the sparrows in the plane-tree sounded upon the air
+like the chink-chink of the picks on Dartmoor. Hugh a convict! It might
+well befall thus, if his jaunty demeanor hardened Stephen's heart.
+Suppose that Stephen should be seized with one of those moral crises
+that can only be relieved by making an example of somebody? Would it not
+be as well to go down at once to his place in the country and try to
+square matters, unembarrassed by Hugh's brazen impenitence? Or was it
+already too late? John could not bring himself to believe that his old
+friend would call in the police without warning him. Stephen had always
+had a generous disposition, and it might well be that rather than wound
+John's pride by the revelation of his brother's disgrace he had made up
+his mind to say nothing and to give Hugh another chance: that would be
+like Stephen. No, he should not intrude upon his week-end; though how he
+was going to pass the long Sunday unless he occupied himself with
+something more cheerful than his own thoughts he did not know. Should he
+visit James and Beatrice, and take them out to lunch with a Symphony
+Concert to follow? No, he should never be able to keep the secret of
+Hugh's crime, and James would inevitably wind up the discussion by
+making it seem as if it were entirely his own fault. Should he visit
+George and warn him that the less intercourse he had with Hugh the
+better, yes, and incidentally observe to George that he resented his
+impersonation of himself at Mrs. Fenton's? No, George's company would be
+as intolerable as his port. And the children? No, no, let them dress up
+with minds still untainted by their Uncle Hugh's shame; let them enact
+Robinson Crusoe and if they liked burn Halma House to the ground. What
+was unpremeditated arson compared with deliberate forgery? But if there
+was a genuine criminal streak in the Touchwoods, how was he ever again
+to feel secure of his relations' honor? To-morrow he might learn that
+James had murdered Beatrice because she had slept through the opening
+chapters of _Lord Ormont and his Aminta_. To-morrow he might learn that
+George was a defaulting bookmaker, that Hilda had embezzled the whole of
+Laurence's board, and that Harold was about to be prosecuted by the
+Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Why, even his mother
+might have taken to gin-drinking in the small hours of the morning!
+
+"God forgive me," said John. "I am losing my faith in humanity and my
+respect for my mother. Yet some imbeciles prate about the romance of
+crime."
+
+John felt that if he continued to sit here brooding upon his relations
+he should be in danger of taking some violent step such as joining the
+Salvation Army: he remembered how an actor in _The Fall of Babylon_ had
+brooded upon his inability to say his lines with just the emphasis he as
+author had required, until on the night before the opening he had left
+the theater and become a Salvationist. One of the loafers in the court
+shuffled up to John and begged him for a match; when John complied he
+asked for something to use it on, and John was so much distressed by the
+faint likeness he bore to his eldest brother that he gave him a cigar.
+
+"Without me that is what they would all be by now, every one of them,
+James, George, and Hugh," he thought "But if I hadn't been lucky, so
+might I," he added, reprovingly, to himself, "though at any rate I
+should have tried to join a workhouse and not wasted my time cadging for
+matches in Staple Inn."
+
+John was not quite clear about workhouses; he had abandoned realistic
+writing before he dealt with workhouse life as it really is.
+
+"However, I can't sit here depressing myself all day; besides, this
+bench is damp. What fools those sparrows are to stay chirping in that
+tree when they might be hopping about in Hampshire--out of reach of
+Harold's air-gun of course--and what a fool I am! But it's no use for me
+to go home and work at Joan of Arc. The English archers will only be
+shooting broad arrows all the time. I'll walk slowly to the Garrick, I
+think, and have an early lunch."
+
+Perversely enough the club did not seem to contain one sympathetic
+acquaintance, let alone a friend, that Sunday; and after lunch John was
+reduced to looking at the portraits of famous dead players, who bored
+him nearly as much as one or two of the live ones who were lounging in
+the smoking-room.
+
+"This is getting unendurable," he moaned, and there seemed nothing for
+it but to sally forth and walk the hollow-sounding city. From Long Acre
+he turned into St. Martin's Lane, shook off the temptation to bore
+himself still more hopelessly by a visit to the National Gallery, and
+reached Cockspur Street. Three or four Sabbath loiterers were staring at
+a window, and John saw that it was the office of the Cunard Line and
+that the attraction was a model of the _S.S. Murmania_.
+
+"What a fool I am!" John murmured much more emphatically than in Staple
+Inn. He was just going to call a taxi to drive him to Chelsea, when he
+experienced from yesterday a revulsion against taxis. Yesterday had been
+a nightmare of taxis, between driving to the Zoo and driving to the
+police station and driving home after that interview with the forger--by
+this time John had discarded Hugh as a relation--not to mention Mrs.
+Worfolk in a taxi, and the children in a taxi, and their luggage buzzing
+backward and forward between Earl's Court and Hampstead in a taxi. No,
+he should walk to Chelsea: a brisk walk with an objective would do him
+good. 83 Camera Square. It was indeed rather a tribute to his memory, he
+flattered himself, that he could remember her address without referring
+to her card. He should walk along the Embankment; it was only half-past
+two now.
+
+It was pleasant walking by the river on that fine afternoon, and John
+felt as he strode along Grosvenor Road, his spirit rising with the eager
+tide, that after all there was nothing like the sea, nothing!
+
+"As soon as I've finished Joan of Arc, I shall take a sea-voyage. It's
+all very well for George to talk about sea-voyages, but let him do some
+work first. Even if I do send him for a sea-voyage, how will he spend
+his time? I know perfectly well. He'll feel seasick for the first week
+and play poker for the rest of the passage. No, no, after the Christmas
+holidays at Ambles he'll be as right as a trivet without a sea-voyage.
+What is a trivet by the way? Now if I had a secretary, I should make a
+note of a query like that. As it is, I shall probably never know what a
+trivet is; but if I had a secretary, I should ask her to look it up in
+the dictionary when we got home. I dare say I've lost thousands of ideas
+by not having a secretary at hand. I shall have to advertise--or find
+out in some way about a secretary. Thank heaven, neither Hilda nor
+Beatrice nor Eleanor nor Edith knows shorthand. But even if Edith did
+know shorthand, she'd be eternally occupied with the dactylography--as I
+suppose _he'd_ call it--of Laurence's apostolic successes--there's
+another note I might make. Of course, it's nothing wonderful as a piece
+of wit, but I might get an epigram worth keeping, say three times a
+week, if I had a secretary at my elbow. I don't believe that Stephen
+will make any difficulties about Hugh. Oh no, I don't think so. I was
+tired this morning after yesterday. This walk is making me see events in
+their right proportion. Rosification indeed! James brings out these
+things as if he were a second Sydney Smith; but in my opinion wit
+without humor is like marmalade without butter. And even if I do rosify
+things, well, what is it that Lady Teazle says? _I wish it were spring
+all the year round and that roses grew under our feet._ And it takes
+something to rosify such moral anemia as Hugh's. By the way I wonder
+just exactly whereabouts in Chelsea Camera Square is."
+
+Now if there was one thing that John hated, if there was one thing that
+dragged even his buoyant spirits into the dust, if there was one thing
+worse than having a forger for a blood-relation, it was to be compelled
+to ask his way anywhere in London within the four miles radius. He would
+not even now admit to himself more than that he did not know the _exact_
+whereabouts of Camera Square. Although he really had not the remotest
+idea beyond its location in the extensive borough of Chelsea where
+Camera Square was, he wasted half-an-hour in dancing a kind of Ladies'
+Chain with all the side-streets off King's Road and never catching a
+glimpse of his destination. It was at last borne in upon him that if he
+wanted to call on Mrs. Hamilton at a respectable hour for afternoon tea
+he should simply have to ask his way.
+
+Now arose for John the problem of choosing the oracle. He walked on and
+on, half making up his mind every moment to accost somebody and when he
+was on the point of doing so perceiving in his expression a latent
+haughtiness that held him back until it was too late. Had it not been
+Sunday, he would have entered a shop and bought sufficiently expensive
+to bribe the shopman from looking astonished at his ignorance.
+Presently, however, he passed a tobacconist's, and having bought three
+of the best cigars he had, which were not very good, he asked casually
+as he was going out the direction of Camera Square. The shopman did not
+know. He came to another tobacconist's, bought three more cigars, and
+that shopman did not know either. Gradually with a sharp sense of
+impending disgrace John realized that he must ask a policeman. He turned
+aside from the many inviting policemen in the main road, where the
+contemptuous glances of wayfarers might presume his rusticity, and tried
+to find a policeman in a secluded by-street. This took another
+half-an-hour, and when John did accost this ponderous hermit of the
+force he accosted him in broken English.
+
+"Ees thees ze vay to Cahmehra Squah?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders
+in what he conceived to be the gesture of a Frenchman who had landed
+that morning from Calais.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Cahmehra Squah?" John repeated.
+
+The policeman put his hand in his pocket, and John thought he was going
+to whistle for help; but it was really to get out a handkerchief to blow
+his nose and give him time to guess what John wanted to know.
+
+"Say it again, will yer?" the policeman requested.
+
+John repeated his Gallic rendering of Camera.
+
+"I ain't seen it round here. Where do you say you dropped it?"
+
+"Eet ees a place I vants."
+
+What slow-witted oafs the English were, thought John with a
+compassionate sigh for the poor foreigners who must be lost in London
+every day. However, this policeman was so loutish that he felt he could
+risk an almost perfect pronunciation.
+
+"Oh, Kemmerer Squer," said the policeman with a huge smile of
+comprehension. "Why, you're looking at it." He pointed along the road.
+
+"Damn," thought John. "I needn't have asked at all. Sank you.
+Good-evening," he said aloud.
+
+"The same to you and many of them, Napoleon," the policeman nodded.
+
+John hurried away, and soon he was walking along a narrow garden, very
+unlike a London garden, for it was full of frost-bitten herbaceous
+flowers and smelt of the country. Not a house on this side of the square
+resembled its neighbor; but Number 83 was the most charmingly odd of
+all, two stories high with a little Chinese balcony and jasmine over a
+queer pointed porch of wrought iron.
+
+"Yes, sir, Mrs. Hamilton is at home," said the maid.
+
+The last bars of something by Schumann or Chopin died away; in the
+comparative stillness that succeeded John could hear a canary singing,
+and the tinkle of tea-cups; there was also a smell of muffins
+and--mimosa, was it? Anyway it was very delicious, he thought, while he
+made his overcoat as small as possible, so as not to fill the tiny hall
+entirely.
+
+"Mr. Touchwood was the name?" the maid asked.
+
+"What an intelligent young woman," he thought. "How much more
+intelligent than that policeman. But women are more intelligent in small
+things."
+
+John felt very large as he bowed his head to enter the drawing-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+A sudden apprehension of his bulk (though he was only comparatively
+massive) overcame John when he stood inside the tiny drawing-room of 83
+Camera Square; and it was not until the steam from the tea-pot had
+materialized into Miss Hamilton, who in a dress of filmy gray floated
+round him as a cloud swathes a mountain, that he felt at ease.
+
+"Why, how charming of you to keep your word," her well-remembered voice,
+so soft and deep, was murmuring. "You don't know my mother, do you?
+Mother, this is Mr. Touchwood, who was so kind to Ida and me on the
+voyage back from America."
+
+Mrs. Hamilton was one of those mothers that never destroy the prospects
+of their children by testifying outwardly to what their beauty may one
+day come: neither in face nor in expression nor in gesture nor in voice
+did she bear the least resemblance to her daughter. At first John was
+inclined to compare her to a diminutive clown; but presently he caught
+sight of some golden mandarins marching across a lacquer cupboard and
+decided that she resembled a mandarin; after which wherever he looked in
+the room he seemed to catch sight of her miniature--on the
+willow-pattern plates, on the mantelpiece in porcelain, and even on the
+red lacquer bridge that spanned the tea-caddy.
+
+"We've all heard of Mr. Touchwood," she said, picking up a small silver
+weapon in the shape of a pea-shooter and puffing out her already plump
+cheeks in a vain effort to extinguish the flame of the spirit-lamp. "And
+I'm devoted to the drama. Pouf! I think this is a very dull instrument,
+dear. What would England be without Shakespeare? Pouf! Pouf! One blows
+and blows and blows and blows till really--well, it has taught me never
+to regret that I did not learn the flute when there was a question of my
+having lessons. Pouf! Pouf!"
+
+John offered his services as extinguisher.
+
+"You have to blow very hard," she warned him; and he being determined at
+all costs to impress Miss Hamilton blew like a knight-errant at the gate
+of an enchanted castle. It was almost too vigorous a blast: besides
+extinguishing the flame, it blew several currants from the cake into
+Mrs. Hamilton's lap, which John in an access of good-will tried to blow
+off again less successfully.
+
+"Bravo," the old lady exclaimed, clapping her hands. "I'm glad to see
+that it can be done. But didn't you write _The Walls of Jericho_? Ah no,
+I'm thinking of Joshua and his trumpet."
+
+"_The Fall of Babylon_, mother," Miss Hamilton put in with a smile, in
+the curves of which quivered a hint of scornfulness.
+
+"Then I was not so far out. _The Fall of Babylon_ to be sure. Oh, what a
+fall was there, my countrymen."
+
+She beamed at the author encouragingly, who beamed responsively back at
+her; presently she began to chuckle to herself, and John, hoping that in
+his wish to be pleasant to Miss Hamilton's mother he was not appearing
+to be imitating a hen, chuckled back.
+
+"I'm glad you have a sense of humor," she exclaimed, suddenly assuming
+an intensely serious expression and throwing up her eyebrows like two
+skipping-ropes.
+
+John, who felt as if he was playing a game, copied her expression as
+well as he was able.
+
+"I live on it," she pursued. "And thrive moreover. A small income and an
+ample sense of humor. Yes, for thus one avoids extravagance oneself, but
+enjoys it in other people."
+
+"And how is Miss Merritt?" John inquired of Miss Hamilton, when he had
+bowed his appreciation of the witticism. But before she could reply, her
+mother rattled on: "Miss Merritt will not take Doris to America again.
+Miss Merritt has written a book called _The Aphorisms of Aphrodite_."
+
+The old lady's remarkable eyebrows were darting about her forehead like
+forked lightning while she spoke.
+
+"The Aphorisms of Aphrodite!" she repeated. "A collection of some of the
+most declassical observations that I have ever encountered." Like a
+diver's arms the eyebrows drew themselves together for a plunge into
+unfathomable moral depths.
+
+"My dear mother, lots of people found it very amusing," her daughter
+protested.
+
+"Miss Merritt," the old lady asserted, "was meant for bookkeeping by
+double-entry, instead of which she had taken to book-writing by
+double-entente. The profits may be treble, but the method is base. How
+did she affect you, Mr. Touchwood?"
+
+"She frightened me," John confessed. "I thought her manner somewhat
+severe."
+
+"You hear that, Doris? Her ethical exterior frightened him."
+
+"You're both very unfair to Ida. I only wish I had half her talents."
+
+"Wrapped in a napkin," said the old lady, "you have your shorthand."
+
+John's heart leapt.
+
+"Ah, you know shorthand," he could not help ejaculating with manifest
+pleasure.
+
+"I studied for a time. I think I had vague ideas once of a commercial
+career," she replied, indifferently.
+
+"The suggestion being," Mrs. Hamilton put in, "that I discouraged her.
+But how is one to encourage shorthand? If she had learnt the deaf and
+dumb alphabet I might have put aside half-an-hour every day for
+conversation. But it is as hard to encourage shorthand as to encourage a
+person who is talking in his sleep."
+
+John fancied that beneath the indifference of the daughter and the
+self-conscious humor of the mother he could detect cross-currents of
+mutual disapproval; he could have sworn that the daughter was beginning
+to be perpetually aware of her mother's presence.
+
+"Or is it due to my obsession that relations should never see too much
+of each other?" he asked himself. "Yet she knows shorthand--an
+extraordinary coincidence. What a delightful house you have," he said
+aloud with as much fervor as would excuse the momentary abstraction into
+which he had been cast.
+
+"My husband was a sinologue," Mrs. Hamilton announced.
+
+"Was he indeed?" said John, trying to focus the word.
+
+"And the study of Chinese is nearly as exclusive as shorthand," the old
+lady went on. "But we traveled a great deal in China when I was first
+married and being upon our honeymoon had but slight need of general
+conversation."
+
+No wonder she looked like a mandarin.
+
+"And to me their furniture was always more expressive than their
+language. Hence this house." Her black eyebrows soared like a condor to
+disappear in the clouds of her snowy hair. "But do not let us talk of
+China," she continued. "Let us rather talk of the drama. Or will you
+have another muffin?"
+
+"I think I should prefer the muffin," John admitted.
+
+Presently he noticed that Miss Hamilton was looking surreptitiously at
+her watch and glancing anxiously at the deepening twilight; she
+evidently had an appointment elsewhere, and he rose to make his
+farewells.
+
+"For I'm sure you're wanting to go out," he ventured.
+
+"Doris never cares to stay at home for very long," said her mother; and
+John was aware once again, this time unmistakably, of the cross-currents
+of mutual discontent.
+
+"I had promised to meet Ida in Sloane Square."
+
+"On the holy mount of Ida," the old lady quoted; John laughed out of
+politeness, though he was unable to see the point of the allusion; he
+might have concluded that after all Mrs. Hamilton was really rather
+stupid, perhaps even vain and tiresome, had she not immediately
+afterward proposed that he should give Doris time to get ready and have
+the benefit of her company along King's Road.
+
+"For I assume you are both going in the same direction," she said,
+evoking with her eyebrows the suggestion of a signpost.
+
+"My dear mother, Mr. Touchwood doesn't want to be bored with escorting
+me," her daughter was protesting.
+
+John laughed at the idea of being bored; then he fancied that in such a
+small room his laughter might have sounded hysterical, and he raised the
+pitch of his voice to give the impression that he always laughed like
+that. In the end, after a short argument, Miss Hamilton agreed somewhat
+ungraciously to let John wait for her. When she was gone to get ready,
+her mother leaned over and tapped John's arm with a fan.
+
+"I'm getting extremely anxious about Doris," she confided; the eyebrows
+hovering in her forehead like a hawk about to strike gave her listener
+the impression that she was really going to say something this time.
+
+"Her health?" he began, anxiously.
+
+"Her health is perfect. It is her independence which worries me. Hence
+this house! Her father's brother is only too willing to do anything for
+her, but she declines to be a poor relation. Now such an attitude is
+ridiculous, because she is a poor relation. To each overture from her
+uncle she replies with defiance. At one moment she drowns his remarks in
+a typewriter; at another she flourishes her shorthand in his face; and
+this summer she fled to America before he had finished what he was
+saying. Mr. Touchwood, I rely on you!" she exclaimed, thumping him on
+the shoulder with the fan.
+
+John felt himself to be a very infirm prop for the old lady's ambition,
+and wobbled in silence while she heaped upon him her aspirations.
+
+"You are a man of the world. All the world's a stage! Prompt her, my
+dear Mr. Touchwood, prompt her. You must have had a great experience in
+prompting. I rely on you. Her uncle _must_ be allowed to help her. For
+pray appreciate that Doris's independence merely benefits charitable
+institutions, and in my opinion there is a limit to anonymous
+benevolence. Perhaps you've heard of the Home for Epileptic Gentlewomen?
+They can have their fits in peace and comfort entirely because my
+daughter refuses to accept one penny from her uncle. To a mother, of
+course, such behavior is unaccountable. And what is so unjust is that
+she won't allow me to accept a penny either, but has even gone so far as
+to threaten to live with Miss Merritt if I do. Aphorisms of Aphrodite! I
+can assure you that there are times when I do not regret that I possess
+an ample sense of humor. If you were a mother, Mr. Touchwood...."
+
+"I _am_ an uncle," said John, quickly. He was not going to let Mrs.
+Hamilton monopolize all the privileges of kinship.
+
+"Then who more able to advise a niece? She will listen to you. Friends,
+Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. You must remember that she
+already admires you as a playwright. Insist that in future she must
+admire you from the stalls instead of from the pit--as now. At present
+she is pinched. Do not misunderstand me. I speak in metaphors. She is
+pinched by straitened circumstances just as the women of China are
+pinched by their shoes. She declines to wear a hobble-skirt; but decline
+or not, she hobbles through life. She cannot do otherwise, which is why
+we live here in Camera Square like two spoonfuls of tea in an old
+caddy!"
+
+"But you know, personally," John protested while the old lady was
+fanning back her lost breath, "personally, and I am now speaking as an
+uncle, personally I must confess that independence charms me."
+
+"Music hath charms," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Who will deny it? And
+independence with the indefinite article before it also hath charms; but
+independence with no article at all, independence, the abstract noun,
+though it may be a public virtue, is a private vice. Vesuvius lends
+variety to the Bay of Naples; but a tufted mole on a woman's cheek
+affects the observer with abhorrence, like a woolly caterpillar lurking
+in the heart of a rose. Let us distinguish between the state and the
+individual. Do, my dear Mr. Touchwood, let us always preserve a
+distinction between wild nature and human nature."
+
+John was determined not to give way, and he once more firmly asserted
+his admiration for independence.
+
+"All the world's a stage," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Yes, and all the men and
+women merely players; yet life, Mr. Touchwood, is not a play. I have
+realized that since my husband died. The widow of a sinologue has much
+to realize. At first I hoped that Doris would marry. But she has never
+wanted to marry. Men proposed in shoals. But as I always said to them,
+'What is the use of proposing to my daughter? She will never marry.'"
+
+For the first time John began to pay a deep and respectful attention to
+the conversation.
+
+"Really I should have thought," he began; but he stopped himself
+abruptly, for he felt that it was not quite chivalrous for him to
+appraise Miss Hamilton's matrimonial chances. "No doubt Miss Hamilton is
+very critical," he substituted.
+
+"She would criticize anybody," the old lady exclaimed. "From the Creator
+of us all in general to her own mother in particular she would criticize
+anybody. Anybody that is, except Miss Merritt. Do not suppose, for
+instance, that she will not criticize you."
+
+"Oh, I have no hope of escaping," John said.
+
+"But pay no attention and continue to advise her. Really, when I think
+that on account of her obstinacy a number of epileptic females are
+enjoying luxurious convulsions while I am compelled to alternate between
+muffins and scones every day of the week, though I never know which I
+like better, really I resent our unnecessary poverty. As I say to her,
+whether we accept her uncle's offer or not, we are always poor
+relations; so we may as well be comfortably off poor relations."
+
+"Don't you suppose that perhaps her uncle is all the fonder of her
+because of this independence?" John suggested. "I think I should be."
+
+"But what is the use of that?" Mrs. Hamilton demanded. "Nothing is so
+bad for people as stunted affection. My husband spent all his
+patrimony--he was a younger son--everything he had in fact upon his
+passion for Chinese--well, not quite everything, for he was able to
+leave me a small income, which I share with Doris. Pray remember that I
+have never denied her anything that I could afford. Although she has
+many times plotted with her friend Ida Merritt to earn her own living, I
+have never once encouraged her in such a step. The idea to me has always
+been painful. A sense of humor has carried _me_ through life; but Doris,
+alas, is infected with gloom. Whether it is living in London or whether
+it is reading Nietzsche I don't know, but she is infested with gloom.
+Therefore when I heard of her meeting you I was glad; I was almost
+reconciled to the notion of that vulgar descent upon America. Pray do
+not imagine that I am trying to flatter: you should be used to public
+approbation by now. John Hamilton is her uncle's name, and he has a
+delightful estate near the Mull of Kintyre--Glencockic House--some of
+the rents of which provide carpets for the fits of epileptic gentlewomen
+and some the children of indigent tradesmen in Ayr with colonial
+opportunities. Yet his sister-in-law must choose every morning between
+muffins and scones."
+
+John tried unsuccessfully to change the conversation; he even went so
+far as to ask the old lady questions about her adventures in China,
+although it was one of the rules of his conduct never to expose himself
+unnecessarily to the reminiscences of travelers.
+
+"Yes, yes," she would reply, impatiently, "the bells in the temple
+gardens are delicious. Ding-dong! ding-dong! But, as I was saying,
+unless Doris sees her way to be at any rate outwardly gracious ..." and
+so it went on until Doris herself, dressed in that misty green Harris
+tweed of the _Murmania_, came in to say that she was ready.
+
+"My dear child," her mother protested. "The streets of London are empty
+on Sunday evening, but they are not a Highland moor. What queer notions
+of dress you do have, to be sure."
+
+"Ida and I are going out to supper with some friends of hers in Norwood,
+and I want to keep warm in the train."
+
+"One of the aphorisms of Aphrodite, I suppose, to wear a
+Norfolk-jacket--or should I say a Norwood jacket?--on Sunday evening.
+You must excuse her, Mr. Touchwood."
+
+John was by this time thoroughly bored by the old lady's witticisms and
+delighted to leave her to fan herself in the firelight, while he and her
+daughter walked along toward King's Road.
+
+"No sign of a taxi," said John, whose mind was running on shorthand,
+though he was much too shy to raise the topic for a second time. "You
+don't mind going as far as Sloane Square by motor-bus?"
+
+A moment later they were climbing to the outside of a motor-bus; when
+John pulled the waterproof rug over their knees and felt the wind in his
+face while they swayed together and apart in the rapid motion, he could
+easily have fancied that they were once again upon the Atlantic.
+
+"I often think of our crossing," he said in what he hoped was an
+harmonious mixture of small talk and sentiment.
+
+"So do I."
+
+He tried to turn eagerly round, but was unable to do so on account of
+having fastened the strap of the rug.
+
+"Well, in Camera Square, wouldn't you?" she murmured.
+
+"You're not happy there?" In order to cover his embarrassment at finding
+he had asked what she might consider an impertinent question John turned
+away to fasten the rug more tightly, which nearly kept him from turning
+around again at all.
+
+"Don't let's talk about me," she begged, dismissing the subject with a
+curt little laugh. "How fast they do drive on Sunday."
+
+"Yes, the streets are empty," he agreed. Good heavens, at this rate they
+would be at Sloane Square in five minutes, and he might just as well
+never have called on her. What did it matter if the streets were empty?
+They were not half as empty as this conversation.
+
+"I'm working hard," he began.
+
+"Lucky you!"
+
+"At least when I say I'm working hard," he corrected himself, "I mean
+that I have been working hard. Just at present I'm rather worried by
+family matters."
+
+"Poor man, I sympathize with you."
+
+She might sympathize with him; but on this motor-bus her manner was so
+detached that nobody could have guessed it, John thought, and he had
+looked at her every time a street-lamp illuminated her expression.
+
+"I often think of our crossing," he repeated. "I'm sure it would be a
+great pity to let our friendship fade out into nothing. Won't you lunch
+with me one day?"
+
+"With pleasure."
+
+"Wednesday at Princes? Or no, better say the Carlton Grill."
+
+"Thanks so much."
+
+"It's not easy to talk on a motor-bus, is it?" John suggested.
+
+"No, it's like trying to talk to somebody whom you're seeing off in a
+train."
+
+"I hope you'll enjoy your evening. You'll remember me to Miss Merritt?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+Sloane Square opened ahead of them; but at any rate, John congratulated
+himself, he had managed to arrange a lunch for Wednesday and need no
+longer reproach himself for a complete deadlock.
+
+"I must hurry," she warned him when they had descended to the pavement.
+
+"Wednesday at one o'clock then."
+
+He would have liked to detain her with elaborate instructions about the
+exact spot on the carpet where she would find him waiting for her on
+Wednesday; but she had shaken him lightly by the hand and crossed the
+road before he could decide between the entrance in Regent Street and
+the entrance in Pall Mall.
+
+"It is becoming every day more evident, Mrs. Worfolk," John told his
+housekeeper after supper that evening, "that I must begin to look about
+for a secretary."
+
+"Yes, sir," she agreed, cheerfully. "There's lots of deserving young
+fellows would be glad of the job, I'm shaw."
+
+John left it at that, acknowledged Mrs. Worfolk's wishes for his night's
+repose, poured himself out a whisky and soda, and settled himself down
+to read a gilded work at fifteen shillings net entitled _Fifteen Famous
+Forgers_. When he had read three shillings' worth, he decided that the
+only crime which possessed a literary interest for anybody outside the
+principals was murder, and went to bed early in order to prepare for the
+painful interview at Staple Inn next morning.
+
+Stephen Crutchley, the celebrated architect, was some years older than
+John, old enough in fact to have been severely affected by the esthetic
+movement in his early twenties; he had a secret belief that was
+nourished both by his pre-eminence in Gothic design and by his wife's
+lilies and languors that he formed a link with the Pre-Raphaelites. His
+legs were excessively short, but short though they were one of them had
+managed to remain an inch shorter than the other, which in conjunction
+with a ponderous body made his gait something between a limp and a
+shamble. He had a long ragged beard which looked as if he had dropped
+egg or cigarette-ash on it according to whether the person who was
+deciding its color thought it was more gray or more yellow. His
+appearance was usually referred to by paragraph writers as leonine, and
+he much regretted that his beard was turning gray so soon, when what the
+same writers called his "tawny mane of hair" was still unwithered. He
+affected the Bohemian costume of the 'eighties, that is to say the
+velvet jacket, the flowered silk waistcoat, and the unknotted tie of
+deep crimson or old gold kept in place by a prelate's ring; he lunched
+every day at the Arts Club, and since he was making at least L6000 a
+year, he did not bother to go back to his office in the afternoon. John
+had met him first soon after his father's death in 1890 somewhere in
+Northamptonshire where Crutchley was restoring a church--his first big
+job--and where John was editing temporarily a local paper. In those days
+John reacting from dog-biscuits was every bit as romantic as he was now;
+he and the young architect had often talked the sun up and spoken
+ecstatically of another medieval renaissance, of the nobility of
+handicrafts and of the glory of the guilds. Later on, when John in the
+reaction from journalism embarked upon realistic novels, Crutchley was
+inclined to quarrel with him as a renegade, and even went so far as to
+send him a volume of Browning's poems with _The Lost Leader_ heavily
+marked in red pencil. Considering that Crutchley was making more money
+with his gargoyles than himself with his novels John resented the
+accusation of having deserted his friend for a handful of silver; and as
+for the ribbon which he was accused of putting in his coat, John thought
+that the architect was the last person to underline such an accusation,
+when himself for the advancement of his work had joined every
+ecclesiastical society from the English Church Union to the Alcuin Club.
+There was not a ritualistic parson in the land who wanted with or
+without a faculty to erect a rood or reredos but turned to Crutchley for
+his design, principally because his watch-chain jingled with religious
+labels; although to do him justice, even when he was making L6000 a year
+he continued to attend Choral Eucharists as regularly as ever. When John
+abandoned realistic novels and made a success as a romantic playwright
+his friend welcomed him back to the Gothic fold with emotion and
+enthusiasm.
+
+"You and I, John, are almost the only ones left," the architect had
+said, feelingly.
+
+"Come, come, Stephen, you mustn't talk as if I was William de Morgan.
+I'm not yet forty, and you're not yet forty-five," John had replied,
+slightly nettled by this ascription of them to a bygone period.
+
+Yet with all his absurdities and affectations Stephen was a fine fellow
+and a fine architect, and when soon after this he had agreed to take
+Hugh into his office John would have forgiven him if he had chosen to
+perambulate Chelsea in doublet and hose.
+
+Thinking of Stephen as he had known him for twenty years John had no
+qualms when on Monday morning he ascended the winding stone steps that
+led up to his office in the oldest portion of Staple Inn; nor apparently
+had Hugh, who came in as jauntily as ever and greeted his brother with
+genial self-possession.
+
+"I thought you'd blow in this morning. I betted Aubrey half-a-dollar
+that you'd blow in. He tells me you went off in rather a bad temper on
+Saturday night. But you were quite right, Johnnie; that port of George's
+is not good. You were quite right. I shall always respect your verdict
+on wine in future."
+
+"This is not the moment to talk about wine," said John, angrily.
+
+"I'm afraid that owing to George and his confounded elderberry ink I
+didn't put my case quite as clearly as I ought to have done," Hugh went
+on, serenely. "But don't worry. As soon as you've settled with Stevie, I
+shall tell you all about it. I think you'll be thrilled. It's a pity
+you've moved into Wardour Street, or you might have made a good story
+out of it."
+
+One of the clerks came back with an invitation for John to follow him
+into Mr. Crutchley's own room, and he was glad to escape from his
+brother's airy impenitence.
+
+"Wonderful how Stevie acts up to the part, isn't it?" commented Hugh,
+when he saw John looking round him at the timbered rooms with their
+ancient furniture and medieval blazonries through which they were
+passing.
+
+"I prefer to see Crutchley alone," said John, coldly. "No doubt he will
+send for you when your presence is required."
+
+Hugh nodded amiably and went over to his desk in one of the latticed
+oriel windows, the noise of the Holborn traffic surging in through which
+reminded the listener that these perfectly medieval rooms were in the
+heart of modern London.
+
+"I should rather like to live in chambers here myself," thought John. "I
+believe they would give me the very atmosphere I require for Joan of
+Arc; and I should be close to the theaters."
+
+This project appealed to him more than ever when he entered the
+architect's inmost sanctum, which containing nothing that did not belong
+to the best period of whatever it was, wrought iron or carved wood or
+embroidered stuff, impressed John's eye for a scenic effect. Nor was
+there too much of it: the room was austere, not even so full as a
+Carpaccio interior. Modernity here wore a figleaf; wax candles were
+burned instead of gas or electric light; and even the telephone was
+enshrined in a Florentine casket. When the oaken door covered with huge
+nails and floriated hinges was closed, John sat down upon what is called
+a Glastonbury chair and gazed at his friend who was seated upon a gilt
+throne under a canopy of faded azure that was embroidered with golden
+unicorns, wyverns, and other fabulous monsters in a pasture of silver
+fleurs-de-lys.
+
+"Have a cigar," said the Master, as he liked to be called, pushing
+across the refectory table that had come out of an old Flemish monastery
+a primitive box painted with scenes of saintly temptations, but lined
+with cedar wood and packed full of fat Corona Coronas.
+
+"It seems hardly appropriate to smoke cigars in this room," John
+observed. "Even a churchwarden-pipe would be an anachronism here."
+
+"Yes, yes," Stephen assented, tossing back his hair with the authentic
+Vikingly gesture. "But cigars are the chief consolation we have for
+being compelled to exist in this modern world. I haven't seen you,
+John, since you returned from America. How's work?"
+
+"_Lucretia_ went splendidly in New York. And I'm in the middle of _Joan
+of Arc_ now."
+
+"I'm glad, I'm glad," the architect growled as fiercely as one of the
+great Victorians. "But for Heaven's sake get the coats right. Theatrical
+heraldry is shocking. And get the ecclesiastical details right.
+Theatrical ritual is worse. But I'm glad you're giving 'em Joan of Arc.
+Keep it up, keep it up. The modern drama wants disinfecting."
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't care to advise me about the costumes and
+processions and all that," John suggested, offering his friend a pinch
+of his romantic Sanitas.
+
+"Yes, I will. Of course, I will. But I must have a free hand. An
+absolutely free hand, John. I won't have any confounded play-actor
+trying to tell me that it doesn't matter if a bishop in the fifteenth
+century does wear a sixteenth century miter, because it's more effective
+from the gallery. Eh? I know them. You know them. A free hand or you can
+burn Joan on an asbestos gasfire, and I won't help you."
+
+"Your help would be so much appreciated," John assured him, "that I can
+promise you an absolutely short hand."
+
+The architect stared at the dramatist.
+
+"What did I say? I mean free hand--extraordinary slip," John laughed a
+little awkwardly. "Yes, your name, Stephen, is just what we shall
+require to persuade the skeptical that it is worth while making another
+attempt with Joan of Arc. I can promise you some fine opportunities.
+I've got a particularly effective tableau to show the miserable
+condition of France before the play begins. The curtain will rise upon
+the rearguard of an army marching out of a city, heavy snow will fall,
+and above the silence you will hear the howling of the wolves following
+in the track of the troops. This is an historical fact. I may even
+introduce several wolves upon the stage. But I rather doubt if trained
+wolves are procurable, although at a pinch we could use large dogs--but
+don't let me run away with my own work like this. I did not come here
+this morning to talk about Joan of Arc, but about my brother Hugh."
+
+John rose from his chair and walked nervously up and down the room,
+while Stephen Crutchley managed to exaggerate a slight roughness at the
+back of his throat into a violent fit of coughing.
+
+"I see you feel it as much as I do," John murmured, while the architect
+continued to express his overwrought feelings in bronchial spasms.
+
+"I would have spared you this," the architect managed to gasp at last.
+
+"I'm sure you would," said John, warmly. "But since in what I hope was a
+genuine impulse of contrition not entirely dictated by motives of
+self-interest Hugh has confessed his crime to me, I am come here this
+morning confident that you will allow me to--in other words--what was
+the exact sum? I shall of course remove him from your tutelage this
+morning."
+
+John's eloquence was not spontaneous; he had rehearsed this speech on
+the way from Hampstead that morning, and he was agreeably surprised to
+find that he had been able owing to his friend's coughing-fit to
+reproduce nearly all of it. He had so often been robbed of a prepared
+oration by some unexpected turn of the conversation that he felt now
+much happier than he ought under the weight of a family scandal.
+
+"Your generosity...." he continued.
+
+"No, no," interrupted the architect, "it is you who are generous."
+
+The two romantics gazed at one another with an expression of nobility
+that required no words to enhance it.
+
+"We can afford to be generous," said John, which was perfectly true,
+though the reference was to worth of character rather than to worth of
+capital.
+
+"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence," Crutchley murmured. "But I blame
+myself. I should not have left an old check book lying about. It was
+careless--it was, I do not hesitate to say so, criminally careless. But
+you know my attitude towards money. I am radically incapable of dealing
+with money."
+
+"Of course you are," John assented with conviction. "So am I. Money with
+me is merely a means to an end."
+
+"Exactly what it is with me," the architect declared. "Money in itself
+conveys nothing to me. What I always say to my clients is that if they
+want the best work they must pay for it. It's the work that counts, not
+the money."
+
+"Precisely my own attitude," John agreed. "What people will not
+understand is that an artist charges a high price when he does not want
+to do the work. If people insist on his doing it, they must expect to
+pay."
+
+"And of course," the architect added, "we owe it to our fellows to
+sustain the dignity of our professions. Art in England has already been
+too much cheapened."
+
+"You've kept all your old enthusiasms," John told his friend. "It's
+splendid to find a man who is not spoilt by success. Eighty-one pounds
+you said? I've brought my check book."
+
+"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence, yes. It was like you, John, to
+come forward in this way. But I wish you could have been spared. You
+understand, don't you, that I intended to say nothing about it and to
+blame myself in silence for my carelessness? On the other hand, I could
+not treat your brother with my former confidence. This terrible business
+disturbed our whole relationship."
+
+"I am not going to enlarge on my feelings," said John as he handed the
+architect the stolen sum. "But you will understand them. I believe the
+shock has aged me. I seem to have lost some of my self-reliance. Only
+this morning I was thinking to myself that I must really get a private
+secretary."
+
+"You certainly should have one," the architect agreed.
+
+"Yes, I must. The only thing is that since this dreadful escapade of
+Hugh's I feel that an unbusinesslike creature such as I am ought not to
+put himself in the hands of a young man. What is your experience of
+women? From a business point of view, I mean."
+
+"I think that a woman would do your work much better than a man," said
+the architect, decidedly.
+
+"So do I. I'm very glad to have your advice though."
+
+After this John felt no more reluctant at parting with eighty-one pounds
+six and eightpence than he would have felt in paying a specialist two
+guineas for advising him to take a long rest when he wanted to take a
+long rest. His friend's aloofness from money had raised to a higher
+level what might easily have been a most unpleasant transaction: not
+even one of his heroes could have extricated himself from an involved
+situation more poetically and more sympathetically. It now only remained
+to dispose of the villain.
+
+"Shall we have Hugh in?" John asked.
+
+"I wish I could keep him with me," the architect sighed. "But I don't
+think I have a right to consult my personal feelings. We must consider
+his behavior in itself."
+
+"In any case," said John, quickly, "I have made arrangements about his
+future; he is going to be a mahogany-planter in British Honduras."
+
+"Of course I don't use mahogany much in my work, but if ever ..." the
+architect was beginning, when John waved aside his kindly intentions.
+
+"The impulse is generous, Stephen, but I should prefer that so far as
+you are concerned Hugh should always be as if he had never been. In
+fact, I'm bound to say frankly that I'm glad you do not use mahogany in
+your work. I'm glad that I've chosen a career for Hugh which will cut
+him completely off from what to me will always be the painful
+associations of architecture."
+
+While they were waiting for the sinner to come in, John tried to
+remember the name of the mahogany-planter whom he had met in the
+_Murmania_; but he could get no nearer to it than a vague notion that it
+might have been Raikes, and he decided to leave out for the present any
+allusion to British Honduras.
+
+Hugh entered his chief's room without a blush: he could not have bowed
+his head, however sincere his repentance, because his collars would not
+permit the least abasement; though at least, his brother thought, he
+might have had the decency not to sit down until he was invited, and
+when he did sit down not to pull up his trousers in that aggressive way
+and expose those very defiant socks.
+
+Stephen Crutchley rose from his throne and shambled over to the
+fireplace, leaning against the stone hood of which he took up an
+attitude that would have abashed anybody but Hugh.
+
+"Touchwood," he began, "no doubt you have already guessed why I have
+asked you to speak to me."
+
+Hugh nodded encouragingly.
+
+"I do not wish to enlarge upon the circumstances of your behavior,
+because your brother, my old friend, has come forward to shield you from
+the consequences. Nor do I propose to animadvert upon the forgery
+itself. However lightly you embarked upon it, I don't doubt that by now
+you have sufficiently realized its gravity. What tempted you to commit
+this crime I do not hope to guess; but I fear that such a device for
+obtaining money must have been inspired by debts, whether for cards or
+for horse-racing, or perhaps even for women I do not pretend to know."
+
+"Add waistcoats and whisky and you've got the motive," Hugh chirped. "I
+say, I think your trousers are scorching," he added on a note of anxious
+consideration.
+
+"I do not propose to enlarge on any of these topics," said the
+architect, moving away from the fire and sniffing irritably the faint
+odor of overheated homespun. "What I do wish to enlarge upon is your
+brother's generosity in coming forward like this. Naturally I who have
+known him for twenty years expected nothing else, because he is a man of
+ideals, a writer of whom we are all proud, from whom we all expect great
+things and--however I am not going to enlarge upon his obvious
+qualities. What I do wish to say is that he and I have decided that
+after this business you must leave me. I don't suppose that you
+expected to remain; nor, even if you could, do I suppose that you would
+wish to remain. Perhaps you are not enough in sympathy with my
+aspirations for the future of English architecture to regret our
+parting; but I hope that this lesson you have had will be the means of
+bringing you to an appreciation of what your brother has done for you
+and that in British Honduras you will behave in such a way as to justify
+his generosity. Touchwood, good-by! I did not expect when you came to me
+three years ago that our last farewell would be fraught--would be so
+unpleasant."
+
+John was probably much more profoundly moved by Crutchley's sermon than
+Hugh; indeed he was so much moved that he rose to supplement it with one
+of his own in which he said the same things about the architect that the
+architect had said about him, after which the two romantics looked at
+each other admiringly, while they waited for Hugh to reply.
+
+"I suppose I ought to say I'm very sorry and all that," Hugh managed to
+mutter at last. "Good-by, Mr. Crutchley, and jolly good luck. I'll just
+toddle through the office and say good-by to all the boys, John, and
+then I dare say you'll be ready for lunch."
+
+He swaggered out of the room; when the two friends were left together
+they turned aside with mutual sympathy from the topic of Hugh to discuss
+Joan of Arc and a new transept that Crutchley was designing. When the
+culprit put his head round the door and called out to John that he was
+ready, the two old friends shook hands affectionately and parted with an
+increased regard for each other and themselves.
+
+"Look here, what's all this about British Honduras?" Hugh asked
+indignantly when he and his brother had passed under the arched entry of
+Staple Inn and were walking along Holborn. "I see you're bent on
+gratifying your appetite for romance even in the choice of a colony.
+British Honduras! British humbug!"
+
+"I prefer not do discuss anything except your immediate future," said
+John.
+
+"It's such an extraordinary place to hit on," Hugh grunted in a tone of
+irritated perplexity."
+
+"The immediate future," John repeated, sharply. "To-night you will go
+down to Hampshire and if you wish for any more help from me, you will
+remain there in the strictest seclusion until I have time to settle your
+ultimate future."
+
+"Oh, I shan't at all mind a few weeks in Hampshire. What I'm grumbling
+at is British Honduras. I shall rather enjoy Hampshire in fact. Who's
+there at present?"
+
+John told him, and Hugh made a grimace.
+
+"I shall have to jolly them up a bit. However it's a good job that
+Laurence has lost his faith. I shall be spared his Chloral Eucharists,
+anyway. Where are we going to lunch?"
+
+"Hugh!" exclaimed his outraged brother stopping short in the middle of
+the crowded pavement. "Have you no sense of shame at all? Are you
+utterly callous?"
+
+"Look here, Johnnie, don't start in again on that. I know you had to
+take that line with Stevie, and you'll do me the justice of admitting
+that I backed you up; but when we're alone, do chuck all that. I'm very
+grateful to you for forking out--by the way, I hope you noticed the nice
+little touch in the sum? Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence. The six
+and eightpence was for my lawyer."
+
+"Do you adopt this sickeningly cynical attitude," John besought.
+"Forgery is not a joke."
+
+"Well, this forgery was," Hugh contradicted. "You see, I got hold of
+Stevie's old check book and found he had quite a decent little account
+in Croydon. So I faked his signature--you know how to do that?"
+
+"I don't want to know."
+
+"You copy the signature upside down. Yes, that's the way. Then old
+Aubrey disguised himself with blue glasses and presented the check at
+the bank, just allowing himself five minutes to catch the train back to
+town. I was waiting at the station in no end of a funk. But it was all
+right. The clerk blinked for a minute, but old Aubrey blinked back at
+him as cool as you please, and he shoveled out the gold. Aubrey came
+jingling on to the platform like a milk-can just as the train was
+starting."
+
+"I wish to hear no more."
+
+"And then I found that Stevie was cocking his eye at this check book and
+scratching his head and looking at me and--well, he suspected me. The
+fact of the matter is that Stevie's as keen on his cash as anybody. I
+suppose this is a side account for the benefit of some little lady or
+other."
+
+"Silence," John commanded.
+
+"And then I lost my nerve, so that when Stevie started questioning me
+about his check book I must have looked embarrassed."
+
+"I'm surprised to hear that," John put in, bitterly.
+
+"Yes, I dare say I could have bluffed it out, because I'd taken the
+precaution to cash the check through Aubrey whom Stevie knows nothing
+about. But I don't know. I lost my nerve. Well, thanks very much for
+stumping up, Johnnie; I'm only glad you got so much pleasure out of it
+yourself."
+
+"What do you mean--pleasure?"
+
+"Shut up--don't pretend you didn't enjoy yourself, you old Pharisee.
+Look here where _are_ we going to lunch? I'm carrying a bag full of
+instruments, you know."
+
+John told Hugh that he declined to lunch with him in his present mood of
+bravado, and at the corner of Chancery Lane they parted.
+
+"Mind," John warned him, "if you wish for any help from me you are to
+remain for the present at Ambles."
+
+"My dear chap, I don't want to remain anywhere else; but I wish you
+could appreciate the way in which the dark and bloody deed was done, as
+one of your characters would say. You haven't uttered a word of
+congratulation. After all, it took some pluck, you know, and the
+signature was an absolutely perfect fake--perfect. The only thing that
+failed was my nerve afterwards. But I suppose I should be steadier
+another time."
+
+John hurried away in a rage and walked up the Strand muttering:
+
+"What _was_ the name of that mahogany-planter? _Was_ it Raikes or wasn't
+it? I must find his card."
+
+It was not until he had posted the following letter that he recovered
+some of his wonted serenity.
+
+36 CHURCH ROW,
+
+Hampstead, N.W.,
+
+_Nov. 28, 1910._
+
+MY DEAR MISS HAMILTON,--In case I am too shy to broach the subject at
+lunch on Wednesday I am writing to ask you beforehand if in your wildest
+dreams you have ever dreamt that you could be a private secretary. I
+have for a long time been wanting a secretary, and as you often spoke
+with interest of my work I am in hopes that the idea will not be
+distasteful to you. I should not have dared to ask you if you had not
+mentioned shorthand yesterday and if Mrs. Hamilton had not said
+something about your typewriting. This seems to indicate that at any
+rate you have considered the question of secretarial work. The fact of
+the matter is that in addition to my plays I am much worried by family
+affairs, so much so that I am kept from my own work and really require
+not merely mechanical assistance, but also advice on many subjects on
+which a woman is competent to advise.
+
+I gathered also from your mother's conversation that you yourself were
+sometimes harassed by family problems and I thought that perhaps you
+might welcome an excuse to get away from them for awhile.
+
+My notions of the salary that one ought to offer a private secretary are
+extremely vague. Possibly our friend Miss Merritt would negotiate the
+business side, which to me as an author is always very unpleasant. I
+should of course accept whatever Miss Merritt proposed without
+hesitation. My idea was that you would work with me every morning at
+Hampstead. I have never yet attempted dictation myself, but I feel that
+I could do it after a little practice. Then I thought you could lunch
+with me, and that after lunch we could work on the materials--that is to
+say that I should give you a list of things I wanted to know, which you
+would search for either in my own library or at the British Museum. Does
+this strike you as too heavy a task? Perhaps Miss Merritt will advise
+you on this matter too.
+
+If Mrs. Hamilton is opposed to the idea, possibly I might call upon her
+and explain personally my point of view. In the meantime I am looking
+forward to our lunch and hoping very much that you will set my mind at
+rest by accepting the post. I think I told you I was working on a play
+with Joan of Arc as the central figure. It is interesting, because I am
+determined not to fall into the temptation of introducing a factitious
+love-interest, which in my opinion spoilt Schiller's version.
+
+Yours sincerely,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When after lunch on Wednesday afternoon John relinquished Miss Hamilton
+to the company of her friend Miss Merritt at Charing Cross Station, he
+was relinquishing a secretary from whom he had received an assurance
+that the very next morning she would be at his elbow, if he might so
+express himself. In his rosiest moments he had never expected so swift a
+fulfilment of his plan, and he felt duly grateful to Miss Merritt, to
+whose powers of persuasion he ascribed the acceptance in spite of Mrs.
+Hamilton's usually only too effective method of counteracting any kind
+of independent action on her daughter's part. On the promenade deck of
+the _Murmania_ Miss Merritt had impressed John with her resolute
+character; now she seemed to him positively Napoleonic, and he was more
+in awe of her than ever, so much so indeed that he completely failed to
+convey his sense of obligation to her good offices and could only beam
+at her like a benevolent character in a Dickens novel. Finally he did
+manage to stammer out his desire that she would charge herself with the
+financial side of the agreement and was lost in silent wonder when she
+had no hesitation in suggesting terms based on the fact that Miss
+Hamilton had no previous experience as a secretary.
+
+"Later on, if you're satisfied with her," she said, "you must increase
+her salary; but I will be no party to over-payment simply because she is
+personally sympathetic to you."
+
+How well that was put, John thought. Personally sympathetic! How
+accurately it described his attitude toward Miss Hamilton. He took leave
+of the young women and walked up Villiers Street, cheered by the
+pleasant conviction that the flood of domestic worries which had
+threatened to destroy his peace of mind and overwhelm his productiveness
+was at last definitely stayed.
+
+"She's exactly what I require," he kept saying to himself, exultantly.
+"And I think I may claim without unduly flattering myself that the post
+I have offered her is exactly what she requires. From what that very
+nice girl Miss Merritt said, it is evidently a question of asserting
+herself now or never. With what a charming lack of self-consciousness
+she agreed to the salary and even suggested the hours of work herself.
+Oh, she's undoubtedly practical--very practical; but at the same time
+she has not got that almost painfully practical exterior of Miss
+Merritt, who must have broken in a large number of difficult employers
+to acquire that tight set of her mouth. Probably I shall be easy to
+manage, so working for me won't spoil her unbusinesslike appearance.
+To-morrow we are to discuss the choice of a typewriter; and by the way,
+I must arrange which room she is to use for typing. The noise of a
+machine at high speed would be as prejudicial to composition as Viola's
+step-dancing. Yes, I must arrange with Mrs. Worfolk about a room."
+
+John's faith in his good luck was confirmed by the amazing discovery
+that Mrs. Worfolk had known his intended secretary as a child.
+
+"Her old nurse in fact!" he exclaimed joyfully, for such a melodramatic
+coincidence did not offend John's romantic palate.
+
+"No, sir, not her nurse. I never was not what you might call a nurse
+proper. Well, I mean to say, though I was always fond of children I
+seemed to take more somehow to the house itself, and so I never got
+beyond being a nursemaid. After that I gave myself up to rising as high
+as a housemaid _can_ rise until I married Mr. Worfolk. Perhaps you may
+remember me once passing the remark that I'd been in service with a
+racing family? Well, after I left them I took a situation as upper
+housemaid with a very nice family in the county of Unts, and who came up
+to London for the season to Grosvenor Gardens. Then I met Mr. Worfolk
+who was a carpenter and he made packing-cases for Mr. Hamilton who was
+your young lady's pa. Oh, I remember him well. There was a slight
+argument between Mr. Worfolk and I--well, not argument, because ours was
+a very happy marriage, but a slight conversation as to whether he was to
+make cases for Chi-ner or Chi-nese knick-knacks, and Mr. Worfolk was
+wrong."
+
+"But were you in service with Mr. Hamilton? Did he live in
+Huntingdonshire?"
+
+"No, no, sir. You're getting very confused, if you'll pardon the
+obsivation. Very confused, you're getting. This Mr. Hamilton was a
+customer of Mr. Worfolk and through him coming to superintend his
+Chi-nese valuables being packed I got to know his little girl--your
+secretary as is to be. Oh, I remember her perfickly. Why, I mended a
+hole in her stocking once. Right above the garter it was, and she was so
+fond of our Tom. Oh, but he _was_ a beautiful mouser. I've heard many
+people say they never saw a finer cat nowhere."
+
+"You have a splendid memory, Mrs. Worfolk."
+
+"Yes, sir. I have got a good memory. Why, when I was a tiny tot I can
+remember my poor grandpa being took sudden with the colic and rolling
+about on the kitchen hearth-rug, groaning, as you might say, in a agony
+of pain. Well, he died the same year as the Juke of Wellington, but
+though I was taken to the Juke's funeral by my poor mother, I've
+forgotten that. Well, one can't remember everything, and that's a fact;
+one little thing will stick and another little thing won't. Well, I mean
+to say, it's a good job anybody can't remember everything. I'm shaw
+there's enough trouble in the world as it is."
+
+Mrs. Worfolk startled the new secretary when she presented herself at 36
+Church Row next day by embracing her affectionately in the hall before
+she had explained the reason for such a demonstration. It soon
+transpired, however, that Miss Hamilton's memory was as good as Mrs.
+Worfolk's and that she had not forgotten those jolly visits to the
+carpenter long ago, nor even the big yellow Tomcat. As for the master
+of the house, he raised his housekeeper's salary to show what importance
+he attached to a good memory.
+
+For a day or two John felt shy of assigning much work to his secretary;
+but she soon protested that, if she was only going to type thirty to
+fifty lines of blank verse every other morning, she should resign her
+post on the ground that it was an undignified sinecure.
+
+"What about dictating your letters? You made such a point of my knowing
+shorthand."
+
+"Yes, I did, didn't I?" John agreed.
+
+Dictation made him very nervous at first; but with a little practice he
+began to enjoy it, and ultimately it became something in the nature of a
+vice. He dictated immensely long letters to friends whose very existence
+he had forgotten for years, the result of which abrupt revivals of
+intercourse was a shower of appeals to lend money to these companions of
+his youth. Yet this result did not discourage him from the habit of
+dictating for dictation's sake, and every night before he turned over to
+go to sleep he used to poke about in the rubbish-heap of the past for
+more forgotten friends. As a set off to incommoding himself with a host
+of unnecessary correspondents he became meticulously businesslike, and
+after having neglected Miss Janet Bond for several weeks he began to
+write to her daily about the progress of the play, which notwithstanding
+his passion for dictation really was progressing at last. Indeed he
+worked up the manageress of the Parthenon to such a pitch of excitement
+that one morning she appeared suddenly at Church Row and made a dramatic
+entrance into the library when John, who had for the moment exhausted
+his list of friends, was dictating a letter to _The Times_ about the
+condition of some trees on Hampstead Heath.
+
+"I've broken in upon your inspiration," boomed Miss Bond in tones that
+she usually reserved for her most intensely tragic moments.
+
+In vain did the author asseverate that he was delighted to see her; she
+rushed away without another word; but that evening she wrote him an
+ecstatic letter from her dressing-room about what it had meant to her
+and what it always would mean to her to think of his working like that
+for her.
+
+"But we mustn't deride Janet Bond," said the author to his secretary,
+who was looking contemptuously at the actress's heavy caligraphy. "We
+must remember that she will create Joan of Arc."
+
+"Yes, it's a pity, isn't it?" Miss Hamilton commented, dryly.
+
+"Oh, but won't you allow that she's a great actress?"
+
+"I will indeed," she murmured with an emphatic nod.
+
+Carried along upon his flood of correspondence John nevertheless managed
+to steer clear of his relations, and in his present frame of mind he was
+inclined to attribute his successful course like everything else that
+was prospering just now to the advent of Miss Hamilton. However, it was
+too much to expect that with his newly discovered talent he should
+resist dictating at any rate one epistolary sermon to his youngest
+brother, of whose arrival at Ambles he had been sharply notified by
+Hilda. This weighty address took up nearly a whole morning, and when it
+was finished John was disconcerted by Miss Hamilton's saying:
+
+"You don't really want me to type all this out?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me that whatever he's done this won't
+make him repent. You don't mind my criticizing you?"
+
+"I asked you to," he reminded her.
+
+"Well, it seems to me a little false--a little, if I may say so,
+complacently wrathful. It's the sort of thing I seem to remember reading
+and laughing at in old-fashioned books. Of course, I'll type it out at
+once if you insist, but it's already after twelve o'clock, and we have
+to go over the material for the third act. I can't somehow fit in what
+you've just been dictating with what you were telling me yesterday about
+the scene between Gilles de Rais and Joan. I'm so afraid that you'll
+make Joan preach, and of course she mustn't preach, must she?"
+
+"All right," conceded John, trying not to appear mortified. "If you
+think it isn't worth sending, I won't send it."
+
+He fancied that she would be moved by his sensitiveness to her judgment;
+but, without a tremor, she tore the pages out of her shorthand book and
+threw them into the waste-paper basket. John stared at the ruthless
+young woman in dismay.
+
+"Didn't you mean me to take you at your word?" she asked, severely.
+
+He was not altogether sure that he had, but he lacked the courage to
+tell her so and checked an impulse to rescue his stillborn sermon from
+the grave.
+
+"Though I don't quite like the idea of leaving my brother at Ambles with
+nothing to occupy his energies," John went on, meditatively, "I'm
+doubtful of the prudence of exposing him to the temptations of
+idleness."
+
+"If you want to give him something to do, why don't you intrust him with
+getting ready the house for your Christmas party? You are always
+worrying about its emptiness."
+
+"But isn't that putting in his way temptations of a more positive kind?"
+he suggested.
+
+"Not if you set a limit to your expenditure. Can you trust his taste? He
+ought to be an adept at furnishings."
+
+"Oh, I think he'd do the actual furnishing very well. But won't it seem
+as if I am overlooking his abominable behavior too easily?"
+
+With a great effort John kept his eyes averted from the waste-paper
+basket.
+
+"You must either do that or refuse to have anything more to do with
+him," Miss Hamilton declared. "You can't expect him to be the mirror of
+your moral superiority for the rest of his life."
+
+"You seem to take quite an interest in him," said John, a little
+resentfully.
+
+Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"All right," he added, hurriedly. "I'll authorize him to prepare the
+house for Christmas. He must fight his own battles with my sister,
+Hilda. At any rate, it will annoy her."
+
+Miss Hamilton shook her head in mock reproof.
+
+"Act Three. Scene One," the dramatist announced in the voice of a mystic
+who has at last shaken himself free from earthly clogs and is about to
+achieve levitation. It was consoling to perceive that his secretary's
+expression changed in accord with his own, and John decided that she
+really was a most attractive young woman and not so unsympathetic as he
+had been upon the verge of thinking. Moreover, she was right. The
+important thing at present, the only thing, in fact, was the progress of
+the play, and it was for this very purpose that he had secured her
+collaboration--well, perhaps collaboration was too strong a word--but,
+indeed, so completely had she identified herself with his work that
+really he could almost call it collaboration. He ought not to tax his
+invention at this critical point with such a minor problem as the
+preparation of Ambles for a family reunion. Relations must go to the
+deuce in their own way, at any rate until the rough draft of the third
+act was finished, which, under present favorable conditions, might
+easily happen before Christmas. His secretary was always careful not to
+worry him with her own domestic bothers, though he knew by the way she
+had once or twice referred to her mother that she was having her own
+hard fight at home. He had once proposed calling upon the old lady; but
+Doris had quickly squashed the suggestion. John liked to think about
+Mrs. Hamilton, because through some obscure process of logic it gave him
+an excuse to think about her daughter as Doris. In other connections he
+thought of her formally as Miss Hamilton, and often told himself how
+lucky it was that so charming and accomplished a young woman should be
+so obviously indifferent to--well, not exactly to himself, but surely he
+might allege to anything except himself as a romantic playwright.
+
+Meanwhile, the play itself marched on with apparent smoothness, until
+one morning John dictated the following letter to his star:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MY DEAR MISS BOND,--Much against my will, I have come to the conclusion
+that without a human love interest a play about Joan of Arc is
+impossible. You will be surprised by my abrupt change of front, and you
+will smile to yourself when you remember how earnestly I argued against
+your suggestion that I might ultimately be compelled to introduce a
+human love interest. The fact of the matter is that now I have arrived
+at the third act I find patriotism too abstract an emotion for the
+stage. As you know, my idea was to make Joan so much positively
+enamoured of her country that the ordinary love interest would be
+superseded. I shall continue to keep Joan herself heart free; but I do
+think that it would be effective to have at any rate two people in love
+with her. My notion is to introduce a devoted young peasant who will
+follow her from her native village, first to the court at Chinon, and so
+on right through the play until the last fatal scene in the market place
+at Rouen. I'm sure such a simple lover could be made very moving, and
+the contrast would be valuable; moreover, it strikes me as a perfectly
+natural situation. Further, I propose that Gilles de Rais should not
+only be in love with her, but that he should actually declare his love,
+and that she should for a brief moment be tempted to return it, finally
+spurning him as a temptation of the Devil, and thereby reducing him to
+such a state of despair that he is led into the horrible practices for
+which he was finally condemned to death. Let me know your opinion soon,
+because I am at this moment working on the third act.
+
+Yours very sincerely,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To which Miss Bond replied by telegram:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Complete confidence in you, and think suggestion magnificent, there
+should be exit speech of renunciation for Joan to bring down curtain of
+third act.
+
+JANET BOND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You agree with these suggestions?" John asked his secretary.
+
+"Like Miss Bond, I have complete confidence in you," she replied.
+
+He looked at her earnestly to see if she was laughing at him, and put
+down his pen.
+
+"Do you know that in some ways you yourself remind me of Joan?"
+
+It was a habit of John's, who had a brain like a fly's eye, to perceive
+historical resemblances that were denied to an ordinary vision.
+Generally he discovered these reincarnations of the past in his own
+personality. While he was writing _The Fall of Babylon_ he actually
+fretted himself for a time over a fancied similarity between his
+character and Nebuchadnezzar's, and sometimes used to wonder if he was
+putting too much of himself into his portrayal of that dim potentate;
+and during his composition of _Lucretia_ he was so profoundly convinced
+that Caesar Borgia was simply John Touchwood over again in a more
+passionate period and a more picturesque costume that, as the critics
+pointed out, he presented the world with an aspect of him that would
+never have been recognized by Machiavelli. Yet, even when Harold was
+being most unpleasant, or when Viola and Bertram were deafening his
+household, John could not bring himself to believe that he and Gilles de
+Rais, who was proved to have tortured over three hundred children to
+death, had many similar traits; nor was he willing to admit more than a
+most superficial likeness to the feeble Dauphin Charles. In fact, at one
+time he was so much discouraged by his inability to adumbrate himself in
+any of his personages that he began to regret his choice of Joan of Arc
+and to wish that he had persevered in his intention to write a play
+about Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom, allowing for the sundering years,
+he felt he had more in common than with any other historical figure.
+Therefore he was relieved to discover this resemblance between his
+heroine and his secretary, in whom he was beginning to take nearly as
+much interest as in himself.
+
+"Do you mean outwardly?" asked Miss Hamilton, looking at an engraving of
+the bust from the church of St. Maurice, Orleans. "If so, I hope her
+complexion wasn't really as scaly as that."
+
+"No, I mean in character."
+
+"I suppose a private secretary ought not to say 'what nonsense' to her
+employer, but really what else can I say? You might as well compare Ida
+Merritt to Joan of Arc; in fact, she really is rather like my conception
+of her."
+
+"I'm sorry you find the comparison so far-fetched," John said, huffily.
+"It wasn't intended to be uncomplimentary."
+
+"Have you decided to introduce those wolves in the first act, because I
+think I ought to begin making inquiries about suitable dogs?"
+
+When Miss Hamilton rushed away from the personal like this, John used to
+regret that he had changed their relationship from one of friendship to
+one of business. Although he admired practicalness, he realized that it
+was possible to be too practical, and he sighed sometimes for the tone
+that his unknown admirers took when they wrote to him about his work.
+Only that morning he had received a letter from one of these, which he
+had tossed across the table for his secretary's perusal before he
+dictated a graceful reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+HILLCREST,
+
+Highfield Road,
+
+Hornsey, N.,
+
+_Dec. 14, 1910_.
+
+DEAR SIR:--I have never written to an author before, but I cannot help
+writing to ask you _when_ you are going to give us another play. I
+cannot tell you how much I enjoy your plays--they take me into another
+world. Please do not imagine that I am an enthusiastic schoolgirl. I am
+the mother of four dear little children, and my husband and I both act
+in a dramatic club at Hornsey. We are very anxious to perform one of
+your plays, but the committee is afraid of the expense. I suppose it
+would be asking too much of you to lend us some of the costumes of _The
+Fall of Babylon_. I think it is your greatest work up till now, and I
+simply live in all those wonderful old cities now and read everything I
+can find about them. I was brought up very strictly when I was young and
+grew to hate the Bible--please do not be shocked at this--but since I
+saw _The Fall of Babylon_ I have taken to reading it again. I went nine
+times--twice in the gallery, three times in the pit, twice in the upper
+circle and twice in the dress circle, once in the fifth row at the side
+and once right in the middle of the front row! I cut out the enclosed
+photo of you from _The Tatler_, and, would it be asking too much to sign
+your name? Hoping for the pleasure of a reply, I remain,
+
+Your sincere admirer,
+
+(MRS.) ENID FOSTER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What extraordinary lunatics there are in this world," Miss Hamilton had
+commented. "Have you noticed the one constant factor in these letters?
+All the women begin by saying that it is the first time they have ever
+written to an author; of course, they would say the same thing to a man
+who kissed them. The men, however, try to convey that they're in the
+habit of writing to authors. I think there's a moral to be extracted
+from that observation."
+
+Now, John had not yet attained--and perhaps it was improbable that he
+ever would attain--those cold summits of art out of reach alike of the
+still, sad music and the hurdy-gurdies of humanity, so that these
+letters from unknown men and women, were they never so foolish,
+titillated his vanity, which he called "appealing to his imagination."
+
+"One must try to put oneself in the writer's place," he had urged,
+reproachfully.
+
+"Um--yes, but I can't help thinking of Mrs. Enid Foster living in those
+wonderful old cities. Her household will crash like Babylon if she isn't
+careful, and her family will be reduced to eating grass like
+Nebuchadnezzar, if the green-grocer's book is neglected any longer."
+
+"You won't allow the suburbs to be touched by poetry?"
+
+John had tried to convey in his tone that Miss Hamilton in criticizing
+the enthusiasm of Mrs. Foster was depreciating his own work. But she had
+seemed quite unconscious of having rather offended him and had taken
+down his answer without excusing herself. Now when in a spirit that was
+truly forgiving he had actually compared her to his beloved heroine, she
+had scoffed at him as if he was a kind of Mrs. Foster himself.
+
+"You're very matter-of-fact," he muttered.
+
+"Isn't that a rather desirable quality in a secretary?"
+
+"Yes, but I think you might have waited to hear why you reminded me of
+Joan of Arc before you began talking about those confounded wolves,
+which, by the way, I have decided to cut out."
+
+"Don't cut out a good effect just because you're annoyed with me," she
+advised.
+
+"Oh no, there are other reasons," said John, loftily. "It is possible
+that in an opening tableau the audience may not appreciate that they are
+wolves, and if they think they're only a lot of stray dogs, the effect
+will go for nothing. It was merely a passing idea, and I have discarded
+it."
+
+Miss Hamilton left him to go and type out the morning's correspondence,
+and John settled down to a speech by the Maid on the subject of
+perpetual celibacy: he wrote a very good one.
+
+"She may laugh at me," said the author to himself, "but she _is_ like
+Joan--extraordinarily like. Why, I can hear her making this very
+speech."
+
+Miss Hamilton might sometimes profane John's poetic sanctuaries and
+sometimes pull his leg when he was on tiptoe for a flight like Mr.
+Keats' sweetpeas, but she made existence much more pleasant for him, and
+he had already reached the stage of wondering how he had ever managed to
+get along without her. He even went so far in his passion for historical
+parallels as to compare his situation before she came to the realm of
+France before Joan of Arc took it in hand. He knew in his heart that
+these weeks before Christmas were unnaturally calm; he had no hope of
+prolonging this halcyon time much further; but while it lasted he would
+enjoy it to the full. Any one who had overheard John announcing to his
+reflection in the glass an unbridled hedonism for the immediate future
+might have been pardoned for supposing that he was about to amuse
+himself in a very desperate fashion. As a matter of fact, the averred
+intention was due to nothing more exciting than the prospect of a long
+walk over the Heath with Miss Hamilton to discuss an outline of the
+fourth act, which John knew would gradually be filled in with his plans
+for writing other plays and finally be colored by a conversation, or,
+anyhow, a monologue about himself as a human being without reference to
+himself as an author.
+
+"What is so delightful about Miss Hamilton," he assured that credulous
+and complaisant reflection, "is the way one can talk to her without
+there being the least danger of her supposing that one has any ulterior
+object in view. Notwithstanding all the rich externals of the past, I'm
+bound to confess that the relations between men and women are far more
+natural nowadays. I suppose it was the bicycle that began female
+emancipation; had bicycles been invented in the time of Joan of Arc she
+would scarcely have had to face so much ecclesiastical criticism of her
+behavior."
+
+The walk was a success; amongst other things, John discovered that if he
+had had a sister like Miss Hamilton, most of his family troubles would
+never have arisen. He shook his head sadly at the thought that once upon
+a time he had tried to imagine a Miss Hamilton in Edith, and in a burst
+of self-revelation, like the brief appearance of two or three acres of
+definitely blue sky overhead, he assured his secretary that her coming
+had made a difference to his whole life.
+
+"Well, of course you get through much more in the day now," she agreed.
+
+John would have liked a less practical response, but he made the best of
+it.
+
+"I've got so much wrapped up in the play," he said, "that I'm wondering
+now if I shall be able to tear myself away from London for Christmas. I
+dread the idea of a complete break--especially with the most interesting
+portion just coming along. I think I must ask you to take your holiday
+later in the year, if you don't mind."
+
+He had got it out, and if he could have patted himself on the back
+without appearing ridiculous in a public thoroughfare he would have done
+so. His manner might have sounded brusque, but John was sure that the
+least suggestion of any other attitude except that of an employer
+compelled against his will to seem inconsiderate would have been fatal.
+
+"That would mean leaving my mother alone," said Miss Hamilton,
+doubtfully.
+
+John looked sympathetic, but firm, when he agreed with her.
+
+"She would understand that literary work takes no account of the church
+calendar," he pointed out. "After all, what is Christmas?"
+
+"Unfortunately, my mother is already very much offended with me for
+working with you at all. Oh, well, bother relations!" she exclaimed,
+vehemently. "I'm going to be selfish in future. All right, if you
+insist, I must obey--or lose my job, eh?"
+
+"I might have to engage a locum tenens. You see, now that I've got into
+the habit of dictating my letters and relying upon somebody else to keep
+my references in order and--"
+
+"Yes, yes," she interrupted. "I quite see that it would put you to great
+inconvenience if I cried off. All the same, I can't help being worried
+by the notion of leaving mother alone on Christmas Day itself. Why
+shouldn't I join you on the day after?"
+
+"The very thing," John decided. "I will leave London on Christmas Eve,
+and you shall come down on Boxing Day. But I should travel in the
+morning, if I were you. It's apt to be unpleasant, traveling in the
+evening on a Bank Holiday. Hullo, here we are! This walk has given me a
+tremendous appetite, and I do feel that we've made a splendid start with
+the fourth act, don't you?"
+
+"The fourth act?" repeated his secretary. "It seems to me that most of
+the time you were talking about the position of women in modern life."
+
+John laughed gayly.
+
+"Ah, I see you haven't even yet absolutely grasped my method of work. I
+was thinking all the while of Joan's speech to her accusers. I can
+assure you that all my remarks were entirely relevant to what I had in
+my head. That's the way I get my atmosphere. I told you that you
+reminded me of her, but you wouldn't believe me. In doublet and hose you
+would be Joan."
+
+"Should I? I think I should look more like Dick Whittington in a touring
+pantomime. My legs are too thin for tights."
+
+"By the way, I wonder if Janet Bond has good legs?" said John,
+pensively.
+
+It was charming to be able to talk about women's legs like this without
+there being the slightest suggestion that they had any; yet, somehow the
+least promising topics were rehabilitated by the company of Miss
+Hamilton, and most of them, even the oldest, acquired a new and
+absorbing interest. John had registered a vow on the first day his
+secretary came that he would watch carefully for the least signs of
+rosifying her and he had renewed this vow every morning before his
+glass; but it was sometimes difficult not to attribute to her all sorts
+of mysterious fascinations, as on those occasions when he would have
+kept her working later than usual in the afternoon and when she would
+have been persuaded to stay for tea, for which she made a point of
+getting home to please her mother, who gave it a grand importance. John
+was convinced that even James would forgive him for thinking that in all
+England there was not a more competent, a more charming, a more--he used
+to pull himself up guiltily at about the third comparative and stifle
+his fancies in the particularly delicious cake that Mrs. Worfolk always
+seemed to provide on the days when his secretary stayed to tea.
+
+It was on one of these rosified afternoons, full of candlelight and
+firelight and the warmed scent of hyacinths that Miss Hamilton rallied
+John about his exaggerated dread of his relations.
+
+"For I've been working with you now for nearly three weeks, and you've
+not been bothered by them once," she declared.
+
+"My name! My name!" he cried. "Touchwood?"
+
+"I begin to think it's nothing but an affectation," she persisted.
+"_You're_ not pestered by charitable uncles who want to boast of what
+they've done for their poor brother's only daughter. _You're_ not made
+to feel that you've wrecked your mother's old age by earning your own
+living."
+
+"Yes, they have been quiet recently," he admitted. "But there was such a
+terrible outbreak of Family Influenza just before you came that some
+sort of prostration for a time was inevitable. I hope you don't expect
+my brother, Hugh, to commit a forgery every week. Besides, that
+excellent suggestion of yours about preparing Ambles for Christmas has
+kept him busy, and probably all the rest of them down there too. But
+it's odd you should raise the subject, because I was going to propose
+your having supper here some Sunday soon and inviting my eldest brother
+and his wife to meet you."
+
+"To-morrow is the last Sunday before Christmas. The Sunday after is
+Christmas Day."
+
+"Is it really? Then I must dictate an invitation for to-morrow, and I
+must begin to see about presents on Monday. By Jove, how time has
+flown!"
+
+"After all, what is Christmas?" she laughed.
+
+"Oh, you must expect children to be excited about it," John murmured. "I
+don't like to disappoint _them_. But I'd no idea Christmas was on top of
+us like this. You'll help me with my shopping next week? I hope to
+goodness Eleanor won't come and bother me. She'll be getting back to
+town to-morrow. It's really extraordinary, the way the time has passed."
+
+John dictated an urgent invitation to James and Beatrice to sup with
+them the following evening, and since it was too late to let them know
+by post, he decided to see Miss Hamilton as far as the tube and leave
+the note in person at Hill Road.
+
+James arrived for supper in a most truculent mood, and this being
+aggravated by his brother's burgundy, of which he drank a good deal,
+referring to it all the while as poison, much to John's annoyance,
+embroiled him half way through supper in an argument with Miss Hamilton
+on the subject of feminine intelligence.
+
+"Women are not intelligent," he shouted. "The glimmering intelligence
+they sometimes appear to exhibit is only one of their numerous sexual
+allurements. A woman thinks with her nerves, reasons with her emotions,
+and speculates with her sensations."
+
+"Rubbish," said Miss Hamilton, emphatically.
+
+"Now, Jimmie dear," his wife put in, "you'll only have indigestion if
+you get excited while you're eatin'."
+
+"I shall have indigestion anyway," growled her husband. "My liver will
+be like dough to-morrow after this burgundy. I ought to drink a light
+moselle."
+
+"Well, you can have moselle," John began.
+
+"I loathe moselle. I'd as soon drink syrup of squills," James bellowed.
+
+"All right, you shall have syrup of squills next time."
+
+"Oh, Johnnie," Beatrice interposed with a wide reproachful smile.
+"Jimmie's only joking. He doesn't really like syrup of squills."
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't try to analyze my tastes," said James to his
+wife.
+
+John threw a glance at Miss Hamilton, which was meant to express "What
+did I tell you?" But she was blind to his signal and only intent upon
+attacking James on behalf of her sex.
+
+"Women have not the same kind of intelligence as men," she began,
+"because it is denied to them by their physical constitution. But they
+have, I insist, a supplementary intelligence without which the great
+masculine minds would be as ineffective as convulsions of nature. Women
+work like the coral polyps...."
+
+"Bravo!" John cried. "A capital comparison!"
+
+"An absurd comparison!" James contradicted. "A ludicrous comparison!
+Woman is purely individualistic. The moment she begins to take up with
+communal effort, she tends to become sterile."
+
+"Do get on with your supper, dear," urged Beatrice, who had only
+understood the last word and was anxious not "to be made to feel small,"
+as she would have put it, in front of an unmarried woman.
+
+John perceived her mortification and jumped through the argument as a
+clown through a paper hoop.
+
+"Remember I'm expecting you both at Ambles on Christmas Eve," he said,
+boisterously. "We're going to have a real old-fashioned Christmas
+party."
+
+James forgot all about women in his indignation; but before he could
+express his opinion Beatrice held up another paper hoop for the
+distraction of the audience.
+
+"I'm simply longin' for the country," she declared. "Christmas with a
+lot of children is the nicest thing I know."
+
+John went through the hoop with aplomb and refused to be unseated by his
+brother.
+
+"James will enjoy it more than any of us," he chuckled.
+
+"What!" shouted the critic. "I'd sooner be wrecked on a desert island
+with nothing to read but a sixpenny edition of the Christmas Carol.
+Ugh!"
+
+John looked at Miss Hamilton again, and this time his appeal was not
+unheeded; she said no more about women and let James rail on at
+sentimental festivities, which, by the time he had finished with them,
+looked as irreparable as the remains of the tipsy-cake. There seemed no
+reason amid the universal collapse of tradition to conserve the habit of
+letting the ladies retire after dinner. As there was no drawing-room in
+his bachelor household, it would have been more comfortable to smoke
+upstairs in the library; but James returned to Fielding after
+demolishing Dickens and protested against being made to hurry over his
+port; so his host had to watch Beatrice escort Miss Hamilton from the
+dining-room with considerable resentment at what he thought was her
+unjustifiably protective manner.
+
+"As my secretary," he felt, "Miss Hamilton is more at home in my house
+than Beatrice is. I suppose, though, that like everything else I have my
+relations are going to take possession of her now."
+
+"Where did you pick up your lady-help?" James asked, when he and his
+brother were left alone with the wine.
+
+"If you're alluding to Miss Hamilton," John said, sharply, "I met her on
+board the _Murmania_, crossing the Atlantic."
+
+"I never heard any good come of traveling acquaintances. She has a good
+complexion; I suppose she took your eye by not being seasick. Beware of
+women with good complexions who aren't seasick, Johnnie. They always
+flirt."
+
+"Are you supposed to be warning me against my secretary?"
+
+"Any woman who finds herself at a man's elbow is dangerous. Nurses, of
+course, are the most notoriously dangerous--but a secretary who isn't
+seasick is nearly as bad."
+
+"Thanks very much for your brotherly concern," said John, sarcastically.
+"You will be relieved to hear that the relationship between Miss
+Hamilton and myself is a purely practical one, and likely to remain
+so."
+
+"Platonism was never practical," James answered with a snort. "It was
+the most impractical system ever imagined."
+
+"Fortunately Miss Hamilton is sufficiently interested in her work and in
+mine not to bother her head about the philosophy of the affections."
+
+James was irritating when he was criticizing contemporary literature;
+but his views of modern life were infuriating.
+
+"I'm not accusing your young woman--how old is she, by the way? About
+twenty-nine, I should guess. A damned dangerous age, Johnnie. However,
+as I say, I'm not accusing her of designs upon you. But a man who writes
+the kind of plays that you do is capable of any extravagance, and you're
+much too old by now to be thinking about marriage."
+
+"I don't happen to be thinking about marriage," John retorted. "But I
+refuse to accept your dictum about my age. I consider that the effects
+of age have been very much exaggerated by the young. You cannot call a
+man of forty-two old."
+
+"You look much more than forty-two. However, one can't write plays like
+yours without exposing oneself to a good deal of emotional wear and
+tear. No, no, you're making a great mistake in introducing a woman into
+the house. Believe me, Johnnie, I'm speaking for your good. If I hadn't
+married, I might have preserved my illusions about women and compounded
+just as profitable a dose of dramatic nux vomica as yourself."
+
+"What do you mean by a dose of dramatic nux vomica?"
+
+"That's my name for the sort of plays you write, which unduly accelerate
+the action of the heart and make a sane person retch. However, don't
+take my remarks in ill part. I was simply commenting on the danger of
+letting a good-looking young woman make herself indispensable."
+
+"I'm glad you allow her good looks," John said, witheringly. "Any one
+who was listening to our conversation would get the impression that she
+was as ugly and voracious as a harpy."
+
+"Yes, yes. She's quite good-looking. Very nice ankles."
+
+"I haven't noticed her ankles," John said, austerely.
+
+"You will, though," his brother replied with an encouraging laugh. "By
+the way, what's that rascal, Hugh, been doing? I hear you've replanted
+him in the bosom of the family. Isn't Hugh rather too real for one of
+your Christmas parties?"
+
+John, after some hesitation, had decided not to tell any of the others
+the details of Hugh's misdemeanor; he had even denied himself the
+pleasure of holding him up to George as a warning; hence the renewal of
+his interest in Hugh had struck the family as a mere piece of
+sentimentality.
+
+"Crutchley didn't seem to believe he'd ever make much of architecture,"
+he explained to James. "And I'm thinking of helping him to establish
+himself in British Honduras."
+
+"Bah! For less than he'll cost you in British Honduras you could
+establish me as the editor of a new critical weekly," James grunted.
+
+"There is still time for Hugh to make something of his life," John
+replied. He had not had the slightest intention of trying to score off
+his eldest brother by this remark, and he was shocked to see what a
+spasm of ill will twisted up his face.
+
+"I suppose your young woman is responsible for this sudden solicitude
+for Hugh's career? I suppose it's she who has persuaded you that he has
+possibilities? You take care, Johnnie. You can't manipulate the villain
+in life as you can on the stage."
+
+Now, Miss Hamilton, though she had not met him, had shown just enough
+interest in Hugh to give these remarks a sting; and John must have been
+obviously taken aback, for the critic at once recovered his good humor
+and proposed joining the ladies upstairs. Beatrice was sitting by the
+fire; her husband's absence had allowed her to begin the digestion of an
+unusually good dinner in peace, and the smoothness of her countenance
+made her look more than ever like a cabinet photograph of the early
+'nineties. Miss Hamilton, on the other hand, seemed bored, and very
+soon she declared that she must go home lest her mother should be
+anxious.
+
+"Oh, you have a mother?" James observed in such a tone that John thought
+it was the most offensive remark of the many he had heard him make that
+evening. He hoped that Miss Hamilton would not abandon him after this
+first encounter with his relations, and he tried to ascertain her
+impressions while she was putting on her things in the hall.
+
+"I'm afraid you've had a very dull evening," he murmured,
+apologetically. "I hope my sister-in-law wasn't more tiresome than
+usual. What did she talk about?"
+
+"She was warning me--no, I won't be malicious--she was explaining to me
+the difficulties of an author's wife."
+
+"Yes, poor thing; I'm afraid my brother must be very trying to live
+with. I hope you were sympathetic?"
+
+"So sympathetic," Miss Hamilton replied, with a mocking glance, "that I
+told her I was never likely to make the experiment. Good night, Mr.
+Touchwood. To-morrow as usual."
+
+She hurried down the steps and was gone before he could utter a word.
+
+"I don't think she need have said that," he murmured to himself on his
+way back to the library. "I've no doubt Beatrice was very trying; but I
+really don't think she need have said that to me. It wasn't worth
+repeating such a stupid remark. That's the way things acquire an undue
+importance."
+
+With John's entrance the conversation returned to Miss Hamilton; but,
+though it was nearly all implied criticism of his new secretary, he had
+no desire to change the topic. She was much more interesting than the
+weekly bills at Hill Road, and he listened without contradiction to his
+brother's qualms about her experience and his sister-in-law's regrets
+for her lack of it.
+
+"However," said John to his reflection when he was undressing, "they've
+got to make the best of her, even if they all think the worse. And the
+beauty of it is that they can't occupy her as they can occupy a house. I
+must see about getting Hugh off to the Colonies soon. If I don't find
+out about British Honduras, he can always go to Canada or Australia. It
+isn't good for him to hang about in England."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Whether it was due to the Christmas card look of his new house or merely
+to a desire to flaunt a romantic hospitality in the face of his eldest
+brother, it is certain that John had never before in his life gone so
+benevolently mad as during the week that preceded Christmas in the year
+1910. Mindful of that afternoon in the town of Galton when he had tried
+to procure for Harold and Frida gifts of such American appearance as
+would excuse his negligence, he was determined not to expose himself for
+a second time to juvenile criticism, and in the selection of toys he
+pandered to every idiosyncrasy he had so far observed in his nephews and
+nieces. Thus, for Bertram he bought a large stamp album, several sheets
+of tropical stamps, a toy theater, representatives of every species in
+the great genus marbles, a set of expensive and realistic masks, and a
+model fireman's outfit. For Viola he filled a trunk with remnants of
+embroideries and all kinds of stuffs, placing on top two pairs of ebony
+castanets and the most professional tambourine he could find; and, in
+order that nature might not be utterly subordinated to art, he bought
+her a very large doll, rather older in appearance than Viola herself; in
+fact, almost marriageable. In the hope of obliterating the
+disappointment of those china animals, he chose for Frida a completely
+furnished dolls' house with garage and stables attached, so grand a
+house, indeed, that by knocking all the rooms into one, she could with
+slight inconvenience have lived in it herself; this residence he
+populated with gentleman-dolls, lady-dolls, servant-dolls, nurse-dolls,
+baby-dolls, horses, carriages, and motors; nor did he omit to provide a
+fishmonger's shop for the vicinity. For Harold he bought a butterfly
+collector's equipment, a vacuum pistol, a set of climbing-irons, a
+microscope, and at the last moment a juvenile diver's equipment with
+air pumps and all accessories, which was warranted perfectly safe,
+though the wicked uncle wondered if it really was.
+
+"I don't want a mere toy for the bathroom," he explained.
+
+"Quite so, sir," the shopman assented, with a bow. "This is guaranteed
+for any ordinary village pond or small stream."
+
+For his grown-up relations John bought the kind of presents that one
+always does buy for grown-up relations, the kind of presents that look
+very ornamental on the counter, seem very useful when the shopman
+explains what they are for, puzzle the recipient and the donor when the
+shopman is no longer there, and lie about the house on small tables for
+the rest of the year. In the general odor of Russia leather that clung
+to his benefactions John hoped that Miss Hamilton would not consider too
+remarkable the attache case that he intended to give her, nor amid the
+universal dazzle of silver object to the few little luxuries of the
+writing-desk with which he had enhanced it. Then there were the presents
+for the servants to choose, and he counted much on Miss Hamilton's
+enabling him to introduce into these an utilitarian note that for two or
+three seasons had been missing from his donations, which to an outsider
+might have seemed more like lures of the flesh than sober testimonials
+to service. He also counted upon her to persuade Mrs. Worfolk to
+accompany Maud down to Ambles: Elsa was to be left in Church Row with
+permission to invite to dinner the policeman to whom she was betrothed
+and various friends and relations of the two families.
+
+When the presents were settled John proceeded to lay in a store of
+eatables and drinkables, in the course of which enterprise he was
+continually saying:
+
+"I've forgotten for the moment what I want next, but meanwhile you'd
+better give me another box of Elvas plums."
+
+"Another drum? Yes, sir," the shopman would reply, licking his pencil in
+a way that was at once obsequious and pedantic, though it was not
+intended to suggest more than perfect efficiency.
+
+When the hall and the adjacent rooms at 36 Church Row had been turned
+into rolling dunes of brown paper, John rushed about London in a last
+frenzy of unbridled acquisitiveness to secure plenty of amusement for
+the children. To this end he obtained a few well-known and well-tried
+favorites like the kinetoscope and the magic lantern, and a number of
+experimental diversions which would have required a trained engineer or
+renowned scientist to demonstrate successfully. Finally he bargained for
+the wardrobe of a Santa Claus whose dignified perambulations round the
+Christmas Bazaar of a noted emporium had attracted his fancy on account
+of the number of children who followed him everywhere, laughing and
+screaming with delight. It was not until he had completed the purchase
+that he discovered it was not the exterior of the Santa Claus which had
+charmed his little satellites, but the free distribution of bags of
+coagulated jujubes.
+
+"I expect I'd better get the Christmas tree in the country," said John,
+waist-deep in the still rising drift of parcels. "I dare say the Galton
+shops keep those silver and magenta globes you hang on Christmas trees,
+and I ought to patronize the local tradesmen."
+
+"If you have any local shopping to do, I'm sure you would be wise to go
+down to-day," Miss Hamilton suggested, firmly. "Besides, Mrs. Worfolk
+won't want to arrive at the last minute."
+
+"No, indeed, I shan't, Miss," said the housekeeper. "Well, I mean to
+say, I don't think we ever shall arrive, not if we wait much longer. We
+shall require a performing elephant to carry all these parcels, as it
+is."
+
+"My idea was to go down in the last train on Christmas Eve," John
+argued. "I like the old-fashioned style, don't you know?"
+
+"Yes, old-fashioned's the word," Mrs. Worfolk exclaimed. "Why, who's to
+get the house ready if we all go trooping down on Christmas Eve? And if
+I go, sir, you must come with me. You know how quick Mrs. Curtis always
+is to snap any one up. If I had my own way, I wouldn't go within a
+thousand miles of the country; that's a sure thing."
+
+John began to be afraid that his housekeeper was going back on her word,
+and he surrendered to the notion of leaving town that afternoon.
+
+"I say, what is this parcel like a long drain-pipe?" he asked in a final
+effort to detain Miss Hamilton, who was preparing to make her farewells
+and leave him to his packing.
+
+"Ah, it would take some finding out," Mrs. Worfolk interposed. "I've
+never seen so many shapes and sizes of parcels in all my life."
+
+"They must have made a mistake," said John. "I don't remember buying
+anything so tubular as this."
+
+He pulled away some of the paper wrapping to see what was inside.
+
+"Ah, of course! They're two or three boxes of Elvas plums I ordered. But
+please don't go, Miss Hamilton," he protested. "I am relying upon you to
+get the tickets to Waterloo."
+
+In spite of a strenuous scene at the station, in the course of which
+John's attempts to propitiate Mrs. Worfolk led to one of the porters
+referring to her as his mother, they managed to catch the five o'clock
+train to Wrottesford. After earnestly assuring his secretary that he
+should be perfectly ready to begin work again on Joan of Arc the day
+after her arrival and begging her on no account to let herself be
+deterred from traveling on the morning of Boxing Day, John sank back
+into the pleasant dreams that haunt a warm first-class smoking
+compartment when it's raining hard outside in the darkness of a December
+night.
+
+"We shall have a green Christmas this year," observed one of his fellow
+travelers.
+
+"Very green," John assented with enthusiasm, only realizing as he spoke
+that the superlative must sound absurd to any one who was unaware of his
+thoughts and hiding his embarrassment in the _Westminster Gazette_,
+which in the circumstances was the best newspaper he could have chosen.
+
+John was surprised and depressed when the train arrived at Wrottesford
+to find that the member of the Ambles party who had elected to meet him
+was Hilda; and there was a long argument on the platform who should
+drive in the dogcart and who should drive in the fly. John did not want
+to ride on the back seat of the dogcart, which he would have to do
+unless he drove himself, a prospect that did not attract him when he saw
+how impatiently the mare was dancing about through the extreme lateness
+of the train. Hilda objected to driving with his housekeeper in the fly,
+and in the end John was compelled to let Maud and Mrs. Worfolk occupy
+the dogcart, while he and Hilda toiled along the wet lanes in the fly.
+It was decided to leave the greater portion of the luggage to be fetched
+in the morning, but even so it was after eight o'clock before they got
+away from the station, and John, when he found himself immured with
+Hilda in the musty interior of the hired vehicle was inclined to
+prophesy a blue Christmas this year. To begin with, Hilda would try to
+explain the system she had pursued in allotting the various bedrooms to
+accommodate the large party that was expected at Ambles. It was bad
+enough so long as she confined herself to a verbal exposition, but when
+she produced a map of the house, evidently made by Hugh on an idle
+evening, and to illuminate her dispositions struck away most of John's
+matches, it became exasperating. His brain was already fatigued by the
+puzzle of fitting into two vehicles four pieces, one of which might not
+move to the square next two of the remaining pieces, and another of
+which could not move backward.
+
+"I leave it entirely to you," he declared, introducing at last into the
+intellectual torment of chess some of the happy irresponsibleness of
+bridge. "You mustn't set me these chess problems in a jolting fly before
+dinner."
+
+"Chess!" Hilda sniffed with a shiver. "Draughts would be a better name."
+
+She did not often make jokes, and before John had recovered sufficiently
+from his surprise to congratulate her with a hearty laugh, she was off
+again upon her querulous and rambling narration of the family news.
+
+"If everything _had_ been left to me, I might have managed, but Hugh's
+interference, apparently authorized by you, upset all my poor little
+arrangements. I need hardly say that Mama was so delighted to have her
+favorite at home with her that she has done everything since his arrival
+to encourage his self-importance. It's Hughie this and Hughie that,
+until I get quite sick of the sound of his name. And he's very unkind to
+poor little Harold. Apart from being very coarse and sarcastic in front
+of him, he is sometimes quite brutal. Only this morning he shot him in
+the upper part of the leg with a pellet from the poor little man's own
+air-gun."
+
+John did laugh this time, and shouted "Merry Christmas!" to a passing
+wagon.
+
+"I dare say it sounds very funny to you. But it made Harold cry."
+
+"Come, come, Hilda, it's just as well he should learn the potentialities
+of his own instrument. He'll sympathize with the birds now."
+
+"Birds," she scoffed. "Fancy comparing Harold with a bird!"
+
+"It is rather unfair," John agreed.
+
+"However, you won't be so ready to take Hugh's part when you see what
+he's been doing at Ambles."
+
+"Why, what has he been doing?"
+
+"Oh, never mind. I'd rather you judged for yourself," said Hilda,
+darkly. "Of course, I don't know what Hugh has been up to in London that
+you've had to send him down to Hampshire. I always used to hear you vow
+that you would have nothing more to do with him. But I know that
+successful people are allowed to change their minds more often than the
+rest of us. I know success justifies everything. And it isn't as if Hugh
+was grateful for your kindness. I can assure you that he criticizes
+everything you do. Any stranger who heard him talking about your plays
+would think that they were a kind of disgrace to the family. As for
+Laurence, he encourages him, not because he likes him, but because Hugh
+fills him up with stories about the stage. Though I think that a
+clergyman who has got into such a muddle with his bishops would do
+better not to make himself so conspicuous. The whole neighborhood is
+talking about him."
+
+"What is Laurence's latest?"
+
+"Why, stalking about in a black cloak, with his hair hanging down over
+his collar, stopping people in quiet lanes and reciting Shakespeare to
+them. It's not surprising that half the county is talking about his
+behavior and saying that he was turned out of Newton Candover for being
+drunk when the bishop took a confirmation, and _some_ even say that he
+kept a ballet girl at the vicarage. But do you think that Edith objects?
+Oh, no! All that Laurence does must be right, because it's Laurence. She
+prays for him to get back his belief in the Church of England, though
+who's going to offer him another living I'm sure I don't know, so she
+might just as well spare her knees. And when she's not praying for him,
+she's spoiling him. She actually came out of her room the other morning
+with her finger up to her lips, because Laurence wasn't to be disturbed
+at that moment. I need hardly tell you I paid no attention and went on
+saying what I had to say to Huggins about the disgraceful way he's let
+the pears get so sleepy."
+
+"It's a pity you didn't succeed in waking them up instead of Laurence,"
+John chuckled.
+
+"It's all very well for you to laugh, John, but if you could see the way
+that Edith is bringing up Frida! She's turning her into a regular little
+molly-coddle. I'm sure poor Harold does his best to put some life into
+the child, but she shrinks and twitches whenever he comes near her. I
+told Edith that it wasn't to be wondered at if Harold did tease her
+sometimes. She encourages him to tease her by her affectations. I used
+to think that Frida was quite a nice little girl when I only saw her
+occasionally, but she doesn't improve on acquaintance. However, I blame
+her mother more than I do her. Why, Edith doesn't even make the child
+take her cod-liver oil regularly, whereas Harold drinks his up like a
+little Trojan."
+
+"Never mind," said John, soothingly. "I'm sure we shall all feel more
+cheerful after Christmas. And now, if you don't mind, I'm afraid I must
+keep quiet for the rest of the drive. I've got a scene to think about."
+
+The author turned up the collar of his coat and retired into the further
+corner while Hilda chewed her veil in ruminative indignation until the
+mellow voice of Laurence, who had taken up a statuesque pose of welcome
+by the gate, broke the dank silence of the fly.
+
+"Ah, John, my dear fellow, we are delighted to see you. The rain has
+stopped."
+
+If Laurence had still been on good terms with his Creator, John might
+have thought from his manner that he had personally arranged this break
+in the weather.
+
+"Is Harold there?" asked Hilda, sharply.
+
+"Here I am, mother; I've just caught a Buff-tip, and it won't go into my
+poison-bottle."
+
+"And what is a Buff-tip?" inquired Laurence in a tone of patronizing
+ignorance.
+
+"Oh, it's a pretty common moth."
+
+"Harold, darling, don't bother about moths or butterflies to-night. Come
+and say how d'ye do to dear Uncle John."
+
+"I've dropped the cork of my poison-bottle. Look out, Frida, bother you,
+I say, you'll tread on it."
+
+The combined scents of cyanide of potassium and hot metal from Harold's
+bull's-eye lantern were heavy upon the moist air; when the cork was
+found, Harold lost control over the lantern which he flashed into
+everybody's face in turn, so that John, rendered as helpless as a
+Buff-tip, walked head foremost into a sopping bush by the side of the
+path. However, the various accidents of arrival all escaped being
+serious, and the thought of dinner shortened the affectionate greetings.
+Remembering how Hugh had paid out Harold with his own air-gun, John
+greeted his youngest brother more cordially than he could ever have
+supposed it was possible to greet him again.
+
+By general consent, the owner of the house was allowed to be tired that
+evening, and all discussion of the Christmas preparations was postponed
+until the next day. Harold made a surreptitious attempt to break into
+the most promising parcel he could find, but he was ill rewarded by the
+inside, which happened to be a patent carpet sweeper.
+
+Before old Mrs. Touchwood went to bed, she took John aside and
+whispered:
+
+"They're all against Hughie. But I've tried to make the poor boy feel
+that he's at home, and dear Georgie will be coming very soon, which will
+make it pleasanter for Hugh, and I've thought of a nice way to manage
+Jimmie."
+
+"I think you worry yourself needlessly over Hugh, Mama; I can assure you
+he's perfectly capable of looking after himself."
+
+"I hope so," the old lady sighed. "All my patience came out beautifully
+this evening. So I hope Hughie will be all right. He seemed to think you
+were a little annoyed with him."
+
+"Did he tell you why?"
+
+"Not exactly, but I understand it was something to do with money. You
+mustn't be too strict with Hugh about money, John. You must always
+remember that he hasn't got all the money he wants, and you must make
+allowances accordingly. Ah, dear, peace on earth, good-will towards men!
+But I don't complain. I'm very happy here with my patience, and I dare
+say something can be done to get rid of the bees that have made a nest
+in the wall just under my bedroom window. They're asleep now, but when
+they begin to buzz with the warm weather Huggins must try and induce
+them to move somewhere else. Good-night, my dear boy."
+
+Next morning when John leaned out of his window to inhale the Hampshire
+air and contemplate his domain he was shocked to perceive upon the lawn
+below a large quadrangular excavation in which two workmen were actually
+digging.
+
+"Hi! What are you doing?" he shouted.
+
+The workmen stared at John, stared at one another, stared at their
+spades, and went on with their digging.
+
+"Hi! What the devil are you doing?"
+
+The workmen paid no attention; but the voice of Harold came trickling
+round the corner of the house with a gurgle of self-satisfaction.
+
+"_I_ didn't do it, Uncle John. I began geology last week, but I haven't
+dug up _anything_. Mother wouldn't let me. It was Uncle Hugh and Uncle
+Laurence. Mother knew you'd be angry when you saw what a mess the garden
+was in. It does look untidy, doesn't it? Huggins said he should complain
+to you, first thing. He says he'd just as soon put brown sugar on the
+paths as _that_ gravel. Did you know that Ambles is built on a gravel
+subsoil, Uncle John? Aren't you glad, because my geology book says that
+a gravel subsoil is the healthiest...."
+
+John removed himself abruptly out of earshot.
+
+"What is that pernicious mess on the front lawn?" he demanded of Hugh
+half-an-hour later at breakfast.
+
+"Ah, you noticed it, did you?"
+
+"Noticed it? I should think I did notice it. I understand that you're
+responsible."
+
+"Not entirely," Laurence interposed, gently. "Hugh and I must accept a
+joint responsibility. The truth is that for some time now I've felt that
+my work has been terribly at the mercy of little household noises, and
+Hugh recommended me to build myself an outside study. He has made a very
+clever design, and has kindly undertaken to supervise its erection. As
+you have seen, they are already well on with the foundations. The design
+which I shall show you after breakfast is in keeping with the house, and
+of course you will have the advantage of what I call my little Gazebo
+when I leave Ambles. Have I told you that I'm considering a brief
+experience of the realities of the stage? After all, why not?
+Shakespeare was an actor."
+
+If John had been eating anything more solid than a lightly boiled egg at
+the moment he must have choked.
+
+"You can call it your little Gazebo as much as you like, but it's
+nothing but a confounded summerhouse," he shouted.
+
+"Look here, Johnnie," said Hugh, soothingly. "You'll like it when it's
+finished. This isn't one of Stevie's Gothic contortions. I admit that to
+get the full architectural effect there should be a couple of them. You
+see, I've followed the design of the famous dovecotes at...."
+
+"Dovecoats be damned," John exploded. "I instructed you to prepare the
+house for Christmas; I didn't ask you to build me a new one."
+
+"Laurence felt that he was in the way indoors," Edith explained,
+timidly.
+
+"The impression was rather forced upon me," said Laurence with a glance
+at Hilda, who throughout the dispute had been sitting virtuously silent;
+nor did she open her thin lips now.
+
+"He was going to pay for his hermitage out of the money he ought to have
+made from writing _Lamp-posts_," Edith went on in a muddled exposition
+of her husband's motives. "He wasn't thinking of himself at all. But of
+course if you object to his building this Gas--oh, I am so bad at proper
+names--he'll understand. Won't you, dear?"
+
+"Oh, I shall understand," Laurence admitted with an expression of
+painfully achieved comprehension. "Though I may fail to see the
+necessity for such strong language."
+
+Frida wiggled in the coils of an endless whisper from which her mother
+extricated her at last by murmuring:
+
+"Hush, darling, Uncle John is a little vexed about something."
+
+Hilda and her son still sat in mute self-righteousness; and Grandmama,
+who always had her breakfast in bed, was not present to defend Hugh.
+
+"If it had been anywhere except on the lawn right in front of my room,"
+John began more mildly.
+
+"We tried to combine suitability of site with facility of access,"
+Laurence condescended to explain. "But pray do not say another word," he
+added, waving his fingers like magic wands to induce John's silence.
+"The idea of my little Gazebo does not appeal to you. That is enough. I
+do not grudge the money already spent upon the foundations. Further
+discussion will irritate us all, and I for one have no wish to disturb
+the harmony of the season." Then exchanging his tone of polite martyrdom
+for the suave jocularity of a vicar, he continued: "And when are we to
+expect our Yuletide guests? I hear that the greater portion of your
+luggage is still in the care of the station-master at Wrottesford. If I
+can do anything to aid in the transport of what rumor says is our
+Christmas commissariat, do not hesitate to call upon my services. I am
+giving the Muse a holiday and am ready for anything. Harold, pass the
+marmalade, please."
+
+John felt incapable of further argument with Laurence and Hugh in
+combination, and having gained his point, he let the subject of the
+Gazebo drop. He was glad that Miss Hamilton was not here; he felt that
+she might have been rather contemptuous of what he tried to believe was
+"good-nature," but recognized in his heart as "meekness," even
+"feebleness."
+
+"When are Cousin Bertram and Cousin Viola coming?" Harold asked.
+
+"Wow-wow-wow!" Hugh imitated, and he was probably expressing the general
+opinion of Harold's re-entry into the breakfast-table conversation.
+
+"For goodness' sake, boy, don't talk about them as if they were elderly
+colonial connections," John commanded with the resurgent valor that
+Harold always inspired. "Bertram and Viola are coming to-morrow. By the
+way, Hilda, is there any accommodation for a monkey? I don't know for
+certain, but Bertram talked vaguely of bringing a monkey down. Possibly
+a small annex could be attached to the chickenhouse."
+
+"A monkey?" Edith exclaimed in alarm. "Oh, I hope it won't attack dear
+Frida."
+
+"I shall shoot him, if he does," Harold boasted. "I shot a mole last
+week."
+
+"No, you didn't, you young liar," Hugh contradicted. "It was killed by
+the trap."
+
+"Harold is always a very truthful little boy," said his mother, glaring.
+
+"Is he? I hadn't noticed it," Hugh retorted.
+
+"Far be it from me to indulge in odious comparisons," Laurence
+interposed, grandly. "But I cannot help being a trifle--ah--tickled by
+so much consideration's being exhibited on account of the temporary
+lodging of a monkey and so much animus--however, don't let us rake up a
+disagreeable topic."
+
+John thought it was a pity that his brother-in-law had not felt the same
+about raking up the lawn when after breakfast he was telling Huggins to
+fill in the hole and hearing that it was unlikely to lose the scar for a
+long time.
+
+"You could have knocked me down with a feather, sir, when they started
+in hacking away at a lovely piece of turf like that."
+
+"I'm sure I could," John agreed, warmly.
+
+"But what's done can't be undone, and the best way to mend a bad job
+would be to make a bed for ornamental annuals. Yes, sir, a nice bed in
+the shape of a star--or a shell."
+
+"No thanks, Huggins, I should prefer grass again, even if for a year or
+two the lawn does look as if it had been recently vaccinated."
+
+John's Christmas enthusiasm had been thoroughly damped by the atmosphere
+of Ambles and he regretted that he had let himself be persuaded into
+coming down two days earlier than he had intended. It had been Mrs.
+Worfolk's fault, and when his housekeeper approached him with a
+complaint about the way things were being managed in the kitchen John
+told her rather sharply that she must make the best of the present
+arrangements, exercise as much tact as possible, and remember that
+Christmas was a season when discontent was out of fashion. Then he
+retreated to the twenty-acre field to lose a few golf-balls. Alas, he
+had forgotten that Laurence had proclaimed himself to be in a holiday
+humor and was bored to find that this was so expansive as to include an
+ambition to see if golf was as difficult as people said.
+
+"You can try a stroke if you really want to," John offered, grudgingly.
+
+"I understand that the theory of striking involves the correct
+application of the hands to the club," said the novice. "I set much
+store by the old adage that well begun is half done."
+
+"The main thing is to hit the ball."
+
+"I've no doubt whatever about being able to hit the ball; but if I
+decide to adopt golf as a recreation from my dramatic work I wish to
+acquire a good style at the outset," Laurence intoned, picking up the
+club as solemnly as if he was going to baptize it. "What is your advice
+about the forefinger of my left hand? It feels to me somewhat
+ubiquitous. I assume that there is some inhibition upon excessive
+fidgeting."
+
+"Keep your eye on the ball," John gruffly advised him. "And don't shift
+your position."
+
+"One, two, three," murmured Laurence, raising the club above his
+shoulder.
+
+"Fore!" John shouted to a rash member of the household who was crossing
+the line of fire.
+
+A lump of turf was propelled a few feet in the direction of the
+admonished figure, and the ball was hammered down into the soft earth.
+
+"You distracted me by counting four," Laurence protested. "My intention
+was to strike at three. However, if at first you don't succeed...."
+
+But John could stand no more of it and escaped to Galton, where he
+bought a bushel of lustrous ornaments for the Christmas tree that was
+even now being felled by Huggins in a coppice remote from Harold's
+myopic explorations. Then for two days the household worked feverishly
+and unitedly in a prevalent odor of allspice; the children were decoyed
+from the house while the presents were mysteriously conveyed to the
+drawing-room, which had been consecrated to the forthcoming revelry;
+Harold, after nearly involving himself in a scandal by hiding himself
+under the kitchen-table during one of the servant's meals in order to
+verify the cubic contents of their several stockings, was finally
+successful in contracting with Mrs. Worfolk for the loan of one of hers;
+Frida whispered as ceaselessly as a grove of poplars; everybody's
+fingers were tattooed by holly-pricks; and the introduction of so much
+decorative vegetation into the house brought with it a train of
+somnambulant insects.
+
+On Saturday afternoon the remaining guests arrived, and when John heard
+Bertram and Viola shouting merrily up and down the corridors he
+recognized the authentic note of Christmas gayety at last. James was
+much less disagreeable than he had expected, and did not even freeze
+Beatrice when she gushed about the loveliness of the holly and reminded
+everybody that she was countrified herself; Hilda and Eleanor were
+brought together by their common dread of Hugh's apparent return to
+favor; George exuded a gross reproduction of the host's good-will and
+wandered about the room reading jokes from the Christmas numbers to
+those who would listen to him; Laurence kissed all the ladies under the
+mistletoe, bending down to them from his majesty as patronizingly as in
+the days of his faith he used to communicate the poor of the parish;
+Edith clapped her hands every time that Laurence brought off a kiss and
+talked in a heart-felt tremolo about the Christmas-tides of her
+girlhood; Frida conceived an adoration for Viola; Hugh egged on Bertram
+to tease, threaten, and contradict Harold on every occasion; Grandmama
+in a new butter-colored gown glowed in the lamplight, and purred over
+her fertility, as if on the day she had accepted Robert Touchwood's
+hand nearly half a century ago she had foreseen this gathering and had
+never grumbled when she found she was going to have another baby.
+
+"Snapdragon will be ready at ten," John proclaimed, "and then to bed, so
+that we're all fit for Christmas Day."
+
+He was anxious to get the household out of the way, because he had
+formed a project to dress himself up that night as Santa Claus and, as
+he put it to himself, stimulate the children's fancy in case they should
+be awake when their stockings were being filled.
+
+The clock struck ten; Mrs. Worfolk gave portentous utterance to the
+information that the snapdragon was burning beautiful; there was a rush
+for the pantry where the ceremony was to take place. Laurence picked out
+his raisins as triumphantly as if he were snatching souls from a
+discredited Romish purgatory. Harold notwithstanding his bad sight
+seemed to be doing well until Bertram temporarily disabled him by
+snatching a glowing raisin from the fiercest flame and ramming it down
+his neck. But the one who ate most of all, more even than Harold, was
+George, whose fat fingers would scoop up half-a-dozen raisins at a go,
+were they never so hot, until gradually the blue flames flickered less
+alertly and finally went out altogether in a pungency of burnt brandy.
+
+"Half-past ten," John, who was longing to dress himself up, cried
+impatiently.
+
+His efforts to urge the family up to bed were rather interfered with by
+Laurence, who detained Eleanor with numerous questions about going on
+the stage with a view to correcting a few technical deficiencies in his
+dramatic craftsmanship.
+
+"I'm anxious to establish by personal experience the exact length of the
+interval required to change one's costume, and also the distance from
+one's green-room to the--ah--wings. I do not aim high. I should be
+perfectly satisfied with such minor parts as Rosencrantz or Metellus
+Cimber. Perhaps, Eleanor, you will introduce me to some of your
+theatrical friends after the holidays? There is a reduced day return up
+to town every Thursday. We might lunch together at one of those little
+Bohemian restaurants where rumor says that an excellent lunch is to be
+had for one and sixpence."
+
+Eleanor promised she would do all she could, because John evidently
+wanted her to go to bed, and he was the uncle of her children.
+
+"Thank you, Eleanor. I hope that as a catechumen I shall do honor to
+you. By the way, you will be interested in the part of Pontius Pilate's
+wife in my play. In fact I'm hoping that you will--ah--interpret it
+ultimately."
+
+"Did you ever think of writing a play about Polonius's wife?" James
+growled on his way upstairs. "Good-night."
+
+When the grown-ups were safely in their rooms, John could not understand
+why the children were allowed to linger in the passage, gossiping and
+bragging; they would never go to sleep at this rate.
+
+"I've got two cocoons of a Crimson-underwing," Harold was saying.
+
+"Poof!" Viola scoffed. "What are they. Bertram touched the nose of a
+kangaroo last time we went to the Zoo."
+
+"Yes, and I prodded a crocodile with V's umbrella," added Bertram,
+acknowledging her testimonial by awarding his sister a kind of share in
+the exploit.
+
+"Well, I was bitten by a squirrel once," related Harold in an attempt to
+keep his end up. "And that was in its nest, not in a cage."
+
+"A squirrel!" Viola sneered. "Why, the tallest giraffe licked Bertram's
+fingers with his tongue, and they stayed wet for hours afterwards."
+
+"Well, so could I, if I went to the Zoo," Harold maintained with a sob
+at the back of his throat.
+
+"No, you couldn't," Bertram contradicted. "Because your fingers are too
+smelly."
+
+"Much too smelly!" Viola corroborated.
+
+Various mothers emerged at this point and put a stop to the contest; the
+hallowed and gracious silence of Christmas night descended upon Ambles,
+and John went on tiptoe up to his bedroom.
+
+"The beard, I suppose, is the most important item," he said to himself,
+when he had unpacked his costume.
+
+It was a noble beard, and when John had fixed it to his cheeks with a
+profusion of spirit-gum, he made up his mind that it became him so well
+that he would grow one of his own, which whitening with the flight of
+time would in another thirty years make him look what he hoped to
+be--the doyen of romantic playwrights. The scarlet robe of Santa Claus
+with its trimming of bells, icicles, and holly and its ruching of snow
+had been made in a single piece without buttons, so that when John put
+it over his head the beard caught in the folds and part of it was
+thinned out by an icicle. In trying to disentangle himself John managed
+to get one sleeve stuck to his cheek much more firmly than the beard had
+ever been. Nor were his struggles to free himself made easier by the
+bells, which tinkled with every movement and made him afraid that
+somebody would knock at the door soon and ask if he had rung. Finally he
+got the robe in place, plucked several bits of sleeve from his cheek,
+renovated the beard, gathered together the apples, oranges, sweets, and
+small toys he had collected for the stockings, looked at his watch,
+decided that it was at least an hour too early to begin, and lay down
+upon his bed, where notwithstanding the ticking of his beard he fell
+asleep. When he woke, it was after one o'clock; the house was absolutely
+still. He walked cautiously to the little room occupied by Frida, turned
+the handle, and felt his way breathlessly along the bed to where the
+stocking should be hung. Unfortunately, the bed had somehow got twisted
+round or else his beard had destroyed his sense of direction, for while
+he was groping for the stocking he dropped an orange on Frida's face,
+who woke with a loud scream.
+
+"Hush, my little dear," John growled in what he supposed to be the
+correct depth for the character. "It's only Santa Claus."
+
+"Go away, go away," shrieked the horrified child.
+
+John tried to strike a match to reassure her, and at the cost of a
+shower of apples on the floor, which sounded like bombs in the tense
+darkness, he managed to illuminate his appearance for an instant. The
+effect on Frida was appalling; she screamed a thousand times louder than
+before and fled from the room. John ran after her to stop her before she
+woke up everybody else and spoilt his fantasy; but he was hampered by
+the costume and Frida gained the sanctuary of her parents' bedroom.
+
+"I only hope the little idiot will frighten them more than I frightened
+her," muttered John, hurrying as fast as he could back to his own room.
+
+Suddenly from the hall below he heard a sound of sleigh-bells that put
+to shame the miserable little tinkle that attended his own progress;
+above the bells rose peals of hearty laughter, and above the laughter
+Hugh's voice could be heard shouting:
+
+"Wake up! Wake up! Good people all! Here's Santa Claus! Santa Claus!
+Wake up!"
+
+Just as John reached his own room, Hugh appeared at the head of the
+stairs brandishing a lighted torch, while close behind him dragging
+Harold's toboggan loaded with toys was a really superb Santa Claus.
+
+John locked his door and undressed himself savagely, tearing off his
+beard in handfuls and flinging all the properties into a corner.
+
+"Anyway, whoever it is," he said, "he'll get the credit of driving Frida
+mad. That's one thing. But who is it? I suppose it's Laurence showing us
+how well he can act."
+
+But it was Aubrey Fenton whom Hugh had invited down to Ambles for
+Christmas and smuggled into the house like this to sweeten the
+unpleasant surprise. What annoyed John most was that he himself had
+never thought of using the toboggan; but the new Santa Claus was an
+undoubted success with the children, and Frida's sanity was soon
+restored by chocolates. The mystery of the apples and oranges strewn
+about her bedroom remained a mystery, though Hilda tried to hint that
+her niece had abstracted them from the sideboard.
+
+John was able to obtain as much sympathy as he wanted from the rest of
+the family over Hugh's importation of his friend. In fact they were so
+eager to express their disapproval of such calm self-assurance, not to
+mention the objectionable way in which he had woken everybody up in the
+middle of the night, that John's own indignation gradually melted away
+in the heat of their malice. As for Grandmama, she shut herself up in
+her bedroom on Christmas morning and threatened not to appear all day,
+so deep was her hatred of that young Fenton who was the author of all
+Hugh's little weaknesses--not even when she could shift the blame could
+she bring herself to call her son's vices and crimes by any stronger
+name. Aubrey, who lacked Hugh's serene insolence, wanted to go back to
+London and was so much abashed in his host's presence and so
+appreciative of what he had done in the affair of the check that John's
+compassion was aroused and he made the intruder welcome. His hospitality
+was rewarded, because it turned out that Aubrey's lifelong passion for
+mechanical toys saved the situation for many of John's purchases, nearly
+all of which he managed to set in motion; nor could it be laid to his
+account that one of the drawing-room fireworks behaved like an
+out-of-door firework, because while Aubrey was lighting it at the right
+end Harold was lighting it simultaneously at the other.
+
+On the whole, the presentation of the Christmas gifts passed off
+satisfactorily. The only definite display of jealousy occurred over the
+diver's equipment given to Harold, which was more than Bertram
+notwithstanding his own fireman's outfit could suppress.
+
+"I'll swop with you, if you like," he began mildly enough.
+
+But Harold clutched the diver's mask to his breast and shrank from the
+proposal.
+
+"I think you'd rather be a fireman," Bertram persisted. "Anybody can be
+a diver, can't they, V?"
+
+Viola left her doll in a state of semi-nudity and advanced to her
+brother's support.
+
+"You'd look much nicer as a fireman, Harold," she said, coaxingly. "I
+wish I could be a fireman."
+
+"Well, you can if you like," he answered, sullenly, looking round with a
+hunted expression for his mother, who unluckily for her son was in
+another part of the house arguing with Mrs. Worfolk about the sauce for
+the plum-pudding.
+
+"But wouldn't you rather wear a pretty brass helmet?" Viola went on.
+
+"No, I wouldn't," said Harold, desperately wrapping himself in the
+rubber tubes that was so temptingly conspicuous a portion of his
+equipment.
+
+"Oh, you little idiot," Viola burst out, impatiently. "What's the good
+of your dressing up as a diver? In those goggles you always look like a
+diver."
+
+"I don't, do I, Frida?" Harold implored.
+
+Now Frida was happy with her dolls'-house; she had no reason to be loyal
+to Harold, who had always treated her shamefully; but the spirit of the
+squaw rose in her breast and she felt bound to defend the wigwam against
+outside criticism. Therefore she assured Harold that in ordinary life he
+did not look in the least like a diver.
+
+"Well," Bertram announced, throwing aside the last pretense of
+respecting property, "V and I want that diver's dress, because we often
+act _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_."
+
+"Well, I can act _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ too."
+
+"No you can't because you haven't read it."
+
+"Yes, I have."
+
+"What a bung!" exclaimed Bertram. "You've only read _A Journey to the
+Center of the Earth_ and _Round the World in Eighty Days_."
+
+Then he remembered Frida's attitude. "Look here, if you take the
+fireman's uniform you can set fire to Frida's house."
+
+Frida yelled her refusal.
+
+"And put it out, you little idiot," Bertram added.
+
+"And put it out," Viola echoed.
+
+Frida rushed to her mother.
+
+"Mother, mother, don't let them burn my dolls'-house! Mother, you won't,
+will you? Bertram wants to burn it."
+
+"Naughty Bertram!" said Edith. "But he's only teasing you, darling."
+
+"Good lummy, what a sneak," Bertram commented, bitterly, to his sister.
+
+Viola eyed her cousin with the scorn of an Antigon.
+
+"Beastly," she murmured. "Come on, Bertram, you don't want the diver's
+dress!"
+
+"Rather not. And anyway it won't work."
+
+"It will. It will," cried Harold, passionately. "I'm going to practice
+in a water-butt the first fine day we have."
+
+It happened that John was unable to feel himself happily above these
+childish jealousies, because at that moment he was himself smarting with
+resentment at his mother's handing over to James all that she still
+retained of family heirlooms. His eldest brother already had the
+portraits, and now he was to have what was left of the silver, which
+would look utterly out of place in Hill Road. If John had been as young
+as Bertram, he would have spoken his mind pretty freely on the subject
+of giving James the silver and himself a checkered woolen kettle-holder.
+It was really too disproportionate, and he did mildly protest to the old
+lady that she might have left a few things at Ambles.
+
+"But Jimmie is the eldest, and I expect him to take poor Hugh's part.
+The poor boy will want somebody when I'm gone, and Jimmie is the
+eldest."
+
+"He may be the eldest, but I'm the one who has to look after Hugh--and
+very often James for that matter."
+
+"Ah well, you're the lucky one, but Jimmie is the eldest and Hugh is the
+baby."
+
+"But James hasn't any children."
+
+"Nor have you, my dear boy."
+
+"But I might have," said John.
+
+If this sort of thing went on much longer, he would, too--dozens of
+children.
+
+"Bertram," John called out. "Come here, my boy, and listen to me. When I
+go back to London, you shall have a diving-suit too if I can find
+another."
+
+Eleanor tossed her head back like a victorious game-cock; she would have
+crowed, if she could.
+
+"Dinner is ready," announced Hilda fresh from a triumph over Mrs.
+Worfolk about the sauce and happily ignorant of the dreadful relegation
+of her son. After an unusually large meal even for Christmas the company
+lay about the drawing-room like exhausted Roman debauchees, while the
+pink and green paper caps out of the crackers one by one fluttered from
+their brows to the carpet. Snores and the occasional violent whizz of an
+overwound toy were all that broke the stillness. At tea-time everybody
+woke up, and Bertram was allowed to put on his fireman's uniform in
+order to extinguish a bonfire that Huggins had hoped would burn slowly
+over the holidays. After a comparatively light supper games were played;
+drawing-room fireworks were let off; Laurence blacked his nose in the
+magic lantern; and George walking ponderously across the room to fetch
+himself a cigar was struck on the ear by a projectile from the vacuum
+pistol, the red mark of which was visible for some time even on his
+florid countenance. Then, when the children became too quarrelsome to be
+any longer tolerated out of bed, a bowl of punch was brought in and Auld
+Lang Syne was sung. After which everybody agreed that it had been a very
+merry Christmas, and Grandmama was led weeping up to bed.
+
+The next morning about midday John announced that he was driving to
+Wrottesford for the purpose of meeting Miss Hamilton.
+
+"For though it is holiday time, I must do a certain amount of work," he
+explained.
+
+"Miss Hamilton?" said Grandmama. "And who may Miss Hamilton be?"
+
+Hilda, Edith, Eleanor, and Beatrice all looked very solemn and
+mysterious; James chuckled; Hugh brightened visibly.
+
+"Well, I suppose we mustn't mind a stranger's coming to spoil our happy
+party," Hilda sighed.
+
+"Ah, this will be your new secretary of whom rumor has already spoken,"
+said Laurence. "Possibly she will give me some advice on the subject of
+the typing of manuscripts."
+
+"Miss Hamilton will be very busy while she is staying here," said John,
+curtly.
+
+Everybody looked at everybody else, and there was an awkward pause,
+which was relieved by Harold's saying that he would show her where he
+thought a goldfinch would make a nest in spring.
+
+"Dear little man," murmured his mother with a sigh for his childish
+confidence.
+
+"Shall _I_ drive in to meet her?" Hugh suggested.
+
+"No, thank you," said John, quickly.
+
+"That's right, Johnnie," James guffawed. "You stick to the reins
+yourself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+John did not consider himself a first-class whip: if he had been offered
+the choice between swimming to meet his love like Leander, climbing into
+her father's orchard like Romeo, and driving to meet her with a
+dog-cart, he would certainly, had the engagement shown signs of being a
+long one, have chosen any mode of trysting except the last. This
+morning, however, he was not as usual oppressed by a sense of imperfect
+sympathy between himself and the mare; he did not think she was going to
+have hysterics when she blew her nose, nor fancy that she was on the
+verge of bolting when she tossed her chestnut mane; the absence of
+William the groom seemed a matter for congratulation rather than for
+regret; he felt as reckless as Phaeton, as urgent as Jehu, and the mare
+knew it. Generally, when her master held the reins, she would try to
+walk up steep banks or emulate in her capricious greed the lofty
+browsings of the giraffe; this morning at a steady swinging trot she
+kept to the middle of the road, passed two motor-cars without trying to
+box the landscape, and did not even shy at the new hat of the vicar's
+wife.
+
+Later on, however, when John was safe in the station-yard and saw the
+familiar way in which Miss Hamilton patted the mare he decided not to
+take any risk on the return journey and in spite of his brother's
+parting gibe to hand over the reins to his secretary; nor was the
+symbolism of the action distasteful. How charming she looked in that
+mauve frieze! How well the color was harmonizing with the purple
+hedgerows! How naturally she seemed to haunt the woodland scene!
+
+"Oh, this exquisite country," she sighed. "Fancy staying in London when
+you can write here!"
+
+"It does seem absurd," the lucky author agreed. "But the house is very
+full at present. We shall be rather exposed to interruptions until the
+party breaks up."
+
+He gave her an account of the Christmas festival, to which she seemed
+able to listen comfortably and appreciatively in spite of the fact that
+she was driving. This impressed John very much.
+
+"I hope your mother wasn't angry at your leaving town," he said,
+tentatively. "I thought of telegraphing an invitation to her; but there
+really isn't room for another person."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't say that she was gracious about my desertion of her.
+Indeed, she's beginning to put pressure on me to give up my post. Quite
+indirectly, of course, but one feels the effect just the same. Who
+knows? I may succumb."
+
+John nearly fell out of the dog-cart.
+
+"Give up your post?" he gasped. "But, my dear Miss Hamilton, the
+dog-roses won't be in bloom for some months."
+
+"What have dog-roses got to do with my post?"
+
+He laughed a little foolishly.
+
+"I mean the play won't be finished for some months. Did I say dog-roses?
+I must have been thinking of the dog-cart. You drive with such admirable
+unconcern. Still, you ought to see these hedgerows in summer. Now the
+time I like for a walk is about eight o'clock on a June evening. The
+honeysuckle smells so delicious about eight o'clock. There's no doubt it
+is ridiculous to live in London. I hope you made it quite clear to your
+mother you had no intention of leaving me?"
+
+"Ida Merritt did most of the arguing."
+
+"Did she? What a very intelligent girl she is, by the way. I confess I
+took a great fancy to her."
+
+"You told mother once that she frightened you."
+
+"Ah, but I'm always frightened by people when I meet them first. Though
+curiously enough I was never frightened of you. Some people have told me
+that _I_ am frightening at first. You didn't find that did you?"
+
+"No, I certainly did not. And I can't imagine anybody else's doing so
+either."
+
+Although John rather plumed himself upon the alarm he was credited with
+inspiring at first sight, he did not argue the point, because he really
+never had had the least desire to frighten his secretary.
+
+"And your relations don't seem to find you very frightening," she
+murmured. "Good gracious, what an assemblage!"
+
+The dog-cart had just drawn clear of the beechwood, and the whole of the
+Ambles party could be seen vigilantly grouped by the gate to receive
+them, which John thought was a lapse of taste on the part of his guests.
+Nor was he mollified by the way in which after the introductions were
+made Hugh took it upon himself to conduct Miss Hamilton indoors, while
+he was left shouting for William the groom. If it was anybody's business
+except his own to escort her into the house, it was Hilda's.
+
+"What a very extraordinary thing," said John, fretfully, "that the
+_only_ person who's wanted is not here. Where is that confounded boy?"
+
+"I'm here," cried Bertram, responding to the epithet instinctively.
+
+"Not you. Not you. I wanted William to take the mare."
+
+When lunch was over John found that notwithstanding his secretary's
+arrival he was less eager to begin work again upon his play than he had
+supposed.
+
+"I think I must be feeling rather worn out by Christmas," he told her.
+"I wonder if a walk wouldn't do you good after the journey."
+
+"Now that's a capital notion," exclaimed Hugh, who was standing close by
+and overheard the suggestion. "We might tramp up to the top of Shalstead
+Down."
+
+"Oh yes," Harold chimed in. "I've never been there yet. Mother said it
+was too far for me; but it isn't, is it, Uncle John?"
+
+"Your mother was right. It's at least three miles too far," said John,
+firmly. "Oh, by the way, Hugh, I've been thinking over your scheme for
+that summerhouse or whatever you call it, and I'm not sure that I don't
+rather like the idea after all. You might put it in hand this afternoon.
+You'd better keep Laurence with you. I want him to have it in the way he
+likes it, although of course I shall undertake the expense. Where's
+Bertram? Ah, there you are. Bertram, why don't you and Viola take Harold
+down to the river and practice diving? I dare say Mr. Fenton will
+superintend the necessary supply of air and reduce the chances of a
+fatal accident."
+
+"But the water's much too cold," Hilda protested in dismay.
+
+"Oh well, there's always something to amuse one by a river without
+actually going into the water," John said. "You like rivers, don't you,
+Fenton? I'm afraid we can't offer you a very large one, but it wiggles
+most picturesquely."
+
+Aubrey Fenton, who was still feeling twinges of embarrassment on account
+of his uninvited stay at Ambles, was prepared to like anything his host
+put forward for his appreciation, and he spoke with as much enthusiasm
+of a promenade along the banks of the small Hampshire stream as if he
+were going to view the Ganges for the first time. John, having disposed
+of him, looked around for other possible candidates for a walk.
+
+"You look like hard work, James," he said, approvingly.
+
+"I've a bundle of trash here for review," the critic growled.
+
+"I'm sorry. I was going to propose a stroll up Shalstead Down. Never
+mind. You'll have to walk into your victims instead." And, by gad, he
+would walk into them too, John thought, after that dinner yesterday.
+
+Beatrice and Eleanor were not about; old Mrs. Touchwood was unlikely at
+her age to venture up the third highest elevation in Hampshire; Hilda
+was occupied with household duties; Edith had a headache. Only George
+now remained unoccupied, and John was sure he might safely risk an
+invitation to him; he looked incapable of walking two yards.
+
+"I suppose you wouldn't care for a constitutional, George?" he inquired,
+heartily.
+
+"A constitutional?" George repeated, gaping like a chub at a large
+cherry. "No, no, no, no. I always knit after lunch. Besides I never walk
+in the country. It ruins one's boots."
+
+George always used to polish his own boots with as much passionate care
+as he would have devoted to the coloring of a meerschaum pipe.
+
+"Well, if nobody wants to climb Shalstead Down," said John beaming
+happily, "what do you say, Miss Hamilton?"
+
+A few minutes later they had crossed the twenty-acre field and were
+among the chalk-flecked billows of the rising downs.
+
+"You're a terrible fraud," she laughed. "You've always led me to believe
+that you were completely at the mercy of your relations. Instead of
+which, you order them about and arrange their afternoon and really bully
+them into doing all sorts of things they never had any intention of
+doing, or any wish to do, what's more."
+
+"Yes, I seemed to be rather successful with my strategy to-day," John
+admitted. "But they were stupefied by their Christmas dinner. None of
+them was really anxious for a walk, and I didn't want to drag them out
+unwillingly."
+
+"Ah, it's all very well to explain it away like that, but don't ever ask
+me to sympathize with you again. I believe you're a replica of my poor
+mother. Her tyranny is deeply rooted in consideration for others. Why do
+you suppose she is always trying to make me give up working for you? For
+her sake? Oh, dear no! For mine."
+
+"But _you_ don't forge my name and expect her to pay me back. _You_
+don't arrive suddenly and deposit children upon her doorstep."
+
+"I dare say I don't, but for my mother Ida Merritt represents all the
+excesses of your relations combined in one person. I'm convinced that if
+you and she were to compare notes you would find that you were both
+suffering from acute ingratitude and thoroughly enjoying it. But come,
+come, this is not a serious conversation. What about the fourth act?"
+
+"The fourth act of what?" he asked, vaguely.
+
+"The fourth act of Joan of Arc."
+
+"Oh, Joan of Arc. I think I must give her a rest. I don't seem at all in
+the mood for writing at present. The truth is that I find Joan rather
+lacking in humanity and I'm beginning to think I made a mistake in
+choosing such an abnormal creature for the central figure of a play."
+
+"Then what have I come down to Hampshire for?" she demanded.
+
+"Well, it's very jolly down here, isn't it?" John retorted in an
+offended voice. "And anyway you can't expect me to burst into blank
+verse the moment you arrive, like a canary that's been uncovered by the
+housemaid. It would be an affectation to pretend I feel poetical this
+afternoon. I feel like a jolly good tramp before tea. I can't stand
+writers who always want to be literary. I have the temperament of a
+country squire, and if I had more money and fewer relations I should
+hardly write at all."
+
+"Which would be a great pity," said his secretary.
+
+"Would it?" John replied in the voice of one who has found an unexpected
+grievance and is determined to make the most of it. "I doubt if it
+would. What is my work, after all? I don't deceive myself. There was
+more in my six novels than in anything I've written since. I'm a failure
+to myself. In the eyes of the public I may be a success, but in the
+depths of my own heart--" he finished the sentence in a long sigh, all
+the longer because he was a little out of breath with climbing.
+
+"But you were so cheerful a few minutes ago. I'm sure that country
+squires are not the prey to such swift changes of mood. I think you must
+be a poet really."
+
+"A poet!" he exclaimed, bitterly, with what he fancied was the kind of
+laugh that is called hollow. "Do I look like a poet?"
+
+"If you're going to talk in that childish way I sha'n't say any more,"
+she warned him, severely. "Oh, there goes a hare!"
+
+"Two hares," said John, trying to create an impression that in spite of
+the weight of his despondency he would for her sake affect a
+light-hearted interest in the common incidents of a country walk.
+
+"And look at the peewits," she said. "What a fuss they make about
+nothing, don't they?"
+
+"I suppose you are comparing me to a peewit now?" John reproachfully
+suggested.
+
+"Well, a moment ago you compared yourself to an uncovered canary; so if
+I've exceeded the bounds of free speech marked out for a secretary, you
+must forgive me."
+
+"My dear Miss Hamilton," he assured her, "I beg you to believe that you
+are at liberty to compare me to anything you like."
+
+Having surrendered his personality for the exercise of her wit John felt
+more cheerful. The rest of the walk seemed to offer with its wide
+prospects of country asleep in the winter sunlight a wider prospect of
+life itself; even Joan of Arc became once again a human figure.
+
+It was to be feared that John's manipulation of his guests after lunch
+might have had the effect of uniting them against the new favorite; and
+so it had. When he and Miss Hamilton got back to the house for tea the
+family was obviously upon the defensive, so obviously indeed that it
+gave the impression of a sculptor's group in which each figure was
+contributing his posture to the whole. There was not as yet the least
+hint of attack, but John would almost have preferred an offensive action
+to this martyred withdrawal from the world in which it was suggested
+that he and Miss Hamilton were living by themselves. It happened that a
+neighbor, a colorless man with a disobedient and bushy dog, called upon
+the Touchwoods that afternoon, and John could not help being aware that
+to the eyes of his relations he and his secretary appeared equally
+intrusive and disturbing; the manner in which Hilda offered Miss
+Hamilton tea scarcely differed from the manner in which she propitiated
+the dog with a bun; and it would have been rash to assert that she was
+more afraid of the dog's biting Harold than of the secretary's doing so.
+
+"Don't worry Miss Hamilton, darling. She's tired after her long walk.
+Besides, she isn't used to little boys. And don't make Mr. Wenlow's dog
+eat sugar if it doesn't want to."
+
+Eleanor would ordinarily have urged Bertram to prove that he could
+achieve what was denied to his cousin. Yet now in the face of a common
+enemy she made overtures to Hilda by simultaneously calling off her
+children from the intruders.
+
+"If I'd known that animals were so welcomed down here," James grumbled,
+"I should have brought Beyle with us."
+
+It was not a polite remark; but the disobedient dog in an effusion of
+cordiality had just licked the back of James' neck, and he was not
+nearly so rude as he would have been about a human being who had
+surprised him, speaking figuratively, in the same way.
+
+"Lie down, Rover," whispered the colorless neighbor with so rich a blush
+that until it subsided the epithet ceased to be appropriate.
+
+Rover unexpectedly paid attention to the command, but chose Grandmama's
+lap for his resting place, which made Viola laugh so ecstatically that
+Frida felt bound to imitate her, with the result that a geyser of tea
+spurted from her mouth and descended upon her father's leg. Laurence
+rose and led his daughter from the room, saying:
+
+"Little girls who choke in drawing-rooms must learn to choke outside."
+
+"I'm afraid she has adenoids, poor child," said Eleanor, kindly.
+
+"I know what that word means," Harold bragged with gloating knowledge.
+
+"Shut up!" cried Bertram. "You know everything, glass-eyes. But you
+don't know there are two worms in your tea-cup."
+
+"There aren't," Harold contradicted.
+
+"All right, drink it up and see. I put them there myself."
+
+"Eleanor!" expostulated the horrified mother. "_Do_ you allow Bertram to
+behave like this?"
+
+She hurriedly poured away the contents of Harold's cup, which proved
+that the worms were only an invention of his cousin. Yet the joke was
+successful in its way, because there was no more tea, and therefore
+Harold had to go without a third cup. Edith, whose agitation had been
+intense while her husband was brooding in the passage over Frida's
+chokes, could stay still no longer, but went out to assist with tugs and
+taps of consolation. The colorless visitor departed with his disobedient
+dog, and soon a thin pipe was heard in vain whistles upon the twilight
+like the lisp of reeds along the dreary margin of a December stream.
+
+John welcomed this recrudescence of maternal competition, which seemed
+likely to imperil the alliance, and he was grateful to Bertram and Viola
+for their provocation of it. But he had scarcely congratulated himself,
+when Hugh came in and at once laid himself out to be agreeable to Miss
+Hamilton.
+
+"You've put the summerhouse in hand?" John asked, fussily, in order to
+make it perfectly clear to his brother that he was not the owner of
+Ambles.
+
+Hugh shook his head.
+
+"My dear man, it's Boxing Day. Besides, I know you only wanted to get
+rid of me this afternoon. By the way, Aubrey's going back to town
+to-night. Can he have the dog-cart?"
+
+John looked round at the unbidden guest with a protest on his lips; he
+had planned to keep Aubrey as a diversion for Hugh, and had taken quite
+a fancy to him. Aubrey however, had to be at the office next day, and
+John was distressed to lose the cheerful young man's company, although
+it had been embarrassing when Grandmama had shuddered every time he
+opened his mouth. Another disadvantage of his departure was the
+direction of the old lady's imagination toward an imminent marriage
+between Hugh and Miss Hamilton, which was extremely galling to John,
+especially as the rest of the family was united in suggesting a similar
+conjunction between her and himself.
+
+"I don't want to say a word against her, Johnnie," Grandmama began to
+mutter one evening about a week later when every game of patience had
+failed in turn through congestion of the hearts. "I'm not going to say
+she isn't a lady, and perhaps she doesn't mean to make eyes at Hughie."
+
+John would have liked to tell his mother that she was on the verge of
+senile decay; but the dim old fetish of parental respect blinked at him
+from the jungle of the past, and in a vain search for a way of stopping
+her without being rude he let her ramble on.
+
+"Of course, she has very nice eyes, and I can quite understand Hughie's
+taking an interest in her. I don't grudge the dear boy his youth. We all
+get old in time, and its natural that with us old fogies round him he
+_should_ be a little interested in Miss Hamilton. All the same, it
+wouldn't be a prudent match. I dare say she thinks I shall have
+something to leave Hugh, but I told her only yesterday that I should
+leave little or nothing."
+
+"My dear Mama, I can assure you that my secretary--my secretary," John
+repeated with as much pomposity as might impress the old lady, "is not
+at all dazzled by the glamour of your wealth or James' wealth or
+George's wealth or anybody's wealth for that matter."
+
+He might have said that the donkey's ears were the only recognizable
+feature of Midas in the Touchwood family had there been the least chance
+of his mother's understanding the classical allusion.
+
+"I don't mean to hint that she's _only_ after Hugh's money. I've no
+doubt at all that she's excessively in love with him."
+
+"Really?" John exclaimed with such a scornfully ironical intonation that
+his mother asked anxiously if he had a sore throat.
+
+"You might take a little honey and borax, my dear boy," she advised, and
+immediately continued her estimate of the emotional situation. "Yes, as
+I say, excessively in love! But there can't be many young women who
+resist Hugh. Why, even as a boy he had his little love affairs. Dear me,
+how poor papa used to laugh about them. 'He's going to break a lot of
+hearts,' poor papa used to say."
+
+"I don't know about hearts," John commented, gruffly. "But he's broken
+everything else, including himself. However, I can assure you, Mama,
+that Miss Hamilton's heart is not made of pie-crust, and that she is
+more than capable of looking after herself."
+
+"Then you agree with me that she has a selfish disposition. I _am_ glad
+you agree with me. I didn't trust her from the beginning; but I thought
+you seemed so wrapped up in her cleverness--though when I was young
+women didn't think it necessary to be clever--that you were quite blind
+to her selfishness. But I _am_ glad you agree with me. There's nobody
+who has more sympathy for true love than I have. But though I always
+said that love makes the world go round, I've never been partial to
+vulgar flirtations. Indeed, if it had to be, I'd rather they got engaged
+properly, even if it did mean a long engagement--but leading poor Hughie
+on like this--well, I must speak plainly, Johnnie, for, after all, I am
+your mother, though I know it's the fashion now to think that children
+know more than their parents, and, in my opinion, you ought to put your
+foot down. There! I've said what I've been wanting to say for a week,
+and if you jump down my throat, well, then you must, and that's all
+there is to it."
+
+Now, although John thought his mother fondly stupid and was perfectly
+convinced when he asked himself the question that Miss Hamilton was as
+remote from admiring Hugh as he was himself, he was nevertheless unable
+to resist observing Hugh henceforth with a little of the jealousy that
+most men of forty-two feel for juniors of twenty-seven. He was not
+prepared to acknowledge that his opinion of Miss Hamilton was colored by
+any personal emotion beyond the unqualified respect he gave to her
+practical qualities, and he was sure that the only reason for anxiety
+about possible developments between her and Hugh was the loss to himself
+of her valuable services.
+
+"I've reached an age," he told his reflection, whose crow's-feet were
+seeming more conspicuous than usual in the clear wintry weather, "when a
+man becomes selfish in small matters. Let me be frank with myself. Let
+me admit that I do dislike the idea of an entanglement with Hugh,
+because I _have_ found in Miss Hamilton a perfect secretary whom I
+should be extremely sorry to lose. Is that surprising? No, it is quite
+natural. Curious! I noticed to-day that Hugh's hair is getting very thin
+on top. Mine, however, shows no sign of baldness, though fair men nearly
+always go bald before dark men. But I'm inclined to fancy that few
+observers would give me fifteen years more than Hugh."
+
+If John had really been conscious of a rival in his youngest brother, he
+might have derived much encouragement from the attitude of all the other
+members of the family, none of whom seemed to think that Hugh had a look
+in. But, since he firmly declined to admit his secretary's potentiality
+for anything except efficient clerical work, he was only irritated by
+it.
+
+"Are you going to marry Miss Hamilton?" Harold actually wanted to know
+one evening. He had recently been snubbed for asking the company what
+was the difference between gestation and digestion, and was determined
+to produce a conundrum that could not be evaded by telling him that he
+would not understand the answer. John's solution was to look at his
+watch and say it was time for him and Bertram to be in bed, hoping that
+Bertram would take it out of his cousin for calling attention to their
+existence. One of Bertram's first measures at Ambles had been to
+muffle, impede, disorganize and finally destroy the striking of the
+drawing-room clock. When this had been accomplished he could count every
+night on a few precious minutes snatched from the annihilation of bed
+during which he sat mute as a mummy in a kind of cataleptic ecstasy. The
+betrayer of this profound peace sullenly gathered up the rubbish with
+which he was wont to litter the room every night, and John saw Bertram's
+eye flash like a Corsican sharpening the knife of revenge. But whatever
+was in store for Harold lacked savor when John heard from the group of
+mothers, aunts, sisters, and sisters-in-law the two words "Children
+know" dying away in a sibilance of affirmative sighs.
+
+After that it was small consolation to hear a scuffle outside in the
+hall followed by the crash of Harold's dispersed collections and a wail
+of protest. For the sake of a childish quarrel Hilda and Eleanor were
+not going to break up the alliance to which they were now definitely
+committed.
+
+"It's so nice for poor Harold to have Bertram to play with him,"
+volunteered one mother.
+
+"Yes, and it's nice for Bertram too, because Harold's such a little
+worker," the other agreed.
+
+Even George's opaque eyes glimmered with an illusion of life when he
+heard his wife praise her nephew; she had not surprised him so
+completely since on a wet afternoon, thirteen years ago, she accepted
+his hand. It was even obvious to Edith that she must begin to think
+about taking sides; and, having exhausted her intelligence by this
+discovery, she had not enough wit left to see that now was her
+opportunity to trade upon John's sentimental affection for herself, but
+proceeded to sacrifice her own daughter to the success of the hostile
+alliance.
+
+"I think perhaps it's good for Frida to be teased sometimes," she
+ventured.
+
+As for Beatrice, she was not going to draw attention to her
+childlessness by giving one more woman the chance of feeling superior to
+herself, and her thwarted maternity was placed at the disposal of the
+three mothers. Indeed it was she who led the first foray, in which she
+was herself severely wounded, as will be seen.
+
+Among the unnecessary vexations and unsatisfactory pleasures which the
+human side of John inflicted upon the well-known dramatist, John
+Touchwood, was the collection of press-cuttings about himself and his
+work; one of Miss Hamilton's least congenial tasks was to preserve in a
+scrap-book these tributes to egoism.
+
+"You don't really want me to stick in this paragraph from _High Life_?"
+she would protest.
+
+"Which one is that?"
+
+"Why, this ridiculous announcement that you've decided to live on the
+upper slopes of the Andes for the next few months in order to gather
+material for a tragedy about the Incas."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. It's rather amusing, I think," John would insist,
+apologetically. Then, rather lamely, he would add, "You see, I
+subscribe."
+
+Miss Hamilton, with a sigh, would dip her brush in the paste.
+
+"I can understand your keeping the notices of your productions, which I
+suppose have a certain value, but this sort of childish gossip...."
+
+"Gossip keeps my name before the public."
+
+Then he would fancy that he caught a faint murmur about "lack of
+dignity," and once even he thought she whispered something about "lack
+of humor."
+
+Therefore, in view of the importance he seemed to attach to the most
+irrelevant paragraph, Miss Hamilton could not be blamed for drawing his
+attention to a long article in one of those critical quarterlies or
+monthlies that are read in club smoking-rooms in the same spirit of
+desperation in which at railway stations belated travelers read
+time-tables. This article was entitled _What Is Wrong With Our Drama?_
+and was signed with some obscurely allusive pseudonym.
+
+"I suppose I am involved in the general condemnation?" said John, with
+an attempt at a debonair indifference.
+
+Had he been alone he might have refrained from a descent into
+particulars, but having laid so much stress upon the salvage of
+worthless flotsam, he could not in Miss Hamilton's presence ignore this
+large wreck.
+
+"_Let us pause now to contemplate the roundest and the rosiest of our
+romantic cherubs._ Ha-ha! I suppose the fellow thinks that will irritate
+me. As a matter of fact, I think it's rather funny, don't you? Rather
+clever, I mean. Eh? _But, after all, should we take Mr. Touchwood
+seriously? He is only an exuberant schoolboy prancing about with a
+pudding-dish on his head and shouting 'Let's pretend I'm a
+Knight-at-Arms' to a large and susceptible public. Let us say to Mr.
+Touchwood in the words of an earlier romantic who was the fount and
+origin of all this Gothic stucco:_
+
+    _'O what can ail thee, Knight-at-Arms,_
+    _So staggered by the critics' tone?_
+    _The pit and gallery are full,_
+    _And the play has gone.'_
+
+"I don't mind what he says about _me_," John assured his secretary. "But
+I do resent his parodying Keats. Yes, I do strongly resent that. I
+wonder who wrote it. I call it rather personal for anonymous criticism."
+
+"Shall I stick it in the book?"
+
+"Certainly," the wounded lion uttered with a roar of disdain. At least
+that was the way John fancied he said "certainly."
+
+"Do you really want to know who wrote this article?" she asked,
+seriously, a minute or two later.
+
+"It wasn't James?" the victim exclaimed in a flash of comprehension.
+
+"Well, all I can tell you is that two or three days ago your brother
+received a copy of the review and a letter from the editorial offices. I
+was sorting out your letters and noticed the address on the outside.
+Afterwards at breakfast he opened it and took out a check."
+
+"James would call me a rosy cherub," John muttered. "Moreover, I did
+tell him about Bertram and the pudding-dish when he was playing at
+Perseus. And--no, James doesn't admire Keats."
+
+"Poor man," said Miss Hamilton, charitably.
+
+"Yes, I suppose one ought to be sorry for him rather than angry," John
+agreed, snatching at the implied consolation. "All the same, I think I
+ought to speak to him about his behavior. Of course, he's quite at
+liberty to despise my work, but I don't think he should take advantage
+of our relationship to introduce a note of personal--well, really, I
+don't think he has any right to call me a round and rosy cherub in
+print. After all, the public doesn't know what a damned failure James
+himself is. I shouldn't so mind if it really was a big pot calling the
+kettle black. I could retaliate then. But as it is I can do nothing."
+
+"Except stick it in your press-cutting book," suggested Miss Hamilton,
+with a smile.
+
+"And then my mother goes and presents him with all the silver! No, I
+will not overlook this lapse of taste; I shall speak to him about it
+this morning. But suppose he asks me how I found out?"
+
+"You must tell him."
+
+"You don't mind?"
+
+"I'm your secretary, aren't I?"
+
+"By Jove, Miss Hamilton, you know, you really are...."
+
+John stopped. He wanted to tell her what a balm her generosity was to
+his wound; but he felt that she would prefer him to be practical.
+
+It was like the critic to welcome with composure the accusation of what
+John called his duplicity, or rather of what he called duplicity in the
+privacy of his own thoughts: to James he began by referring to it as
+exaggerated frankness.
+
+"I said nothing more than I've said a hundred times to your face," his
+brother pointed out.
+
+"That may be, but you didn't borrow money from me on the strength of
+what you said. You told me you had an article on Alfred de Vigny
+appearing shortly. You didn't tell me that you were raising the money as
+a post obit on my reputation."
+
+"My dear Johnnie, if you're going to abuse me in metaphors, be just at
+any rate. Your reputation was a corpse before I dissected it."
+
+"Very well, then," cried John, hotly, "have it your own way and admit
+that you're a body-snatcher."
+
+"However," James continued, with a laugh that was for him almost
+apologetic, "though I hate excuses, I must point out that the money I
+borrowed from you was genuinely on account of Alfred de Vigny and that
+this was an unexpected windfall. And to show I bear you no ill will,
+which is more than can be said for most borrowers, here's the check I
+received. I'm bound to say you deserve it."
+
+"I don't want the money."
+
+"Yet in a way you earned it yourself," the critic chuckled. "But let me
+be quite clear. Is this a family quarrel? I don't want to quarrel with
+you personally. I hate your work. I think it false, pretentious and
+demoralizing. But I like you very much. Do, my dear fellow, let us
+contract my good taste in literature and bad taste in manners with your
+bad taste in literature and good taste in manners. Like two pugilists,
+let's shake hands and walk out of the ring arm-in-arm. Even if I hit you
+below the belt, you must blame your curves, Johnnie. You're so plump and
+rosy that...."
+
+"That word is becoming an obsession with you. You seem to think it
+annoys me, but it doesn't annoy me at all."
+
+"Then it is a family quarrel. Come, your young lady has opened her
+campaign well. I congratulate her. By the way, when am I to congratulate
+you?"
+
+"This," said John, rising with grave dignity, "is going too far."
+
+He left his brother, armed himself with a brassey, proceeded to the
+twenty-acre field, and made the longest drive of his experience. At
+lunch James announced that he and Beatrice must be getting back to town
+that afternoon, a resolution in which his host acquiesced without even a
+conventional murmur of protest. Perhaps it was this attitude of John's
+that stung Beatrice into a challenge, or perhaps she had been egged on
+by the mothers who, with their children's future to consider, were not
+anxious to declare open war upon the rich uncle. At any rate, in her
+commonest voice she said:
+
+"It's plain that Jimmie and I are not wanted here any longer."
+
+The mothers looked down at their plates with what they hoped was a
+strictly neutral expression. Yet it was impossible not to feel that they
+were triumphantly digging one another in the ribs with ghostly fingers,
+such an atmosphere of suppressed elation was discernible above the
+modest attention they paid to the food before them. Nobody made an
+effort to cover the awkwardness created by the remark, and John was
+faced with the alternative of contradicting it or acknowledging its
+truth; he was certainly not going to be allowed to ignore it in a burst
+of general conversation.
+
+"I think that is rather a foolish remark, Beatrice," was his comment.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders so emphatically that her stays creaked in the
+horrid silence that enveloped the table.
+
+"Well, we can't all be as clever as Miss Hamilton, and most of us
+wouldn't like to be, what's more."
+
+"The dog-cart will be round at three," John replied, coldly.
+
+His sister-in-law, bursting into tears, rushed from the room. James
+guffawed and helped himself to potatoes. The various mothers reproved
+their children for breaches of table manners. George looked nervously at
+his wife as if she was on the point of following the example of
+Beatrice. Grandmama, who was daily receding further and further into the
+past, put on her spectacles and told John, reproachfully, that he ought
+not to tease little Beatrice. Hugh engaged Miss Hamilton in a
+conversation about Bernard Shaw. John, forgetting he had already dipped
+twice in mustard the morsel of beef upon his fork, dipped it again, so
+that his eyes presently filled with tears, to which the observant Harold
+called everybody's attention.
+
+"Don't make personal remarks, darling," his mother whispered.
+
+"That's what Johnnie said to me this morning," James chuckled.
+
+When the dog-cart drove off with James and Beatrice at three o'clock to
+catch the 3:45 train up to town, John retired to his study in full
+expectation that when the mare came back she would at once turn round
+for the purpose of driving Miss Hamilton to catch the 5:30 train up to
+town: no young woman in her position would forgive that vulgar scene at
+lunch. But when he reached his desk he found his secretary hard at work
+upon the collection of material for the play as if nothing had happened.
+In the presence of such well-bred indifference the recollection of
+Beatrice's behavior abashed him more than ever, and, feeling that any
+kind of even indirect apology from him would be distasteful to Miss
+Hamilton, he tried to concentrate upon the grouping of the trial scene
+with an equal show of indifference to the mean events of family life. He
+was so far successful that the afternoon passed away without any
+allusion to Beatrice, and when the gong sounded for tea his equanimity
+was in order again.
+
+After tea, however, Eleanor managed to get hold of John for what she
+called a little chat about the future, but which he detected with the
+mind's nose as an unpleasant rehash of the morning's pasticcio. He
+always dreaded this sister-in-law when she opened with zoological
+endearments, and his spirits sank to hear her exclaim boisterously:
+
+"Now, look here, you poor wounded old lion, I'm going to talk to you
+seriously about Beatrice."
+
+"There's nothing more to be said," John assured her.
+
+"Now don't be an old bear. You've already made one poor aunt cry; don't
+upset me too."
+
+Anybody less likely to be prostrated by grief than Eleanor at that
+moment John could not have imagined. She seemed to him the incarnation
+of a sinister self-assurance.
+
+"Rubbish," he snapped. "In any case, yours would only be stage tears,
+you old crocodile--if I may copy your manner of speech."
+
+"Isn't he in a nasty, horrid, cross mood?" she demanded, with an
+affected glance at an imaginary audience. "No, but seriously, John! I do
+want to give you a little advice. I suppose it's tactless of me to talk
+about advising the great man, but don't bite my head off."
+
+"In what capacity?" the great man asked. "You've forgotten to specify
+the precise carnivore that will perform the operation."
+
+"Oh dear, aren't we sarcastic this afternoon?" she asked, opening wide
+her eyes. "However, you're not going to frighten me, because I'm
+determined to have it out with you, even if you order the dog-cart
+before dinner. Johnnie, is it fair to let a complete stranger make
+mischief among relations?"
+
+John played the break in Eleanor's voice with beautiful ease.
+
+"I will not have Miss Hamilton's name dragged into these sordid family
+squabbles," he asseverated.
+
+"I'm not going to say a word against Miss Hamilton. I think she's a
+charming young woman--a little too charming perhaps for you, you
+susceptible old goose."
+
+"For goodness sake," John begged, "stick to the jungle and leave the
+farmyard alone."
+
+"Now you're not going to rag me out of what I'm going to say. You know
+that I'm a real Bohemian who doesn't pay attention to the stupid little
+conventionalities that, for instance, Hilda or Edith might consider.
+Therefore I'm sure you won't misunderstand me when I warn you about
+people talking. Of course, you and I are accustomed to the freedom of
+the profession, and as far as I'm concerned you might engage half a
+dozen handsome lady secretaries without my even noticing it. But the
+others don't understand. They think it's funny."
+
+"Good heavens, what are you trying to suggest?" John demanded.
+
+He could manage the break, but this full pitch made him slog wildly.
+
+"_I_'m not trying to suggest anything. I'm simply telling you what other
+people may think. You see, after all, Hilda and Edith couldn't help
+noticing that you did allow Miss Hamilton to make mischief between you
+and your brother. I dare say James was in the wrong; but is it a part of
+a secretary's duties to manage her employer? And James _is_ your
+brother. The natural deduction for conventional people like Hilda and
+Edith was that--now, don't be annoyed at what I'm going to say, but I
+always speak out--I'm famous for my frankness. Well, to put it frankly,
+they think that Miss Hamilton can twist you round her little finger.
+Then, of course, they ask themselves why, and for conventional people
+like Hilda and Edith there's only one explanation. Of course, I told
+them it was all nonsense and that you were as innocent as an old lamb. I
+dare say you don't mind people talking. That's your business, but I
+shouldn't have been a good pal if I hadn't warned you that people will
+talk, if they aren't talking already."
+
+"You've got the mind of an usher," said John. "I can't say worse than
+that of anybody. Wasn't it you who suggested a French governess should
+be given the freedom of Church Row and who laughed at me for being an
+old beaver or some other prudish animal because I objected? If I can be
+trusted with a French governess, I can surely be trusted with a
+confidential secretary. Besides, we're surrounded by an absolute
+_chevaux de frise_ of chaperons, for I suppose that Hilda and Edith may
+fairly be considered efficient chaperons, even if you are still too
+youthfully Bohemian for the post."
+
+Eleanor's age was the only vulnerable spot in her self-confidence, and
+John took advantage of it to bring her little chat to a bitter end.
+
+"My dear Johnnie," she said, tartly, "I'm not talking about the present.
+I'm warning you about the future. However, you're evidently not in the
+mood to listen to anybody."
+
+"No, I'm not," he assented, warmly. "I'm as deaf as an old adder."
+
+The next day John, together with Mrs. Worfolk and Maud, left for
+Hampstead, and his secretary traveled with him up to town.
+
+"Yes," his housekeeper was overheard observing to Elsa in the hall of 36
+Church Row, "dog-cart is a good name for an unnatural conveyance, but
+give me a good old London cab for human beings. Turn again, Whittington,
+they say, and they're right. They may call London noisy if they like,
+but it's as quiet as a mouse when you put it alongside of all that
+baaring and mooing and cockadoodledoing in the country. Well, I mean to
+say, Elsa, I'm getting too old for the country. And the master's getting
+too old for the country, in my opinion. I'm in hopes he'll settle down
+now, and not go wearing himself out any more with the country. Believe
+me or not as you will, Elsa, when I tell you that the pore fellow had to
+play at ball like any little kid to keep himself amused."
+
+"Fancy that, Mrs. Worfolk," Elsa murmured with a gentle intake of
+astonished breath.
+
+"Yes, it used to make me feel all over melancholy to see him. All by
+himself in a great field. Pore fellow. He's lonely, that's what it is,
+however...."
+
+At this point the conversation born upon whispers and tut-tut passed out
+of John's hearing toward the basement.
+
+"I suppose my own servants will start gossiping next," he grumbled to
+himself. "Luckily I've learnt to despise gossip. Hullo, here's another
+bundle of press-cuttings.
+
+"_It is rumored that John Touchwood's version of Joan of Arc which he is
+writing for that noble tragedienne, Miss Janet Bond, will exhibit the
+Maid of Orleans in a new and piquant light. The distinguished dramatist
+has just returned from France where he has been obtaining some
+startling scenic effects for what is confidently expected will be the
+playwright's most successful production. We are sorry to hear that Miss
+Bond has been suffering from a sharp attack of 'flu, but a visit to Dr.
+Brighton has--_"
+
+These and many similar paragraphs were all pasted into the album by his
+secretary the next morning, and John was quite annoyed when she referred
+to them as worthless gossip.
+
+"You don't know what gossip is," he said, thinking of Eleanor. "I ignore
+real gossip."
+
+Miss Hamilton smiled to herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+After the Christmas party at Ambles John managed to secure a
+tranquillity that, however brief and deceptive he felt it was like to
+be, nevertheless encouraged him sufficiently to make considerable
+progress with the play while it lasted. Perhaps Eleanor's warning had
+sunk deeper than she might have supposed from the apparent result of
+that little chat with her brother-in-law about his future; at any rate,
+he was so firmly determined not to give the most evil mind the least
+opportunity for malicious exaggeration that in self-defense he devoted
+to Joan of Arc a more exclusive attention than he had hitherto devoted
+to any of his dramatic personages. Moreover, in his anxiety to prove how
+abominably unjust the insinuations of his family were, he imparted to
+his heroine some of his own temporary remoteness from the ordinary
+follies and failings of humanity.
+
+"We are too much obsessed by sex nowadays," he announced at the club one
+afternoon, and was tempted to expatiate upon his romantic shibboleth to
+several worn out old gentlemen who had assented to this proposition.
+"After all," he argued, "life is not all sex. I've lately been
+enormously struck by that in the course of my work. Take Joan of Arc for
+instance. Do we find any sex obsession in her? None. But is she less
+psychologically interesting on that account? No. Sex is the particular
+bane of modern writers. Frankly, I cannot read a novel nowadays. I
+suppose I'm old-fashioned, but I'd rather be called old-fashioned than
+asked to appreciate one of these young modern writers. I suppose there's
+no man more willing than myself to march with the times, but I like the
+high roads of literature, not the muddy lanes...."
+
+"The John Longs and John Lanes that have no turnings," a club wag put
+in.
+
+"Look at Stevenson," the dramatist continued, without paying any
+attention to the stupid interruption. "When Stevenson wrote a love scene
+he used to blush."
+
+"So would any one who had written love scenes as bad as his," sniggered
+a young man, who seemed oblivious of his very recent election to the
+club.
+
+The old members looked at him severely, not because he had sneered at
+Stevenson, but because, without being spoken to, he had volunteered a
+remark in the club smoking-room at least five years too soon.
+
+"I've got a young brother who thinks like you," said John, with friendly
+condescension.
+
+"Yes, I know him," the young man casually replied.
+
+John was taken aback; it struck him as monstrous that a friend of Hugh's
+should have secured election to _his_ club. The sanctity of the retreat
+had been violated, and he could not understand what the world was coming
+to.
+
+"How is Hugh?" the young man went on, without apparently being the least
+conscious of any difference between the two brothers. "Down at your
+place in Hampshire, isn't he? Lucky chap; though they tell me you
+haven't got many pheasants."
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"You don't preserve?"
+
+"No, I do not preserve." John would have liked to add "except the
+decencies of intercourse between old and young in a club smoking-room";
+but he refrained.
+
+"Perhaps you're right," said the young man. "These are tough times for
+landed proprietors. Well, give my love to Hugh when you see him," he
+added, and turning on his heel disappeared into the haze of a more
+remote portion of the smoking-room.
+
+"Who is that youth?" John demanded.
+
+The old members shook their heads helplessly, and one of the waiters was
+called up to be interrogated.
+
+"Mr. Winnington-Carr, I believe, sir," he informed them.
+
+"How long has he been a member?"
+
+"About a week, I believe, sir."
+
+John looked daggers of exclamation at the other members.
+
+"We shall have perambulators waiting in the lobby before we know where
+we are," he said, bitterly.
+
+Everybody agreed that these ill-considered elections were a scandal to a
+famous club, and John, relinquishing the obsession of sex as a topic,
+took up the obsession of youth, which he most convincingly proved to be
+the curse of modern life.
+
+It was probably Mr. Winnington-Carr's election that brought home to John
+the necessity of occupying himself immediately with his brother's
+future; at this rate he should find Hugh himself a member of his club
+before he knew where he was.
+
+"I'm worrying about my young brother," he told Miss Hamilton next day,
+and looked at her sharply to watch the effect of this remark.
+
+"Why, has he been misbehaving himself again?"
+
+"No, not exactly misbehaving; but a friend of his has just been elected
+to my club, and I don't think it's good for Hugh to be hanging about in
+idleness. I do wish I could find the address of that man Raikes from
+British Honduras."
+
+"Where is it likely to be?"
+
+"It was a visiting-card. It might be anywhere."
+
+"If it was a visiting-card, the most likely place to find it is in one
+of your waistcoat-pockets."
+
+John regarded his secretary with the admiration that such a practical
+suggestion justified, and rang the bell.
+
+"Maud, please bring down all my waistcoats," he told his valeting
+parlor-maid, who presently appeared in the library bowed down by a heap
+of clothes as a laborer is bowed down by a truss of hay.
+
+In the twenty-seventh waistcoat that was examined the card was found:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Sydney Ricketts.
+
+14 Lyonesse Road, Belize,
+
+Balam, S.W., British Honduras.
+
+"I thought his name was Raikes," John muttered, indignantly.
+
+"Never mind. A rose by any other name...." Miss Hamilton began.
+
+John might almost have been said to interrupt what she was going to say
+with an angry glare; but she only laughed merrily at his fierce
+expression.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon--I'd forgotten your objection to roses."
+
+Mr. Ricketts, who was fortunately still in London, accepted John's
+invitation to come and see him at Church Row on business. He was a
+lantern-jawed man with a tremendous capacity for cocktails, a sinewy
+neck, and a sentimental affection for his native suburb. At the same
+time, he would not hear a word against British Honduras.
+
+"I reckon our regatta at Belize is the prettiest little regatta in the
+world."
+
+"But the future of logwood and mahogany?" John insisted.
+
+"Great," the visitor assured him. "Why don't _you_ come out to us? You'd
+lose a lot of weight if you worked for a few months up the Zucara river.
+Here's a photograph of some of our boys loading logwood."
+
+"They look very hot," said John, politely.
+
+"They are very hot," said Mr. Ricketts. "You can't expect to grow
+logwood in Iceland."
+
+"No, of course not. I understand that."
+
+In the end it was decided that John should invest L2000 in the logwood
+and mahogany business and that sometime in February Hugh should be ready
+to sail with Mr. Ricketts to Central America.
+
+"Of course he'll want to learn something about the conditions of the
+trade at first. Yes, I reckon your brother will stay in Belize at
+first," said the planter, scratching his throat so significantly that
+John made haste to fill up his glass, thinking to himself that, if the
+cocktails at the Belize Yacht Club were as good as Mr. Ricketts boasted,
+Hugh would be unlikely ever to see much more of mahogany than he saw of
+it at present cut and rounded and polished to the shape of a solid
+dining-room table. However, the more attractive Belize, the less
+attractive England.
+
+"I think you told me this was your first visit home in fifteen years?"
+he asked.
+
+"That's right. Fifteen years in B.H."
+
+"B.H.?" repeated the new speculator, nervously.
+
+"British Honduras."
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon. The initials associated themselves in my mind
+for the moment with another place. B.H. you call it. Very appropriate I
+should think. I suppose you found many changes in Balham on your
+return?"
+
+"Wouldn't have known it again," said Mr. Ricketts. "For one thing they'd
+changed all the lamp-posts along our road. That's the kind of thing to
+teach a man he's growing old."
+
+Perhaps Hugh wouldn't recognize Hampstead after fifteen years, John
+thought, gleefully; he might even pass his nearest relations in the
+street without a salute when like a Rip van Winkle of the tropics he
+returned to his native country after fifteen years.
+
+"I suppose the usual outfit for hot climates will be necessary?"
+
+Mr. Ricketts nodded; and John began to envisage himself equipping Hugh
+from the Army and Navy Stores.
+
+"I always think there is something extraordinarily romantic about a
+tropical outfit," he ventured.
+
+"It's extraordinarily expensive," said Mr. Ricketts. "But everything's
+going up. And mahogany's going up when I get back to B.H., or my name
+isn't Sydney Ricketts."
+
+"There's nothing you particularly recommend?"
+
+"No, they'll tell you everything you want at the Stores and a bit over,
+except--oh, yes, by the way, don't let him forget his shaker."
+
+"Is that some special kind of porous overcoat?"
+
+Mr. Ricketts laughed delightedly.
+
+"Well, if that isn't the best thing I've heard since I was home. Porous
+overcoat! No, no, a shaker is for mixing drinks."
+
+"Humph!" John grunted. "From what I know of my brother, he won't require
+any special instrument for doing that. Good-by, Mr. Ricketts; my
+solicitor will write to you about the business side. Good-by."
+
+When John went back to his work he was humming.
+
+"Satisfactory?" his secretary inquired.
+
+"Extremely satisfactory. I think Hugh is very lucky. Ricketts assures me
+that in another fifteen years--that is about the time Hugh will be
+wanting to visit England again--there is no reason why he shouldn't be
+making at least L500 a year. Besides, he won't be lonely, because I
+shall send Harold out to British Honduras in another five years. It must
+be a fascinating place if you're fond of natural history, B.H.--as the
+denizens apparently call it among themselves," he added, pensively.
+
+It could not be claimed that Hugh was enraptured by the prospect of
+leaving England in February, and John who was really looking forward to
+the job of getting together his outfit was disappointed by his brother's
+lack of enthusiasm. He simply could not understand anybody's failure to
+be thrilled by snake-proof blankets and fever-proof filters, by
+medicine-chests and pith helmets and double-fly tents and all the
+paraphernalia of adventure in foreign parts. Finally he delivered an
+ultimatum to Hugh, which was accepted albeit with ill grace, and
+hardening his heart against the crossed letters of protest that arrived
+daily from his mother and burying himself in an Army and Navy Stores'
+catalogue, he was able to intrench himself in the opinion that he was
+doing the best that could be done for the scapegrace. The worst of
+putting Hugh on his feet again was the resentment such a brotherly
+action aroused among his other relations. After the quarrel with James
+he had hardly expected to hear from him for a long time; but no sooner
+had the news about British Honduras gone the round of the family than
+his eldest brother wrote to ask him for a loan of L1000 to invest in a
+projected critical weekly of which he was to be the editor. James added
+that John could hardly grudge him as much as that for log-rolling at
+home when he was prepared to spend double that amount on Hugh to roll
+logs abroad.
+
+"I can't say I feel inclined to help James after that article about my
+work," John observed to Miss Hamilton. "Besides, I hate critical
+weeklies."
+
+It happened that the post next morning brought a large check from his
+agent for royalties on various dramas that in various theaters all over
+the world were playing to big business; confronted by that bright-hued
+token of prosperity he could not bring himself to sit down and pen a
+flat refusal to his brother's demand. Instead of doing that he merely
+delayed for a few hours the birth of a new critical weekly by making an
+appointment to talk the matter over, and it was only a fleeting pleasure
+that he obtained from adding a postscript begging James not to bring his
+dog with him when he called at Church Row.
+
+"For if that wretched animal goes snorting round the room all the time
+we're talking," he assured his secretary, "I shall agree to anything in
+order to get rid of it. I shall find all my available capital invested
+in critical weeklies just to save the carpet from being eaten."
+
+James seemed to have entirely forgotten that his brother had any reason
+to feel sore with him; he also seemed entirely unconscious of there
+being the least likelihood of his refusing to finance the new venture.
+John remembering how angry James had been when on a former occasion he
+had reminded him that Hugh's career was still before him, was careful to
+avoid the least suggestion of throwing cold water upon the scheme.
+Therefore in the circumstances James' unusual optimism, which lent his
+sallow cheeks some of the playwright's roses, was not surprising, and
+before the conversation had lasted many minutes John had half promised a
+thousand pounds. Having done this, he did try to retrieve the situation
+by advising James to invest it in railway-stock and argued strongly
+against the necessity of another journal.
+
+"What are you going to call this further unnecessary burden upon our
+powers of assimilation?"
+
+"_I_ thought _The New Broom_ would be a good title."
+
+"Yes, I was positive you'd call it The New-Something-or-other. Why not
+The New Way to pay Old Scores? I'll back you to do that, even if you
+can't pay your old debts. However, listen to me. I'll lend the money to
+you personally. But I will not invest it in the paper. For security--or
+perhaps compensation would be a better word--you shall hand over to me
+the family portraits and the family silver."
+
+"I'd rather it was a business proposition," James objected.
+
+"My dear fellow, a new critical weekly can never be a business
+proposition. How many people read your books?"
+
+"About a dozen," James calculated.
+
+"Well, why should more people read your paper? No, you can have the
+money, but it must be regarded as a personal loan, and I must have the
+portraits and the silver."
+
+"I don't see why you should have them."
+
+"I don't see why you should start a new critical weekly."
+
+John could not help enjoying the power that his brother's ambition had
+put in his hands and he insisted firmly upon the surrender of the
+heritage.
+
+"All right, Jacob, I suppose I must sell my birthright for a mess of
+pottage."
+
+"A printer's pie would describe it better," said John.
+
+"Though why you want a few bad pictures and a dozen or so forks and
+spoons, I can't conceive."
+
+"Why do you want them?" John countered.
+
+"Because they're mine."
+
+"And the money is mine."
+
+James went away with a check for a thousand pounds in his pocket; but he
+went away less cheerful than he arrived. John, on the other hand, was
+much impressed by the manner in which he had dealt with his eldest
+brother; it was worth while losing a thousand pounds to have been able
+to demonstrate clearly to James once for all that his taste in
+literature was at the mercy of the romanticism he so utterly despised.
+And while he felt that he had displayed a nice dignity in forcing James
+to surrender the portraits and the silver, he was also pleasantly aware
+of an equally nice magnanimity in being willing to overlook that
+insulting article. But Miss Hamilton was at his elbow to correct the
+slightest tendency to be too well pleased with himself.
+
+"After all I couldn't disappoint poor old James," he said, fishing for
+an encomium and dangling his own good heart as the bait. His secretary,
+however, ignored the tempting morsel and swam away into the deeps of
+romantic drama where his munificence seemed less showy somehow.
+
+"You know best what you _want_ to do," she said, curtly. "And now, have
+you decided upon this soliloquy for Joan in her dungeon?"
+
+"What do you feel about it?"
+
+She held forth upon the advantages of a quiet front scene before the
+trial, and the author took her advice. He wished that she were as
+willing to discant upon his treatment of James, but he consoled himself
+for her lack of interest by supposing that she was diffident about
+giving the least color to any suggestion that she might be influencing
+him to her own advantage.
+
+Hugh came up to town in order to go more fully into the question of his
+future, and John regarding Miss Hamilton's attitude towards him tried to
+feel perfectly sure that she was going out of her way to be pleasant to
+Hugh solely with an idea of accentuating the strictly professional side
+of her association with himself. If this were not the case, he should be
+justified in thinking that she did really like Hugh very much, which
+would be an uncomfortable state of affairs. Still, explain it away as he
+might, John did feel a little uneasy, and once when he heard of a visit
+to the theater preceded by dinner he was upon the verge of pointing out
+to Hugh that until he was definitely established in mahogany and
+logwood he must be extremely careful about raising false hopes. He
+managed to refrain from approaching Hugh on the subject, because he knew
+that if he betrayed the least anxiety in that direction Hugh was capable
+of making it a matter of public jest. He decided instead to sound Miss
+Hamilton upon her views.
+
+"You've never had any longing for the tropics?" he asked, as casually as
+he was able.
+
+"Not particularly, though of course I should enjoy any fresh
+experience."
+
+"I was noticing the other day that you seemed to dislike spiders; and,
+of course, the spiders in hot countries are terrible. I remember reading
+of some that snare birds, and I'm not sure that in parts of South
+America they don't even attack human beings. Many people of course do
+not mind them. For instance, my brother-in-law Daniel Curtis wrote a
+very moving account of a spider as large as a bat, with whom he
+fraternized on the banks of the Orinoco. It's quite a little classic in
+its way."
+
+John noted with the warmest satisfaction that Miss Hamilton shuddered.
+
+"Your poor brother," she murmured.
+
+"Oh, he'll be all right," said John, hurriedly. "I'm equipping him with
+every kind of protection against insects. Only yesterday I discovered a
+most ingenious box which is guaranteed to keep one's tobacco from being
+devoured by cockroaches, and I thought Hugh looked very well in his pith
+helmet, didn't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid I really didn't notice," Miss Hamilton replied,
+indifferently.
+
+Soon after this conversation James' birthright was formally surrendered
+and John gave up contemplating himself upon a peak in Darien in order to
+contemplate himself as the head of an ancient and distinguished family.
+While the portraits were being hung in the library he discoursed upon
+the romance of lineage so volubly that he had a sudden dread of Miss
+Hamilton taking him for a snob, which he tried to counteract by putting
+into the mouth of Joan of Arc sentiments of the purest demophilism.
+
+"I shall aim at getting all the material for the play complete by April
+1st--my birthday, by the way. Yes, I shall be forty-three. And then I
+thought we might go into retreat and aim at finishing entirely by the
+end of June. That would enable Miss Bond to produce in September without
+hurrying the rehearsals. _Lucretia_ will be produced over here in April.
+I think it would be rather jolly to finish off the play in France.
+Domremy, Bourges, Chinon, Orleans, Compiegne, Rouen--a delightful tour.
+You could have an aluminum typewriter...."
+
+John's dreams of literature and life in France were interrupted by Mrs.
+Worfolk, who entered the room with a mystery upon her lips.
+
+"There's the Reverend Armitage waiting to see you in the hall, sir. But
+he was looking so queer that I was in two minds if I ought to admit him
+or not. It was Elsa who happened to open the door. Well, I mean to say,
+Maud's upstairs doing her rooms, and Elsa was a bit frightened when she
+saw him, through her being engaged to a policeman and so her mind
+running on murders and such like. Of course as soon as I saw it was the
+Reverend Armitage I quieted her down. But he really does look most
+peculiar, if you'll pardon the obsivation on Mrs. Armitage's husband. I
+don't think he's actually barmy _yet_; but you know, he gives any one
+the idea he will be soon, and I thought you ought to be told before he
+started to rave up and down the house. He's got a funny look in his eye,
+the same as what a man once had who sat opposite me in a bus and five
+minutes afterwards jumped off on Hammersmith Bridge and threw himself
+into the river. Quite a sensation it created, I remember, and we all had
+to alight, so as the conductor could give what information he had to a
+policeman who'd only heard the splash."
+
+Mrs. Worfolk had been too garrulous; before she had time to ascertain
+her master's views on the subject of admitting Laurence there was a tap
+at the door, and Laurence himself stalked into the room. Unquestionably,
+even to one who had not known him as a clergyman, he did present an odd
+appearance with his fur-lined cloak of voluminous black, his long hair,
+his bundle of manuscript and theatrical newspapers, and his tragic eye;
+the only article of attire that had survived his loss of faith was the
+clergyman's hat; but even that had lost its former meekness and now gave
+the effect of a farouche sombrero.
+
+"Well met," he intoned, advancing solemnly into the room and gripping
+his brother-in-law's hand with dramatic effect. "I would converse with
+you, John."
+
+"That's a blank verse line," said John. There really was not much else
+that he could have said to such an affected greeting.
+
+"Probably, probably," Laurence muttered, shaking his head. "It's
+difficult for me to talk in prose nowadays. But I have news for you,
+John, good news. _Thomas_ is finished."
+
+"You needn't wait, Mrs. Worfolk," said John.
+
+His housekeeper was standing by the door with a face wreathed in notes
+of interrogation and seemed unwilling to retire.
+
+"You needn't wait, Mrs. Worfolk," he repeated, irritably.
+
+"I thought you might have been wanting somebody fetched, sir."
+
+John made an impatient gesture and Mrs. Worfolk vanished.
+
+"You know Miss Hamilton, Laurence," said John, severely.
+
+"Ah, Miss Hamilton! Forgive my abstraction. How d'ye do? But--ah--I was
+anxious to have a few words in private."
+
+"Miss Hamilton is my confidential secretary."
+
+"I bow to your domestic arrangements," said Laurence. "But--ah--my
+business is of an extremely private nature. It bears in fact directly
+upon my future."
+
+John was determined to keep his secretary in the room. He had a feeling
+that money was going to be asked for, and he hoped that her presence
+would encourage him to hold out against agreeing to lend it.
+
+"If you have anything to say to me, Laurence, you must say it in front
+of my secretary. I cannot be continually shooing her from the room like
+a troublesome cat."
+
+The ex-vicar looked awkward for a moment; but his natural conceit
+reasserted itself and flinging back his cloak he laid upon the table a
+manuscript.
+
+"Fresh from Miss Quirk's typewriting office here is _Thomas_," he
+announced. "And now, my dear fellow, I require a little good advice."
+There was flowing into his voice the professional unction of the
+clergyman with a north transept to restore. "Who was it that first said
+'Charity begins at home'? Yes, a little good advice about my play. In
+deference to the Lord Chamberlain while reserving to my conscience the
+right to execrate his despotism I have expunged from my scenes the
+_central_ figures of the gospel story, and I venture to think that there
+is now no reason why _Thomas_ should not be--ah--produced."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't invite you to read it to me just at present,
+Laurence," said John, hurriedly. "No, not just at present, I'm afraid.
+When I'm working myself I'm always chary of being exposed to outside
+influences. _You_ wouldn't like and _I_ shouldn't like to find in _Joan
+of Arc_ echoes of _Thomas_. Miss Hamilton, however, who is thoroughly
+conversant with my point of view, would perhaps...."
+
+"I confess," Laurence interrupted, loftily, "that I do not set much
+store by its being read. No, no. You will acquit me of undue
+self-esteem, my dear fellow, if I say at once in all modesty that I am
+satisfied with my labors, though you may be a little alarmed when I
+confide in you my opinion that it is probably a classic. Still, such is
+my deliberate conviction. Moreover, I have already allowed our little
+party at Ambles to hear it. Yes, we spent a memorable evening before the
+manuscript was dispatched to Miss Quirk. Some of the scenes, indeed,
+proved almost too dramatic. Edith was quite exhausted by her emotion
+and scarcely slept all night. As for Hilda, I've never seen her so
+overcome by anything. She couldn't say anything when I finished. No, no,
+I sha'n't read it to you. In fact, to be--ah--blunt, I could scarcely
+endure the strain a second time. No, what I want you to do, my dear
+fellow, is to--ah--back it. The phrase is Hugh's. We have all been
+thrilled down at Ambles by rumors of your generosity, and I know you'll
+be glad of another medium for exercising it. Am I unduly proud of my
+work if I say that it seems to me a more worthy medium than British
+Honduras or weekly papers?"
+
+John had been gazing at Miss Hamilton with a mute appeal to save him
+while his brother-in-law was talking; she, however, bending lower every
+moment to hide her mirth made no attempt to show him a way of escape and
+John had to rely upon his own efforts.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better," he suggested, mildly, "to submit your play to a
+manager before we--before you try to put it on yourself? I have never
+invested any money in my own plays, and really I...."
+
+"My dear John, far be it from me to appear to cast the least slur--to
+speak in the faintest way at all slightingly of your plays, but I do not
+quite see the point of the comparison. Your plays--excellent as they
+are, most excellent--are essentially commercial transactions. My play is
+not a commercial transaction."
+
+"Then why should I be invited to lose my money over it?"
+
+Laurence smiled compassionately.
+
+"I thought you would be glad of the opportunity to show a disinterested
+appreciation of art. In years to come you will be proud to think that
+you were one of the first to give practical evidence of your belief in
+_Thomas_."
+
+"But perhaps I'm just as skeptical as your hero was. I may not believe
+in your play's immortality."
+
+Laurence frowned.
+
+"Come, my dear fellow, this is being petty. We are all counting on you.
+You wouldn't like to hear it said that out of jealousy you had tried to
+suppress a rival dramatist. But I must not let my indignation run away
+with me, and you must forgive my heat. I am overstrained. The magnitude
+of the subject has almost been too much for me. Besides, I should have
+explained at once that I intended to invest in _Thomas_ all that is left
+of my own little capital. Yes, I am even ready to do that. Then I shall
+spend a year as an actor, after which I shall indulge my more worldly
+self by writing a few frankly commercial plays before I begin my next
+great tragedy entitled _Paul_."
+
+John decided that his brother-in-law had gone mad; unable to think of
+any action more effective at such a crisis, he rang the bell. But when
+Maud came to inquire his need he could not devise anything to tell her
+except that Mr. Armitage was staying to lunch.
+
+It was a most uncomfortable meal, because Miss Hamilton in order to keep
+herself from laughing aloud had to be preternaturally grave, and John
+himself was in a continuous state of nervous irritation at Laurence, who
+would let everything on his plate grow cold while he droned on without a
+pause about the simplicity of the best art. It was more than tantalizing
+to watch him gradually build up a mouthful upon his fork, still talking;
+slowly raise it to his lips, still talking; and wave the overloaded fork
+to and fro before him, still talking. But it was an agony to watch the
+carefully accumulated mouthful drop back bit by bit upon his plate,
+until at last very slowly and still talking he would insert one cold and
+tiny morsel into his patient mouth, so tiny a morsel that the
+mastication of it did not prevent him from still talking.
+
+"I'm afraid you're not enjoying your lunch," his host said.
+
+"Don't wait for me, my dear fellow; when I am interested in something
+else I cannot gobble my food. Though in any case," he added in a
+resigned voice, "I shall have indigestion. One cannot write plays like
+_Thomas_ without exposing oneself to the ills that flesh is heir to."
+
+After lunch, much to John's relief, his brother-in-law announced that he
+had an appointment with Eleanor and would therefore be unable to stay
+even long enough to smoke a cigar.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Eleanor and I are going to interview one or two of her
+theatrical friends. No doubt I shall soon be able to proclaim myself a
+rogue and a vagabond. Yes, yes, poor Edith was quite distressed this
+morning when I told her that jestingly. However, she will be happy to
+hear to-night when I get back that her brother has been so large."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Not that Edith expected him to be otherwise. No, no, my dear fellow,
+Edith has a most exalted opinion of you, which indeed I share, if I may
+be permitted so to do. Good-by, John, and many thanks. Who knows? Our
+little lunch may become a red-letter day in the calendar of English
+dramatic art. Let me see, the tube-station is on the left as I go out?
+Good-by, John; I wish I could stay the night with you, but I have a
+cheap day-ticket which forbids any extension of my plans."
+
+When John got back to the library he turned in bewilderment to his
+secretary.
+
+"Look here. I surely never gave him the least idea that I was going to
+back his confounded play, did I?"
+
+"On the contrary, you made it perfectly clear that you were not."
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say so, because he has gone away from here
+apparently under the delusion that I am. He'll brag about it to Eleanor
+this afternoon, and before I know where I am she will be asking me to
+set George up with a racing-stable."
+
+Eleanor did not go as far as that, but she did write to John and point
+out that the present seemed a suitable moment to deal with the question
+of George's health by sending him on a voyage round the world. She added
+that for herself she asked nothing; but John had an uneasy impression
+that it was only in the belief that he who asks not to him shall it be
+given.
+
+"Take down two letters, please, Miss Hamilton," he said, grimly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEAR LAURENCE,--I am afraid that you went away yesterday afternoon under
+a misapprehension. I do _not_ see my way to offer any financial
+contribution toward the production of your play. I myself passed a long
+apprenticeship before I was able to get one of my plays acted, and I do
+not think that you can expect to do otherwise. Do not imagine that I am
+casting any doubts upon the excellence of _Thomas_. If it is as good as
+you claim, you will have your reward without any help from me. Your idea
+of getting acquainted with the practical side of the stage is a good
+one. If you are not already engaged in the autumn, I think I can offer
+you one of the minor bishops in _Joan of Arc_.
+
+Your affectionate brother-in-law,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+DEAR ELEANOR,--I must say decidedly that I do not perceive any
+likelihood of George's health deriving much benefit from a voyage round
+the world. If he is threatened with sleeping sickness, it would be rash
+to expose him to a tropical climate. If he is suffering from a sluggish
+liver, he will get no benefit from lolling about in smoking-saloons,
+whatever the latitude and longitude. I have repeatedly helped George
+with his schemes to earn a living for himself and he has never failed to
+squander my money upon capricious race-horses. You know that I am always
+willing to come forward on behalf of Bertram and Viola; but their father
+must show signs of helping himself before I do anything more for him. I
+am sorry that I cannot offer you a good part in _Joan of Arc_; there is
+really nothing to suit you for I presume you would not care to accept
+the part of Joan's mother. However, it has now been decided to produce
+_Lucretia_ in April and I shall do my best to persuade Grohmann to
+offer you a part in that.
+
+Your affectionate brother-in-law,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+John did not receive an answer to either of these letters, and out of an
+atmosphere of pained silence he managed to conjure optimistically an
+idea that Laurence and Eleanor had realized the justice of his point of
+view.
+
+"You do agree with me that they were going too far?" he asked Miss
+Hamilton; but she declined to express an opinion.
+
+"What's the good of having a confidential secretary, if I can't ask her
+advice about confidential matters?" he grumbled.
+
+"Are you dissatisfied with me?"
+
+"No, no, no. I'm not dissatisfied. What an exaggeration of my remark!
+I'm simply a little puzzled by your attitude. It seems to me--I may be
+wrong--that instead of ... well, at first you were always perfectly
+ready to talk about my relations and about me, whereas now you won't
+talk about anything except Joan of Arc. I'm really getting quite bored
+with Joan of Arc."
+
+"I was only an amateur when I began," she laughed. "Now I'm beginning to
+be professional."
+
+"I think it's a great mistake," said John, decidedly. "Suppose I insist
+upon having your advice?"
+
+"You'd find that dictation bears two meanings in English, to only one of
+which are you entitled under the terms of our contract."
+
+"Look here, have I done anything to offend you?" he asked, pathetically.
+
+But she would not be moved and held her pencil so conspicuously ready
+that the author was impaled upon it before he could escape and was soon
+hard at work dictating his first arrangement of the final scene in a
+kind of indignant absent-mindedness.
+
+Soon after this John received a note from Sir Percy Mortimer, asking if
+he could spare time to visit the great actor-manager some evening in the
+course of the current week. Between nine-thirty and ten was indicated as
+a suitable time, inasmuch as Sir Percy would then be in his
+dressing-room gathering the necessary momentum to knock down all the
+emotional fabric carefully built up in the first two acts by the most
+cunning of contemporary dramatists. Sir Percy Mortimer, whose name was
+once Albert Snell, could command anybody, so it ought not to have been
+remarkable that John rather flustered by the invitation made haste to
+obey. Yet, he must have been aware of an implied criticism in Miss
+Hamilton's smile, which flashed across her still deep eyes like a sunny
+wind, for he murmured, apologetically:
+
+"We poor writers of plays must always wait upon our masters."
+
+He tried to convey that Sir Percy was only a mortal like himself, but he
+failed somehow to eliminate the deep-rooted respect, almost it might be
+called awe of the actor that was perceptible under the assumed
+carelessness of the author.
+
+"You see, it may be that he is anxious to hear some of my plans for the
+near future," he added.
+
+If Sir Percy Mortimer was impressive in the smoking-room of the Garrick
+Club as himself, he was dumbfounding in his dressing-room as Lord
+Claridge, the ambassador, about to enter Princess Thingumabobski's salon
+and with diplomatic wiles and smiles to settle the future of several
+couples, incidentally secure for himself the heart and hand of a young
+heiress. His evening-dress had achieved an immaculation that even Ouida
+never dreamed of; he wore the Grand Cross of the Victorian Order with as
+easy an assurance as his father had worn the insignia of a local
+friendly society in Birmingham; he was the quintessential diplomat of
+girlish dreams, and it was not surprising that women were ready to
+remove even their hats to see him perform at matinees.
+
+"Ah, it's very good of you to look me up, my dear fellow. I have just a
+quarter-of-an-hour. Godfrey!" He turned to address his valet, who might
+have been a cardinal driven by an ecclesiastical crisis like the spread
+of Modernism into attendance upon an actor.
+
+"Sir Percy?"
+
+"I do not wish to be disturbed until I am called for the third act."
+
+"Very good, Sir Percy."
+
+"And Godfrey!"
+
+"Sir Percy?"
+
+"The whisky and soda for Mr. Touchwood. Oh, and Godfrey!"
+
+"Sir Percy?"
+
+"If the Duke of Shropshire comes behind, tell His Grace that I am
+unavoidably prevented from seeing him until after the third act. I will
+_not_ be interrupted."
+
+"No, Sir Percy. I quite understand, Sir Percy."
+
+The valet set the decanter at John's elbow and vanished like the ghost
+of a king.
+
+"It's just this, my dear fellow," the actor-manager began, when John who
+had been trying to decide whether he should suggest Peter the Great or
+Augustus the Strong as the next part for his host was inclining towards
+Augustus. "It's just this. I believe that Miss Cartright, a former
+member of my company, is _also_ a relation of yours."
+
+"She is my sister-in-law," admitted John, swallowing both Peter and
+Augustus in a disappointed gulp.
+
+"In fact, I believe that in private life she is Mrs. George Touchwood.
+Correct me if I am wrong in my names."
+
+Sir Percy waited, but John did not avail himself of the offer, and he
+went on.
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, she has approached me upon a matter which I
+confess I have found somewhat embarrassing, referring as it does to
+another man's private affairs; but as one of the--as--how shall I
+describe myself?--" He fingered the ribbon of the Victorian Order for
+inspiration. "As an actor-manager of some standing, I felt that you
+would prefer me to hear what she had to say in order that I might
+thereby adjudicate--yes, I think that is the word--without any--no,
+forgive me--adjudicate is _not_ the word. Adjudicate is too strong. What
+is the word for outsiders of standing who are called in to assist at the
+settlement of a trade dispute? Whatever the word is, that is the word I
+want. I understand from Miss Cartright--Mrs. George Touchwood in private
+life--that her husband is in a very grave state of health and entirely
+without means." Sir Percy looked at himself in the glass and dabbed his
+face with the powder-puff. "Miss Cartright asked me to use my influence
+with you to take some steps to mitigate this unpleasant situation upon
+which, it appears, people are beginning to comment rather unfavorably.
+Now, you and I, my dear fellow, are members of the same club. You and I
+have high positions in our respective professions. Is it wise? There may
+of course be a thousand reasons for leaving your brother to starve with
+an incurable disease. But is it wise? As a man of the world, I think
+not." He touched his cheeks with the hare's-foot and gave them a richer
+bloom. "Don't allow me to make any suggestion that even borders upon the
+impertinent, but if you care to accept my mediation--_that_ is the word
+I couldn't remember." In his enthusiasm Sir Percy smacked his leg, which
+caused him a momentary anxiety for the perfection of his trousers.
+"Mediation! Of course, that's it--if you care, as I say, to accept my
+mediation I am willing to mediate."
+
+John stared at the actor-manager in angry amazement. Then he let himself
+go:
+
+"My brother is not starving--he eats more than any human being I know.
+Nor is he suffering from anything incurable except laziness. I do not
+wish to discuss with you or anybody else the affairs of my relations,
+which I regret to say are in most cases only too much my own affairs."
+
+"Then there is nothing for me to do," Sir Percy sighed, deriving what
+consolation he could from being unable to find a single detail of his
+dress that could be improved.
+
+"Nothing whatever," John agreed, emphatically.
+
+"But what shall I say to Miss Cartright, who you _must_ remember is a
+former member of my company, as well as your sister-in-law?"
+
+"I leave that to you."
+
+"It's very awkward," Sir Percy murmured. "I thought you would be sure to
+see that it is always better to settle these unpleasant matters--out of
+court, if I may use the expression. I'm so afraid that Miss Cartright
+will air her grievance."
+
+"She can wash as much dirty linen as she likes and air it every day in
+your theater," said John, fiercely. "But my brother George shall _not_
+go on a voyage round the world. You've nothing else to ask me? Nothing
+about my plans for the near future?"
+
+"No, no. I've a success, as you know, and I don't expect I shall want
+another play for months. You've seen my performance, of course?"
+
+"No," said John, curtly, "I've not."
+
+And when he left the actor-manager's dressing-room he knew that he had
+wounded him more deeply by that simple negative than by all the mighty
+insults imaginable.
+
+However, notwithstanding his successful revenge John left the theater in
+a rage and went off to his club with the hope of finding a sympathetic
+listener into whose ears he could pour the tale of Sir Percy's
+megalomania; but by ill luck there was nobody suitable in the
+smoking-room that night. To be sure, Sir Philip Cranbourne was snoring
+in an armchair, and Sir Philip Cranbourne was perhaps a bigger man in
+the profession than Sir Percy Mortimer. Yet, he was not so much bigger
+but that he would have welcomed a tale against the younger theatrical
+knight whose promotion to equal rank with himself he had resented very
+much. Sir Philip, however, was fast asleep, and John doubted if he hated
+Sir Percy sufficiently to welcome being woken up to hear a story against
+him--particularly a story by a playwright, one of that miserable class
+for which Sir Philip as an actor had naturally a very profound contempt.
+Moreover, thinking the matter over, John came to the conclusion that
+the story, while it would tell against Sir Percy would also tell against
+himself, and he decided to say nothing about it. When he was leaving the
+club he ran into Mr. Winnington-Carr, who greeted him airily.
+
+"Evening, Touchwood!"
+
+"Good evening."
+
+"What's this I hear about Hugh going to Sierra Leone? Bit tough, isn't
+it, sending him over to a plague spot like that? You saw that paragraph
+in _The Penguin_? Things we should like to know, don't you know? Why
+John Touchwood's brother is taking up a post in the tropics and whether
+John himself is really sorry to see him go."
+
+"No, I did not see that paragraph," said John, icily.
+
+Next morning a bundle of press-cuttings arrived.
+
+"There is nothing here but stupid gossip," said John to his secretary,
+flinging the packet into the fire. "Nothing that is worth preserving in
+the album, I mean to say."
+
+Miss Hamilton smiled to herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The buzz of gossip, the sting of scandalous paragraph, even the
+blundering impertinence of the actor-knight were all forgotten the
+following afternoon when a telegram arrived from Hampshire to say that
+old Mrs. Touchwood was dying. John left London immediately; but when he
+reached Ambles he found that his mother was already dead.
+
+"She passed away at five o'clock," Edith sobbed.
+
+Perhaps it was to stop his wife's crying that Laurence abandoned at any
+rate temporarily his unbelief and proclaimed as solemnly as if he were
+still Vicar of Newton Candover that the old lady was waiting for them
+all above. Hilda seemed chiefly worried by the fact that she had never
+warned James of their mother's grave condition.
+
+"I did telegraph Eleanor, who hasn't come; and how I came to overlook
+James and Beatrice I can't think. They'll be so hurt. But Mama didn't
+fret for anybody in particular. No, Hugh sat beside the bed and held her
+hand, which seemed to give her a little pleasure, and I was kept
+occupied with changing the hot-water bottles."
+
+In the dining-room George was knitting lugubriously.
+
+"You mustn't worry yourself, old chap," he said to John with his usual
+partiality for seductive advice. "You can't do anything now. None of us
+can do anything till the funeral, though I've written to Eleanor to
+bring my top-hat with her when she comes."
+
+The embarrassment of death's presence hung heavily over the household.
+The various members sat down to supper with apologetic glances at one
+another, and nobody took a second helping of any dish. The children were
+only corrected in whispers for their manners, but they were given to
+understand by reproachful head-shakes that for a child to put his
+elbows on the table or crumble his bread or drink with his mouth full
+was at such a time a cruel exhibition of levity. John could not help
+contrasting the treatment of children at a death with their treatment at
+a birth. Had a baby arrived upstairs, they would have been hustled out
+of sight and sound of the unclean event; but over death they were
+expected to gloat, and their curiosity was encouraged as the fit
+expression of filial piety.
+
+"Yes, Frida, darling, dear Grandmama will have lots and lots of lovely
+white flowers. Don't kick the table, sweetheart. Think of dear Grandmama
+looking down at you from Heaven, and don't kick the table-leg, my
+precious," said Edith in tremulous accents, gently smoothing back her
+daughter's indefinite hair.
+
+"Can people only see from Heaven or can they hear?" asked Harold.
+
+"Hush, my boy," his Uncle Laurence interposed. "These are mysteries into
+which God does not permit us to inquire too deeply. Let it suffice that
+our lightest actions are known. We cannot escape the omniscient eye."
+
+"I wasn't speaking about God," Harold objected. "I was asking about
+Grandmama. Does she hear Frida kicking the table, or does she only see
+her?"
+
+"At this solemn moment, Harold, when we should all of us be dumb with
+grief, you should not persist. Your poor grandmother would be pained to
+hear you being persistent like this."
+
+Harold seemed to think he had tricked his uncle into answering the
+question, for he relapsed into a satisfied silence; Edith's eyes flashed
+gladly through her tears to welcome the return of her husband's truant
+orthodoxy. All managed to abstain while they were eating from any more
+conspicuous intrusion of the flesh than was inevitable; but there was a
+painful scene after supper, because Frida insisted that she was
+frightened to sleep alone, and refused to be comforted by the offer of
+Viola for company. The terrible increase of Grandmama's powers of
+hearing and seeing might extend to new powers of locomotion in the
+middle of the night, in which case Viola would be no protection.
+
+"But Grandmama is in Heaven, darling," her mother urged.
+
+"I want to sleep with you. I'm frightened. I want to sleep with you,"
+she wailed.
+
+"Laurence!" murmured Edith, appealingly.
+
+"Death is a great leveler," he intoned. Grateful to the chance of being
+able to make this observation, he agreed to occupy his daughter's room
+and thereby allow her to sleep with her mother.
+
+"You're looking sad, Bertram," John observed, kindly, to his favorite
+nephew. "You mustn't take this too much to heart."
+
+"No, Uncle John, I'm not. Only I keep wishing Grandmama had lived a
+little longer."
+
+"We all wish that, old man."
+
+"Yes, but I only meant a very little longer, so that I needn't have gone
+back for the first week of term."
+
+John nervously hurried his nephew up to bed beyond the scorching of
+Laurence's rekindled flames of belief. Downstairs, he tried to extract
+from the attitude of the grown-up members of the family the attitude he
+would have liked to detect in himself. If a few months ago John had been
+told that his mother's death would affect him so little he would have
+been horrified by the suggestion; even now he was seriously shocked at
+himself. Yet, try as he might, he could not achieve the apotheosis of
+the old lady that he would have been so content to achieve. Undoubtedly
+a few months ago he would have been able without being conscious of
+self-deception to pretend that he believed not only in the reality of
+his own grief, but also in that of the others. He would have taken his
+part in the utterance of platitudes about life and death, separation and
+reunion. His own platitudes would have been disguised with poetic
+tropes, and he might have thought to himself how well such and such a
+phrase was put; but he would quickly have assured himself that it was
+well put because it was the just expression of a deep emotion. Now he
+could not make a single contribution to the woeful reflections of those
+round him. He believed neither in himself nor in them. He knew that
+George was faintly anxious about his top-hat, that Hilda was agitated at
+the prospect of having to explain to James and Beatrice her
+unintentional slight, that Laurence was unable to resist the opportunity
+of taking the lead at this sorrowful time by reverting to his priestly
+office. And Hugh, for whom the old lady had always possessed a fond
+unreasoning affection, did his countenance express more than a hardly
+concealed relief that it was all over? Did he not give the impression
+that he was stretching his legs after sitting still in one position for
+too long? Edith, to be sure, was feeling some kind of emotion that
+required an endless flow of tears, but it seemed to John that she was
+weeping more for the coming of death than for the going of her mother.
+And the children, how could they be expected to feel the loss of the old
+lady? There under the lamp like a cenotaph recording the slow hours of
+age stood her patience-cards in their red morocco case; there they would
+be allowed to stand for a while to satisfy the brief craving for
+reverence, and then one of the children realizing that Grandmama had no
+more need of playing would take possession of them; they would become
+grubby and dog-eared in younger hands; they would disappear one by one,
+and the memory of that placid presence would hardly outlive them.
+
+"It's so nice to think that her little annuity died with her," sighed
+Edith. She spoke of the annuity as if it were a favorite pug that had
+died out of sympathy with its mistress. "I should hate to feel I was
+benefiting from the death of somebody I loved," she explained presently.
+
+John shivered; that remark of his sister's was like a ghostly footstep
+upon his own grave, and from a few years hence, perhaps much less, he
+seemed to hear the family lawyer cough before he settled himself down to
+read the last will and testament of John Touchwood.
+
+"Of course, poor Mama had been dreadfully worried these last weeks,"
+Hilda said. "She felt very much the prospect of Hugh's going abroad--and
+other things."
+
+John regarded his elder sister, and was on the point of asking what she
+meant to insinuate by other things, when a lament from upstairs startled
+the assembled family.
+
+"Come to bed, mother, come to bed, I want you," Frida was shrieking over
+the balustrade. "The door of Grandmama's room made a noise just now."
+
+"You had better go," said Laurence in answer to his wife's unvoiced
+appeal; and Edith went off gratefully.
+
+"It will always be a consolation to me," said Laurence, "that Mama was
+able to hear _Thomas_ read to her. Yes, yes, she was so well upon that
+memorable evening. So very well. By the way, John, I shall arrange with
+the Vicar to read the burial service myself. It will add the last touch
+to the intimacy of our common grief."
+
+In his own room that night John tried hard not to criticize anybody
+except himself. It was he who was cynical, he who was hard, he who was
+unnatural, not they. He tried to evoke from the past early memories of
+his mother, but he could not recall one that might bring a tear to his
+eye. He remembered that once she had smacked him for something George
+had done, that she had never realized what a success he had made of his
+life's work, that she was--but he tore the unfilial thoughts from his
+brain and reminded himself how much of her personality endured in his
+own. George, Edith, and himself resembled her: James, Hilda, and Hugh
+resembled their father. John's brothers and sisters haunted the
+darkness; and he knew that deep down in himself he blamed his father and
+mother for bringing them all into the world; he could not help feeling
+that he ought to have been an only child.
+
+"I do resent their existence," John thought. "I'm a heartless egotist.
+And Miss Hamilton thinks I'm an egotist. Her manner towards me lately
+has been distant, even contemptuous. Could that suggestion of Hilda's
+have had any truth in it? Was Mama worried to death by Hugh's going
+abroad? Did James complain to her about my taking the portraits and the
+silver? Is it from any standpoint conceivable that my own behavior did
+hasten her end?"
+
+John's self-reproaches were magnified in the darkness, and he spent a
+restless and unhappy night, trying to think that the family was more
+important than the individual.
+
+"You feel it terribly, don't you, dear Johnnie?" Edith asked him next
+morning with an affectionate pressure upon his arm. "You're looking
+quite worn out."
+
+"We all feel it terribly," he sighed.
+
+During the three days before the funeral John managed to work himself up
+into a condition of sentimentality which he flattered himself was
+outwardly at any rate affecting. Continuous reminders of his mother's
+existence culminating in the arrival of a new cap she had ordered just
+before her last swift illness seemed to induce in him the illusion of
+sorrow; and without the least idea of what he intended to do with them
+afterwards he collected a quantity of small relics like spectacle-cases
+and caps and mittens, which he arranged upon his dressing-table and
+brooded over with brimming eyes. He indulged Harold's theories about the
+psychical state of his grandmother; he practiced swinging a golf club,
+but he never once took out a ball; he treated everybody to magnificent
+wreaths, and presented the servants as well as his nephews and nieces
+with mourning; he ordered black-edged note-paper; he composed an epitaph
+in the manner of Sir Thomas Browne with cadences and subtle
+alliterations. Then came the funeral, which ruined the last few romantic
+notions of grief that he had been able to preserve.
+
+To begin with, Beatrice arrived in what could only be described as a
+towering rage: no less commonplace epithet would have done justice to
+the vulgarity of her indignation. That James the eldest son and she his
+wife should not have been notified of the dangerous condition of Mama,
+but should have been summoned to the obsequies like mere friends of the
+family had outraged her soul, or, as Beatrice herself put it, had
+knocked her down like a feather. Oh yes, she had always been considered
+beneath the Touchwood standard of gentility, but poor Mama had not
+thought the worse of her for that; poor Mama had many times gone out of
+her way to be specially gracious towards her; poor Mama must have "laid"
+there wondering why her eldest daughter-in-law did not come to give her
+the last and longest farewell. She had not been lucky enough to be
+blessed with children, but poor Mama had sometimes congratulated her
+upon that fact; poor Mama had realized only too well that children were
+not always a source of happiness. She knew that the undeserved poverty
+which had always dogged poor old Jimmie's footsteps had lately caused to
+be exacted from him the family portraits and the family silver pressed
+upon him by poor Mama herself; but was that a reason for excluding him
+from his mother's death-bed? She would not say whom she blamed, but she
+had her own ideas, and though Hilda might protest it was her fault, she
+knew better; Hilda was incapable of such barbarity. No, she would _not_
+walk beside James as wife of the chief mourner; she would follow in the
+rear of the funeral procession and hope that at any rate she was not
+grudged that humble place. If some people resented her having bought the
+largest wreath from a very expensive flower-shop, she was not too proud
+to carry the wreath herself; she had carried it all the way from town
+first-class to avoid its being crushed by heedless third-class
+passengers.
+
+"And when I die," sobbed Beatrice, "I hope that James will remember we
+weren't allowed to see poor Mama before she went to Heaven, and will let
+me die quite alone. I'm sure I don't want my death to interfere with
+other people's amusements."
+
+The funeral party gathered round the open grave; Laurence read the
+service so slowly and the wind was so raw that grief was depicted upon
+every countenance; the sniffing of many noses, above which rose
+Beatrice's sobs of mortification and rage, mingled with the sighing of
+the yews and the sexton's asthma in a suitably lachrymose symphony.
+
+"Now that poor Mama has gone," said Hilda to her brother that afternoon,
+"I dare say you're anxious for me to be gone too."
+
+"I really don't think you are entitled to ascribe to me such unnatural
+sentiments," John expostulated. "Why should I want you to die?"
+
+He could indeed ask this, for such an event would inevitably connote his
+adoption of Harold.
+
+"I didn't mean you wanted me to die," said Hilda, crossly. "I meant you
+would like me to leave Ambles."
+
+"Not at all. I'm delighted for you to stay here so long as it suits your
+convenience. And that applies equally to Edith. Also I may say to
+George," he added with a glance at Eleanor, who had taken the
+opportunity of mourning to equip herself with a new set of black
+bearskin furs. Eleanor shook herself like a large animal emerging from
+the stream.
+
+"And to me?" she asked with a challenge in her eyes.
+
+"You must judge for yourself, Eleanor, how far my hospitality is likely
+to be extended willingly to you after last week," replied John, coldly.
+He had not yet spoken to his sister-in-law about the interference of Sir
+Percy Mortimer with his private affairs, and he now awaited her excuses
+of reproaches with a curiosity that was very faintly tinged with
+apprehension.
+
+"Oh, I'm not at all ashamed of what I did," she declared. "George can't
+speak up for himself, and it was my duty to do all I could to help him
+in a matter of life and death."
+
+John's cheeks flushed with stormy rose like a menacing down, and he was
+about to break over his sister-in-law in thunder and lightning when
+Laurence, entering the room at the moment and only hearing imperfectly
+her last speech, nodded and sighed:
+
+"Yes, yes. Eleanor is indeed right. Yes, yes. In the midst of life...."
+
+Everybody hurried to take advantage of the diversion; a hum of
+platitudes rose and fell upon the funereal air. John in a convulsion of
+irritability ordered the dog-cart to drive him to the station. He was
+determined to travel back to town alone; he feared that if he stayed any
+longer at Ambles his brother-in-law would revive the discussion about
+his play; he was afraid of Hugh's taking advantage of his mother's death
+to dodge British Honduras and of James' trading upon his filial piety to
+recover the silver and the family portraits.
+
+When John got back to Church Row he found a note from Miss Hamilton to
+say she had influenza and was unlikely to be back at work for at least a
+week--if indeed, she added, she was able to come back at all. This
+unpleasant prospect filled him with genuine gloom, and it was with great
+difficulty that he refrained from driving immediately to Camera Square
+in order to remonstrate with her in person. His despondency was not
+lightened by Mrs. Worfolk's graveside manner and her assumption of a
+black satin dress hung with jet bugles that was usually reserved to mark
+the more cheerful festivals of the calendar. Worn thus out of season
+hung it about the rooms like a fog, and its numerous rustlings coupled
+with the housekeeper's sighs of commiseration added to the lugubrious
+atmosphere a sensation of damp which gave the final touch to John's
+depression. Next morning the weather was really abominable; the view
+over London from his library window showed nothing but great cobwebs of
+rain that seemed to be actually attached to a sky as gray and solid as a
+dusty ceiling. Action offered the only hope of alleviating life upon
+such a day, and John made up his mind to drive over to Chelsea and
+inquire about his secretary's health. He found that she was better,
+though still in bed; being anxious to learn more about her threatened
+desertion he accepted the maid's invitation to come in and speak to Mrs.
+Hamilton. The old lady looked more like a clown than ever in the
+forenoon while the rice-powder was still fresh upon her cheeks, and John
+found her humor as irritating as he would have found the humor of a real
+clown in similar circumstances. Her manner towards him was that of a
+person who is aware of, but on certain terms is willing to overlook a
+grave indiscretion, and she managed most successfully to make him feel
+that he was on his defense.
+
+"Yes, poor Doris has been very seedy. And her illness has unluckily
+coincided with mine."
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry ..." he began.
+
+"Thank you. I'm used to being ill. I am always ill. At least, as luck
+will have it, I usually feel ill when Doris has anything the matter with
+her."
+
+This John was ready to believe, but he tried to look at once shocked and
+sympathetic.
+
+"Do not let us discuss my health," Mrs. Hamilton went on scorching her
+eyebrows in the aureole of martyrdom she wore. "Of what importance is my
+health? Poor Doris has had a very sharp attack, a very sharp attack
+indeed."
+
+"I'm afraid that the weather...."
+
+"It's not the weather, Mr. Touchwood. It is overwork." And before John
+could say a word she was off. "You must remember that Doris is not used
+to hard work. She has spent all her life with me, and you can easily
+imagine that with a mother always at hand she has been spared the least
+hardship. I would have done anything for her. Ever since my husband
+died, my life has been one long buffer between Doris and the world. You
+know how obstinately she has refused to let me do all I wanted. I refer
+to my brother-in-law, Mr. Hamilton of Glencockie. And this is the
+result. Nervous prostration, influenza, a high temperature--and sharp
+pains, which between ourselves I'm inclined to think are perhaps not so
+bad as she imagines. People who are not accustomed to pains," said the
+old lady, jealously, "are always apt to be unduly alarmed and to
+attribute to them a severity that is a leetle exaggerated. I suffer so
+much myself that I cannot take these pains quite as seriously as Doris
+does. However, the poor child really has a good deal to put up with, and
+of course I've insisted that she must never attempt such hard work
+again. I don't suppose you meant to be inconsiderate, Mr. Touchwood. I
+don't accuse you of deliberate callousness. Please do not suppose that I
+am suggesting that the least cruelty in your behavior; but you _have_
+overworked her. Moreover, she has been worried. One or two of our
+friends have suggested more in joke than in earnest that she might be
+compromised by her association with you. No doubt this was said in joke,
+but Doris lacks her mother's sense of humor, and I'm afraid she has
+fretted over this. Still, a stitch in time saves nine, and her illness
+must serve as an excuse for what with a curiously youthful
+self-importance she calls 'leaving you in the lurch.' As I said to her,
+'Do not, my dear child, worry about Mr. Touchwood. He can find as many
+secretaries as he wants. Probably he thought he was doing you a good
+turn, and you've overstrained yourself in trying to cope with duties to
+which you have not been accustomed. You cannot expect to fly before you
+can walk.'"
+
+The old lady paused to fan back her breath, and John seized the
+conversation.
+
+"Does Miss Hamilton herself wish to leave me like this, or is it only
+you who think that she ought to leave me?"
+
+"I will be frank with you," the old lady panted. "Doris has not yet made
+up her mind."
+
+"As long as she is allowed to make up her own mind," said John, "I have
+nothing to say. But I hope you are not going to overpersuade her. After
+all she is old enough to know what she wants to do."
+
+"She is not as old as her mother."
+
+He shook his head impatiently.
+
+"Could I see her?"
+
+"See her?" the old lady answered in amazement. "See her, Mr. Touchwood?
+Didn't I explain that she was in bed?"
+
+"I beg your pardon. I'd forgotten."
+
+"Men are apt to forget somewhat easily. Come, come, do not let us get
+bitter. I took a great fancy to you when I met you first, and though I
+have been a little disappointed by the way in which you have taken
+advantage of Doris's eagerness for new experiences I don't really bear
+you any deep grudge. I don't believe you meant to be selfish. It is only
+a mother who can pierce a daughter's motives. You with your recent loss
+should be able to appreciate that particularly now. Poor Doris! I wish
+she were more like me."
+
+"If you really think I have overworked her," said John, "I'm extremely
+sorry. I dare say her enthusiasm carried me away. But I cannot
+relinquish her services without a struggle. She has been, and she _is_
+invaluable," he added, warmly.
+
+"Yes, but we must think of her health. I'm sorry to seem so
+_intransigente_, but I am only thinking of her."
+
+John was not at all taken in by the old lady's altruism, but he was
+entirely at a loss how to argue in favor of her daughter's continuing to
+work for him. His perplexity was increased by the fact that she herself
+had written to express her doubtfulness about returning; it might
+conceivably be that she did not want to return and that he was
+misjudging Mrs. Hamilton's sincerity. Yet when he looked at the old lady
+he could not discover anything but a cold egotism in every fold of those
+flabby cheeks where the powder lay like drifted snow in the ruts of a
+sunless lane. It was surely impossible that Doris should willingly have
+surrendered the liberty she enjoyed with him; she must have written
+under the depressing effects of influenza.
+
+While John was pondering his line of action Mrs. Hamilton had fanned
+herself into a renewed volubility; finding that it was impossible to
+cross the torrent of words that she was now pouring forth, he sat down
+by the edge of it, confused and deafened, and sometimes gasping a faint
+protest when he was splashed by some particularly outrageous argument.
+
+"Well, I'll write to her," he said at last.
+
+"I beg you will do nothing of the kind. In the present feeble state of
+her health a letter will only agitate her. I hope to persuade her to
+come with me to Glencockie where her uncle will, I know, once more
+suggest adopting her as his heiress...."
+
+The old lady flowed on with schemes for the future of Doris in which
+there was so much talk of Scotland that in the end his secretary
+appeared to John like an advertisement for whisky. He saw her
+rosy-cheeked and tam-o-shantered, smiling beneath a fir-tree while
+mockingly she quaffed a glass to the health of her late employer. He saw
+her as a kind of cross between Flora Macdonald and Highland Mary by the
+banks of Loch Lomond. He saw her in every guise except that in which he
+desired to see her--bending with that elusive and ironical smile over
+the typewriter they had purchased together. Damn!
+
+John made hurried adieus and fled to his taxi from the little house in
+Camera Square. The interview with Mrs. Hamilton had cost him
+half-a-crown and his peace of mind: it had cost the driver one halfpenny
+for the early edition of the _Star_. How much happier was the life of a
+taxi-driver than the life of a playwright!
+
+"I wouldn't say as how Benedictine mightn't win at Kempton this
+afternoon," the driver observed to John when he alighted. "I reckon I'll
+have half-a-dollar on, any old way. It's Bolmondeley's horse and bound
+to run straight."
+
+Benedictine did win that afternoon at six to one: indubitably the life
+of a taxi-driver was superior to his own, John thought as he turned with
+a shudder from the virgin foolscap upon his writing-desk and with a late
+edition of the _Star_ sank into a deep armchair.
+
+"A bachelor's life is a very lonely one," he sighed. For some reason
+Maud had neglected to draw the curtains after tea, and the black yawning
+window where the rain glistened drearily weighed upon his heart with a
+sense of utter abandonment. Ordinarily he would have rung the bell and
+pointed reproachfully to the omission; but this afternoon, he felt
+incapable of stirring from his chair to ring a bell. He could not even
+muster enough energy to poke the fire, which would soon show as little
+life as himself. He listened vainly for the footsteps of Maud or Mrs.
+Worfolk that he might call out and be rescued from this lethargy of
+despair; but not a sound was audible except the dripping rain outside
+and the consumptive coughs of the moribund fire.
+
+"Perhaps I'm feeling my mother's death," said John, hopefully.
+
+He made an effort to concentrate his mind upon an affectionate
+retrospect of family life. He tried to convince himself that the death
+of his mother would involve a change in the attitude of his relations.
+Technically he might not be the eldest son, and while his mother had
+been alive he had never assumed too definitely the rights of an eldest
+son. Practically, however, that was his status, and his acquisition of
+the family portraits and family silver could well be taken as the
+visible sign of that status; with his mother's death he might surely
+consider himself in the eyes of the world the head of the family. Did he
+want such an honor? It would be an expensive, troublesome, and
+ungrateful post like the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. Why didn't Maud
+come and draw those curtains? A thankless job, and it would be more
+congenial to have a family of his own. That meant marriage. And why
+shouldn't he get married? Several palmists had assured him he would be
+married one day: most of them indeed had assured him he was married
+already.
+
+"If I get married I can no longer be expected to bother about my
+relations. Of course in that case I should give back the portraits and
+the silver. My son would be junior to Bertram. My son would occupy an
+altogether inconspicuous position in the family, though he would always
+take precedence of Harold. But if my son had a child, Harold would
+become an uncle. No, he wouldn't. Harold would be a first cousin once
+removed. Harold cannot become an uncle unless Hilda marries again and
+has another child who has another child. Luckily, it's all very
+improbable. I'm glad Harold is never likely to be an uncle: he would
+bring the relationship into an even greater disrepute. Still, even now
+an uncle is disreputable enough. The wicked uncle! It's proverbial, of
+course. We never hear of the wicked cousin or the nefarious aunt. No,
+uncles share with stepmothers the opprobrium and with mothers-in-law the
+ridicule of the mob. Unquestionably, if I do marry, I shall still be an
+uncle, but the status may perhaps be merged in paternity. Suppose I
+marry and never have any children? My wife will be pitied by Hilda,
+Edith, and Eleanor and condoled with by Beatrice. She would find her
+position intolerable. My wife? I wish to goodness Maud would come in and
+draw those curtains. My wife? That's the question. At this stage the
+problem of her personality is more important than theoretical
+speculation about future children. Should I enjoy a woman's bobbing in
+and out of my room all the time? Suppose I were married at this moment,
+it would be my wife's duty to correct Maud for not having drawn those
+curtains. If I were married at this moment I should say, 'My dear, Maud
+does not seem to have drawn the curtains. I wonder why.' And my wife
+would of course ring the bell and remonstrate with Maud. But suppose my
+wife were upstairs? She might be trying on a new hat. Apparently wives
+spend a great deal of time with hats. In that case I should be no better
+off than I am at present. I should still have to get out of this chair
+and ring for Maud. And I should have to complain twice over. Once to
+Maud herself and afterwards all over again to my wife about Maud. Then
+my wife would have to rebuke Maud. Oh, it would be a terribly
+complicated business. Perhaps I'm better off as a bachelor. It's an odd
+thing that with my pictorial temperament I should never yet have
+visualized myself as a husband. My imagination is quite untrammeled in
+most directions. Were I to decide to-morrow that I would write a play
+about Adam and Eve, I should see myself as Adam and Eve and the Serpent
+and almost as the Forbidden Fruit itself without any difficulty. Why
+can't I see myself as a husband? When I think of the number of people
+and things I've been in imagination it really does seem extraordinary I
+should never have thought of being a husband. Apparently Maud has
+completely forgotten about the curtains. It looks as if I should have to
+give up all hope now of her coming in to draw them of her own accord.
+Poor Miss Hamilton! I do trust that horrible old clown of a mother isn't
+turning somersaults round her room at this moment and sending up her
+temperature to three figures. Of course, she must come back to me. She
+is indispensable. I miss her very much. I've accustomed myself to a
+secretary's assistance, and naturally I'm lost without her. These morbid
+thoughts about matrimony are due to my not having done a stroke of work
+all day. I will count seventeen and rise from this chair."
+
+John counted seventeen, but when he came to the fatal number he found
+that his will to move was still paralyzed, and he went on to
+forty-nine--the next fatal number in his private cabbala. When he
+reached it he tightened every nerve in his body and leapt to his feet.
+Inertia was succeeded by the bustle of activity: he rang for Maud; he
+poked the fire; he brushed the tobacco-ash from his waistcoat; he blew
+his nose; he sat down at his desk.
+
+My dear Miss Hamilton, [he wrote,] I cannot say how distressed I was to
+hear the news of your illness and still more to learn from your mother
+that you were seriously thinking of resigning your post. I'm also
+extremely distressed to hear from her that there are symptoms of
+overwork. If I've been inconsiderate I must beg your forgiveness and ask
+you to attribute it to your own good-will. The fact is your example has
+inspired me. With your encouragement I undoubtedly do work much harder
+than formerly. Today, without you, I have not written a single word, and
+I feel dreadfully depressed at the prospect of your desertion. Do let me
+plead for your services when you are well again, at any rate until I've
+finished Joan of Arc, for I really don't think I shall ever finish that
+play without them. I have felt the death of my poor mother very much,
+but I do not ascribe my present disinclination for work to that. No, on
+the contrary, I came back from the funeral with a determination to bury
+myself--that might be expressed better--to plunge myself into hard work.
+Your note telling me of your illness was a great shock, and your
+mother's uncompromising attitude this morning has added to my dejection.
+I feel that I am growing old and view with horror the approach of age.
+I've been sitting by the fire indulging myself in very morbid thoughts.
+You will laugh when I tell you that amongst them was the idea--I might
+call it the chimera of marriage. Do please get well soon and rescue me
+from myself.
+
+Yours very sincerely,
+
+JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
+
+I do not, of course, wish to disturb the relationship between yourself
+and your mother, but my own recent loss has reminded me that mothers do
+not live forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+John waited in considerable anxiety for Miss Hamilton's reply to his
+letter, and when a few days later she answered his appeal in person by
+presenting herself for work as usual he could not express in words the
+intensity of his satisfaction, but could only prance round her as if he
+had been a dumb domestic animal instead of a celebrated romantic
+playwright.
+
+"And what have you done since I've been away?" she asked, without
+alluding to her illness or to her mother or to her threat of being
+obliged to leave him.
+
+John looked abashed.
+
+"Not very much, I'm afraid."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Well, to be quite honest, nothing at all"
+
+She referred sympathetically to the death of Mrs. Touchwood, and,
+without the ghost of a blush, he availed himself of that excuse for
+idleness.
+
+"But now you're back," he added, "I'm going to work harder than ever.
+Oh, but I forgot. I mustn't overwork you."
+
+"Nonsense," said Miss Hamilton, sharply. "I don't think the amount you
+write every day will ever do me much harm."
+
+John busied himself with paper, pens, ink, and notebooks, and was soon
+as deep in the fourth act as if there had never been an intermission.
+For a month he worked in perfect tranquillity, and went so far as to
+calculate that if Miss Hamilton was willing to remain forever in his
+employ there was no reason why he should not produce three plays a year
+until he was seventy. Then one morning in mid-February Mr. Ricketts
+arrived in a state of perturbation to say that he had been unable to
+obtain any reply to several letters and telegrams informing Hugh when
+their steamer would leave. Now here they were with only a day before
+departure, and he was still without news of the young man. John looked
+guilty. The fact was that he had decided not to open any letters from
+his relations throughout this month, alleging to himself the
+interruption they caused to his work and trusting to the old
+superstition that if left unanswered long enough all letters, even the
+most disagreeable, answered themselves.
+
+"I was wondering why your correspondence had dwindled so," said Miss
+Hamilton, severely.
+
+"But that is no excuse for my brother," John declared. "Because I don't
+write to him, that is no reason why he shouldn't write to Mr. Ricketts."
+
+"Well, we're off to-morrow," said the mahogany-planter.
+
+An indignant telegram was sent to Hugh; but the prepaid answer came back
+from Hilda to say that he had gone off with a friend a fortnight ago
+without leaving any address. Mr. Ricketts, who had been telephoned for
+in the morning, arrived about noon in a taxi loaded with exotic luggage.
+
+"I can't wait," he assured John. "The lad must come on by the next boat.
+I shan't go up country for a week or so. Good-by, Mr. Touchwood; I'm
+sorry not to have your brother's company. I was going to put him wise to
+the job on the trip across."
+
+"But look here, can't you...." John began, despairingly.
+
+"Can't wait. I shall miss the boat. West India Docks," he shouted to the
+driver, "and stop at the last decent pub in the city on the way
+through."
+
+The taxi buzzed off.
+
+Two days later Hugh appeared at Church Row, mentioned casually that he
+was sorry he had missed the boat, but that he had been doing a little
+architectural job for a friend of his.
+
+"Very good bridge," he commented, approvingly.
+
+"Over what?" John demanded.
+
+"Over very good whisky," said Hugh. "It was up in the North. Capital
+fun. I was designing a smoking-room for a man I know who's just come
+into money. I've had a ripping time. Good hands every evening and a very
+decent fee. In fact, I don't see why I shouldn't start an office of my
+own."
+
+"And what about mahogany?"
+
+"Look here, I never liked that idea of yours, Johnnie. Everybody agrees
+that British Honduras is a rotten climate, and if you want to help me,
+you can help me much more effectively by setting me up on my own as an
+architect."
+
+"I do not want to help you. I've invested L2,000 in mahogany and
+logwood, and I insist on getting as much interest on my money as your
+absence from England will bring me in."
+
+"Yes, that's all very well, old chap. But why do you want me to leave
+England?"
+
+John embarked upon a justification of his attitude, in the course of
+which he pointed out the dangers of idleness, reminded Hugh of the
+forgery, tried to inspire him with hopes of independence, hinted at
+moral obligations, and rhapsodized about colonial enterprise. As a
+mountain of forensic art the speech was wonderful: clothed on the lower
+slopes with a rich and varied vegetation of example and precept, it
+gradually ascended to the hard rocks of necessity, honor, and duty until
+it culminated in a peak of snow where John's singleness of motive
+glittered immaculately and inviolably to heaven. It was therefore
+discouraging for the orator when he paused and walked slowly up stage to
+give the culprit an opportunity to make a suitably penitent reply, after
+which the curtain was to come down upon a final outburst of magnanimous
+eloquence from himself, that Hugh should merely growl the contemptuous
+monosyllable "rot."
+
+"Rot?" repeated John in amazement.
+
+"Yes. Rot. I'm not going to reason with you...."
+
+"Ah, indeed?" John interrupted, sarcastically.
+
+"Because reason would be lost on you. I simply repeat 'Rot!' If I don't
+want to go to British Honduras, I won't go. Why, to hear you talk
+anybody would suppose that I hadn't had the same opportunities as
+yourself. If you chose to blur your intelligence by writing romantic
+tushery, you must remember that by doing so you yielded to temptation
+just as much as I did when I forged Stevie's name. Do you think I would
+write plays like yours? Never!" he proclaimed, proudly.
+
+"It seems to me that the conversation is indeed going outside the limits
+of reason," said John, trying hard to restrain himself.
+
+"My dear old chap, it has never been inside the limits. No, no, you
+collared me when I was down over that check. Well, here's what you paid
+to get me out of the mess." He threw a bundle of notes on the table. "So
+long, Johnnie, and don't be too resentful of my having demonstrated that
+when I _am_ left for a while on my own I can earn money as well as you.
+I'm going to stay in town for a bit before I go North again, so I shall
+see you from time to time. By the way, you might send me the receipt to
+Carlington Road. I'm staying with Aubrey as usual."
+
+When his brother had gone, John counted the notes in a stupor. It would
+be too much to say that he was annoyed at being paid back; but he was
+not sufficiently pleased to mention the fact to Miss Hamilton for two
+days.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad," she exclaimed when at last he did bring himself to
+tell her.
+
+"Yes, it's very encouraging," John agreed, doubtfully. "I'm still
+suffering slightly from the shock, which has been a very novel
+sensation. To be perfectly honest, I never realized before how much less
+satisfactory it is to be paid back than one thinks beforehand it is
+going to be."
+
+In spite of the disturbing effect of Hugh's honesty, John soon settled
+down again to the play, and became so much wrapped up in its daily
+progress that one afternoon he was able without a tremor to deny
+admittance to Laurence, who having written to warn him that he was
+taking advantage of a further reduction in the price on day-tickets, had
+paid another visit to London. Laurence took with ill grace his
+brother-in-law's message that he was too busy on his own work to talk
+about anybody's else at present.
+
+"I confess I was pained," he wrote from Ambles on John's own note-paper,
+"by the harsh reception of my friendly little visit. I confess that
+Edith and I had hoped you would welcome the accession of a relative to
+the ranks of contemporary playwrights. We feel that in the circumstances
+we cannot stay any longer in your house. Indeed, Edith is even as I pen
+these lines packing Frida's little trunk. She is being very brave, but
+her tear-stained face tells its own tale, and I confess that I myself am
+writing with a heavy heart. Eleanor has been most kind, and in addition
+to giving me several more introductions to her thespian friends has
+arranged with the proprietress of Halma House for a large double room
+with dressing-room attached on terms which I can only describe as
+absurdly moderate. Do not think we are angry. We are only pained,
+bitterly pained that our happy family life should suddenly collapse like
+this. However, excelsior, as the poet said, or as another poet even
+greater said, 'sic itur ad astra.' You will perhaps be able to spare a
+moment from the absorption of your own affairs to read with a fleeting
+interest that Sir Percy Mortimer has offered me the part of the butler
+in a comedy of modern manners which he hopes to stage--you see I am
+already up to the hilt in the jargon of the profession--next autumn.
+Eleanor considers this to be an excellent opening, as indeed so do I.
+Edith and little Frida laugh heartily when they are not too sad for such
+simple fun when I enter the room and assume the characteristic
+mannerisms of a butler. All agree I have a natural propensity for droll
+impersonation. Who knows? I may make a great hit, although Sir Percy
+warns me that the part is but a slight one. Eleanor, however, reminds me
+that deportment is always an asset for an actor. Have I not read
+somewhere that the great Edmund Kean did not disdain to play the tail
+end of a dragon erstwhile? I wish you all good luck in your own work, my
+dear John. People are interested when they hear you are my
+brother-in-law, and I have told them many tales of the way you are wont
+to consult me over the little technical details of religion in which I
+as a former clergyman have been able to afford you my humble
+assistance."
+
+"What a pompous ass the man is," said John to his secretary. He had read
+her the letter, which made her laugh.
+
+"I believe you're really quite annoyed that _he's_ showing an
+independent spirit now."
+
+"Not at all. I'm delighted to be rid of him," John contradicted. "I
+suppose he'll share George's aquarium at Halma House."
+
+"You don't mind my laughing? Because it is very funny, you know."
+
+"Yes, it's funny in a way," John admitted. "But even if it weren't, I
+shouldn't mind your laughing. You have, if I may say so, a peculiarly
+musical laugh."
+
+"Are you going to have Joan's scaffold right center or left center?" she
+asked, quickly.
+
+"Eh? What? Oh, put it where you like. By the way, has your mother been
+girding at you lately?"
+
+Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"She isn't yet reconciled to my being a secretary, if that's what you
+mean."
+
+"I'm sorry," John murmured. "Confound all relations!" he burst out. "I
+suppose she'd object to your going to France with me to finish off the
+play?"
+
+"She would object violently. But you mustn't forget that I've a will of
+my own."
+
+"Of course you have," said John, admiringly. "And you will go, eh?"
+
+"I'll see--I won't promise. Look here, Mr. Touchwood, I don't want to
+seem--what shall I call it--timid, but if I did go to France with you, I
+suppose you realize my mother would make such a fuss about it that
+people would end by really talking? Forgive my putting such an
+unpleasant idea into your innocent head; being your confidential
+secretary, I feel I oughtn't to let you run any risks. I don't suppose
+you care a bit how much people talk, and I'm sure I don't; at the same
+time I shouldn't like you to turn round on me and say I ought to have
+warned you."
+
+"Talk!" John exclaimed. "The idea is preposterous. Talk! Good gracious
+me, can't I take my secretary abroad without bring accused of ulterior
+motives?"
+
+"Now, don't work yourself into a state of wrath, or you won't be able to
+think of this terribly important last scene. Anyway, we sha'n't be going
+to France yet, and we can discuss the project more fully when the time
+comes."
+
+John thought vaguely how well Miss Hamilton knew how to keep him
+unruffled, and with a grateful look--or what was meant to be a grateful
+look, though she blushed unaccountably when he gave it--he concentrated
+upon the site of his heroine's scaffold.
+
+During March the weather was so bright and exhilarating that John and
+his secretary took many walks together on Hampstead Heath; they also
+often went to town, and John derived much pleasure from discussing
+various business affairs with her clerical support; he found that it
+helped considerably when dealing with the manager of a film company to
+be able to say "Will you make a note of that, please, Miss Hamilton?"
+The only place, in fact, to which John did not take her was his club,
+and that was only because he was not allowed to introduce ladies there.
+
+"A rather mediaeval restriction," he observed one day to a group
+assembled in the smoking-room.
+
+"There was a time, Touchwood, when you used to take refuge here from
+your leading ladies," a bachelor member chuckled.
+
+"But nowadays Touchwood has followed Adam with the rest of us," put in
+another.
+
+"What's that?" said John, sharply.
+
+There was a general burst of merriment and headshaking and wagging of
+fingers, from which and a succession of almost ribald comment John began
+to wonder if his private life was beginning to be a subject for club
+gossip. He managed to prevent himself from saying that he thought such
+chaff in bad taste, because he did not wish to give point to it by
+taking it too much in earnest. Nevertheless, he was seriously annoyed
+and avoided the smoking-room for a week.
+
+One night, after the first performance of a friend's play, he turned in
+to the club for supper, and, being disinclined for sleep, because
+although it was a friend's play it had been a tremendous success, which
+always made him feel anxious about his own future he lingered on until
+the smoking-room was nearly deserted. Towards three o'clock he was
+sitting pensively in a quiet corner when he heard his name mentioned by
+two members, who had taken seats close by without perceiving his
+presence. They were both strangers to him, and he was about to rise from
+his chair and walk severely out of the room, when he heard one say to
+the other:
+
+"Yes, they tell me his brother-in-law writes his plays for him."
+
+John found this so delightfully diverting an idea that he could not
+resist keeping quiet to hear more.
+
+"Oh, I don't believe that," said the second unknown member.
+
+"Fact, I assure you. I was told so by a man who knows Eleanor
+Cartright."
+
+"The actress?"
+
+"Yes, she's a sister-in-law of his."
+
+"Really, I never knew that."
+
+"Oh yes. Well, this man met her with a fellow called Armitage, an
+ex-monk who broke his vows in order to marry Touchwood's sister."
+
+John pressed himself deeper into his armchair.
+
+"Really? But I never knew monks could marry," objected number two.
+
+"I tell you, he broke his vows."
+
+"Oh, I see," murmured number two, who was evidently no wiser, but was
+anxious to appear so.
+
+"Well, it seems that this fellow Armitage is a thundering fine poet, but
+without much experience of the stage. Of course, he wouldn't have had
+much as a monk."
+
+"Of course not," agreed number two, decidedly.
+
+"So, what does Johnnie Touchwood do--"
+
+"Damned impudence calling me Johnnie," thought the subject of the
+duologue.
+
+"But make a contract with his brother-in-law to stay out of the way down
+in Devonshire or Dorsetshire--I forget which--but, anyway, down in the
+depths of the country somewhere, and write all the best speeches in old
+Johnnie's plays. Now, it seems there's been a family row, and they tell
+me that Armitage is going to sue Johnnie."
+
+"What was the row about?"
+
+"Well, apparently Johnnie is a bit close. Most of these successful
+writers are, of course," said number one with the nod of an expert.
+
+"Of course," agreed his companion, with an air of equally profound
+comprehension.
+
+"And took advantage of his position as the fellow with money to lord it
+over the rest of his family. There's another brother--an awful clever
+beggar--James, I think his name is--a real first-class scientist,
+original research man and all that, who's spent the whole of his fortune
+on some great discovery or other. Well, will you believe it, but the
+other day when he was absolutely starving, Johnnie Touchwood offered to
+lend him some trifling sum if he would break the entail."
+
+"I didn't know the Touchwoods were landed proprietors. I always
+understood the father was a dentist," said number two.
+
+"Oh, no, no. Very old family. Wonderful old house down in Devonshire or
+Dorset--I wish I could remember just where it is. Anyway, it seems that
+the eldest brother clung on to this like anything. Of course, he would."
+
+"Of course," number two agreed.
+
+"But Johnnie, who's hard as flint, insisted on breaking the entail in
+his own favor, and now I hear he's practically turned the whole family
+into the street, including James' boy, who in the ordinary course of
+events would have inherited."
+
+"Did Eleanor Cartright tell your friend this?" asked number two.
+
+"Oh no, I've heard that from lots of people. It seems that old Mrs.
+Touchwood died of grief over the way Johnnie carried on. It's really a
+very grim story when you hear the details; unfortunately, I can't
+remember all of them. My memory's getting awfully bad nowadays."
+
+Number two muttered an expression of sympathy, and the other continued:
+
+"But one detail I do remember is that another brother--"
+
+"It's a large family, then?"
+
+"Oh, very large. As I was saying, the old lady was terribly upset not
+only about breaking the entail, but also over her youngest son, who had
+some incurable disease. It seems that he was forced by Johnnie to go out
+to the Gold Coast--I think it was--in order to see about some money that
+Johnnie had invested in rubber or something. As I say, I can't remember
+the exact details. However, cherchez la femme, I needn't add the reasons
+for all this."
+
+"A woman?"
+
+"Exactly," said number one. "Some people say it's a married woman, and
+others say it's a young girl of sixteen. Anyway, Johnnie's completely
+lost his head over her, and they tell me...."
+
+The two members put their heads together so that John could not hear
+what was said: but it must have been pretty bad, because when they put
+them apart again number two was clicking his tongue in shocked
+amazement.
+
+"By Jove, that will cause a terrific scandal, eh?"
+
+John decided he had heard enough. Assuming an expression of intense
+superiority, the sort of expression a man might assume who was standing
+on the top of Mount Everest, he rose from his chair, eyed the two
+gossips with disdain, and strode out of the smoking-room. Just as he
+reached the door, he heard number one exclaim:
+
+"Hulloa, see who that was? That was old Percy Mortimer."
+
+"Oh, of course," said number two, as sapiently as ever, "I didn't
+recognize him for a moment. He's beginning to show his age, eh?"
+
+On the way back to Hampstead John tried to assure himself that the
+conversation he had just overheard did not represent anything more
+important than the vaporings of an exceptionally idiotic pair of men
+about town; but the more he meditated upon the tales about himself
+evidently now in general circulation, the more he was appalled at the
+recklessness of calumny.
+
+"One has joked about it. One has laughed at Sheridan's _School for
+Scandal_. One has admitted that human beings are capable of almost
+incredible exaggeration. But--no, really this is too much. I've gossiped
+sometimes myself about my friends, but never like that about a
+stranger--a man in the public eye."
+
+John nearly stopped the taxi to ask the driver if _he_ had heard any
+stories about John Touchwood; but he decided it would not be wise to run
+risk of discovery that he enjoyed less publicity than he was beginning
+to imagine, and he kept his indignation to himself.
+
+"After all, it is a sign of--well, yes, I think it might fairly be
+called fame--a sign of fame to be talked about like that by a couple of
+ignorant chatterboxes. It is, I suppose, a tribute to my position. But
+Laurence! That's what annoyed me most. Laurence to be the author of my
+plays! I begin to understand this ridiculous Bacon and Shakespeare
+legend now. The rest of the gossip was malicious, but that was--really,
+I think it was actionable. I shall take it up with the committee. The
+idea of that pompous nincompoop writing Lucretia's soliloquy before she
+poisons her lips! Laurence! Good heavens! And fancy Laurence writing
+Nebuchadnezzar's meditation upon grass! By Jove, an audience would have
+some cause to titter then! And Laurence writing Joan's defense to the
+Bishop of Beauvais! Why, the bombastic pedant couldn't even write a
+satisfactory letter to the Bishop of Silchester to keep himself from
+being ignominiously chucked out of his living."
+
+The infuriated author bounced up and down on the cushions of the taxi in
+his rage.
+
+"Shall I give you an arm up the steps, sir?" the driver offered,
+genially, when John, having alighted at his front door, had excessively
+overpaid him under the impression from which he was still smarting of
+being called a skinflint.
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. I thought you was a little bit tiddly. You seemed a
+bit lively inside on the way up."
+
+"I suppose the next thing is that I shall get the reputation of being a
+dipsomaniac," said John to himself, as he flung open his door and
+marched immediately, with a slightly accentuated rigidity of bearing,
+upstairs to bed.
+
+But he could not sleep. The legend of his behavior that was obviously
+common gossip in London oppressed him with its injustice. Every
+accusation took on a new and fantastic form, while he turned over and
+over in an attempt to reach oblivion. He began to worry now more about
+what had been implied in his association with Miss Hamilton than about
+the other stories. He felt that it would only be a very short time
+before she would hear of the tale in some monstrous shape and leave him
+forever in righteous disgust. Ought he, indeed, to make her aware
+to-morrow morning of what was being suggested? And even if he did not
+say anything about the past, ought he to compromise her more deeply in
+the future?
+
+It was six o'clock before John fell asleep, and it was with a violent
+headache that he faced his secretary after breakfast. Luckily there was
+a letter from Janet Bond asking him to come and see her that morning
+upon a matter of importance. He seized the excuse to postpone any
+discussion of last night's revelation, and, telling Miss Hamilton he
+should be back for lunch, he decided to walk down to the Parthenon
+Theater in the hope of arriving there with a clearer and saner view of
+life. He nearly told her to go home; but, reflecting that he might come
+back in quite a different mood, he asked her instead to occupy herself
+with the collation of some scattered notes upon Joan of Arc that were
+not yet incorporated into the scheme of the play. He remembered, too,
+that it would be his birthday in three days' time, and he asked her to
+send out notes of invitation to his family for the annual celebration,
+at which the various members liked to delude themselves with the idea
+that by presenting him with a number of useless accessories to the
+smoking-table they were repaying him in full for all his kindness. He
+determined that his birthday speech on this occasion should be made the
+vehicle for administering a stern rebuke to malicious gossip. He would
+dam once for all this muddy stream of scandal, and he would make
+Laurence write a letter to the press disclaiming the authorship of his
+plays. Burning with reformative zeal and fast losing his headache, John
+swung down Fitzjohn's Avenue in the spangled March sunlight to the
+wicked city below.
+
+The Parthenon Theater had for its acropolis the heights of the Adelphi,
+where, viewed from the embankment gardens below, it seemed to be looking
+condescendingly down upon the efforts of the London County Council to
+intellectualize the musical taste of the generation. In the lobby--it
+had been called the propylaeum until it was found that such a long name
+had discouraged the public from booking seats beforehand through fear of
+mispronunciation--a bust of Janet Bond represented the famous statue
+Pallas Athene on the original acropolis, and the programme-girls,
+dressed as caryatides, supplied another charming touch of antiquity. The
+proprietress herself was the outstanding instance in modern times of the
+exploitation of virginity--it must have been a very profitable
+exploitation, because the Parthenon Theater itself had been built and
+paid for by her unsuccessful admirers. Each year made Janet Bond's
+position as virgin and actress more secure, and at the rate her
+reputation was growing it was probable that she would soon be at liberty
+to produce the most immodest plays. At present, however, she still
+applied the same standard of her conduct to her plays as to herself. Nor
+did she confine herself to that. She was also very strict about the
+private lives of her performers, and many a young actress had been seen
+to leave the stage door in tears because Miss Bond had observed her in
+unsuitable company at supper. Mothers wrote from all over England to beg
+Miss Bond to charge herself with the care of their stage-struck
+daughters; the result was a conventional tone among the supernumeraries
+slightly flavored with militant suffragism and the higher mathematics.
+Nor was art neglected; indeed some critics hinted that in the Parthenon
+Theater art was cultivated at the expense of life, though none of them
+attempted to gainsay that Miss Bond had learned how to make virtue pay
+without selling it.
+
+In appearance the great tragedienne was somewhat rounder in outline than
+might have been expected, and more matronly than virginal, perhaps
+because she was in her own words a mother to all her girls. Her voice
+was rich and deep with as much variety as a cunningly sounded gong. She
+never made up for the stage, and she wore hygienic corsets: this
+intimate fact was allowed to escape through the indiscretion of a
+widespread advertisement, but its publication helped her reputation for
+decorum, and clergymen who read their wives' _Queen_ or _Lady_ commented
+favorably on the contrast between Miss Bond and the numerous
+open-mouthed actresses who preferred to advertise toothpaste. England
+was proud of Miss Bond, feeling that America had no longer any right to
+vaunt a monopoly of virtuous actresses; and John, when he rang the bell
+of Miss Bond's flat that existed cleverly in the roof of the theater,
+was proud of his association with her. He did not have to wait long in
+her austere study; indeed he had barely time to admire the fluted calyx
+of a white trumpet daffodil that in chaste symbolism was the only
+occupant of a blue china bowl before Miss Bond herself came in.
+
+"I'm so hating what I'm going to have to say to you," she boomed.
+
+This was a jolly way to begin an interview, John thought, especially in
+his present mood. He tried to look attentive, faintly surprised,
+dignified, and withal deferential; but, not being a great actor, he
+failed to express all these states of mind at a go, and only succeeded
+in dropping his gloves.
+
+"Hating it," the actress cried. "Oh, hating it!"
+
+"Well, if you'd rather postpone it," John began.
+
+"No, no. It must be said now. It's just this!" She paused and fixed the
+author more intensely than a snake fixes a rabbit or a woman in a bus
+tries to see if the woman opposite has blacked her eyelashes. "Can I
+produce _Joan of Arc_?"
+
+"I think that question is answered by our contract," replied John, who
+was used to leading ladies, and when they started like this always fell
+back at once in good order on business.
+
+"Yes, but what about my unwritten contract with the public?" she
+demanded.
+
+"I don't know anything about that," said the author. Moreover, I don't
+see how an unwritten contract can interfere with our written contract."
+
+"John Touchwood, I'm going to be frank with you, fiercely frank. I can't
+afford to produce a play by you about a heroine like Joan of Arc unless
+you take steps to put things right."
+
+"If you want me to cut that scene...."
+
+"Oh, I'm not talking about scenes, John Touchwood. I'm talking about
+these terrible stories that everybody is whispering about you. I don't
+mind myself what you do. Good gracious me, I'm a broad-minded modern
+woman; but my public looks for something special at the Parthenon. The
+knowledge that I am going to play the Maid of Orleans has moved them
+indescribably; I was fully prepared to give you the success of your
+career, but ... these stories! This girl! You know what people are
+saying? You must have heard. How can I put your name on my programme as
+the author of _Joan of Arc_? How can I, John Touchwood?"
+
+If John had not overheard that conversation at his club the night
+before, he would have supposed that Miss Bond had gone mad.
+
+"May I inquire exactly what you have heard about me and my private
+life?" he inquired, as judicially as he could.
+
+"Please spare me from repeating the stories. I can honestly assure you
+that I don't believe them. But you as a man of the world know very well
+how unimportant it is whether a story is true or not. If you were a
+writer of realistic drama, these stories, however bad they were,
+wouldn't matter. If your next play was going to be produced at the Court
+Theater, these stories would, if anything, be in favor of success ...
+but at the Parthenon...."
+
+"You are talking nonsense, Miss Bond," interrupted John, angrily. "You
+are more in a condition to play Ophelia than Joan of Arc. Moreover, you
+shan't play Joan of Arc now. I've really been regretting for some weeks
+now that you were going to play her, and I'm delighted to have this
+opportunity of preventing you from playing her. I don't know to what
+tittle-tattle you've been listening. I don't care. Your opinion of your
+own virtue may be completely justified, but your judgment of other
+people's is vulgar and--however, let me recommend you to produce a play
+by my brother-in-law, the Reverend Laurence Armitage. Even your
+insatiable ambition may be gratified by the part of the Virgin Mary, who
+is one of the chief characters. Good morning, Miss Bond. I shall
+communicate with you more precisely through my agent."
+
+John marched out of the theater, and on the pavement outside ran into
+Miss Ida Merritt.
+
+"Ah, you're a sensible woman," he spluttered, much to her astonishment.
+"For goodness' sake, come and have lunch with me, and let's talk over
+everything."
+
+John, in his relief at meeting Miss Merritt, had taken her arm in a
+cordial fashion, and steered her across the Strand to Romano's without
+waiting to choose a less conspicuously theatrical restaurant. Indeed in
+his anxiety to clear his reputation he forgot everything, and it was
+only when he saw various people at the little tables nudging one another
+and bobbing their heads together that he realized he was holding Miss
+Merritt's arm. He dropped it like a hot coal, and plunged down at a
+table marked "reserved." The head waiter hurried across to apprise him
+of the mistake, and John, who was by now horribly self-conscious,
+fancied that the slight incident had created a stir throughout the
+restaurant. No doubt it would be all over town by evening that he and
+his companion in guilt had been refused service at every restaurant in
+London.
+
+"Look here," said John, when at last they were accommodated at a table
+painfully near the grill, the spitting and hissing from which seemed to
+symbolize the attitude of a hostile society. "Look here, what stories
+have you heard about me? You're a journalist. You write chatty
+paragraphs. For heaven's sake, tell me the worst."
+
+"Oh, I haven't heard anything that's printable," Miss Merritt assured
+him, with a laugh.
+
+John put his head between his hands and groaned; the waiter thought he
+was going to dip his hair into the hors d'oeuvres and hurriedly
+removed the dishes.
+
+"No, seriously, I beg you to tell me if you've heard my name connected
+in any unpleasant way with Miss Hamilton."
+
+"No, the only thing I've heard about Doris is that your brother, Hugh,
+is always pestering her with his attentions."
+
+"What?" John shouted.
+
+"Coming, sir," cried the waiter, skipping round the table like a
+monkey.
+
+John waved him away, and begged Miss Merritt to be more explicit.
+
+"Why didn't she complain to me?" he asked when he had heard her story.
+
+"She probably thought she could look after herself. Besides, wasn't he
+going to British Guiana?"
+
+"He was," replied John. "At least he was going to some tropical colony.
+I've heard so many mentioned that I'm beginning myself to forget which
+it was now. So that's why he didn't go. But he shall go. If I have to
+have him kidnaped and spend all my savings on chartering a private yacht
+for the purpose, by Heaven, he shall go. If he shrivels up like a burnt
+sausage the moment he puts his foot on the beach he shall be left there
+to shrivel. The rascal! When does he pester her? Where?"
+
+"Don't get so excited. Doris is perfectly capable of looking after
+herself. Besides, I think she rather likes him in a way."
+
+"Never," John cried.
+
+"Liver is finished, sair," said the officious waiter, dancing in again
+between John and Miss Merritt.
+
+John shook his fist at him and leant earnestly over the table with one
+elbow in the butter.
+
+"You don't seriously suggest that she is in love with him?" he asked.
+
+"No, I don't think so. But I met him myself once and took rather a fancy
+to him. No, she just likes him as a friend. It's he who's in love with
+her."
+
+"Under my very eyes," John ejaculated. "Why, it's overwhelming."
+
+A sudden thought struck him that even at this moment while he was calmly
+eating lunch with Miss Merritt, as he somewhat loosely qualified the
+verb, Hugh might be making love to Miss Hamilton in his own house.
+
+"Look here," he cried, "have you nearly finished? Because I've suddenly
+remembered an important appointment at Hampstead."
+
+"I don't want any more," said Miss Merritt, obligingly.
+
+"Waiter, the bill! Quick! You don't mind if I rush off and leave you to
+finish your cheese alone?"
+
+His guest shook her head and John hurried out of the restaurant.
+
+No taxi he had traveled in had ever seemed so slow, and he kept putting
+his head out of the window to urge the driver to greater speed, until
+the man goaded to rudeness by John's exhortations and the trams in
+Tottenham Court Road asked if his fare thought he was a blinking bullet.
+
+"I'm not bullying you. I'm only asking you to drive a little faster,"
+John shouted back.
+
+The driver threw his eyes heavenward in a gesture of despair for John's
+sanity but he was pacified at Church Row by half-a-sovereign and even
+went so far as to explain that he had not accused John of bullying him,
+but merely of confusing his capacity for speed with that of a bullet's.
+John thought he was asking for more money, gave him half-a-crown and
+waving his arm, half in benediction, half in protest, he hurried into
+the hall.
+
+"They've nearly finished lunch, sir," murmured Maud who was just coming
+from the dining-room. "Would you like Elsa to hot you up something?"
+
+John without a word pounced into the dining-room, where he caught Hugh
+with a stick of celery half-way to his mouth and Miss Hamilton with a
+glass of water half-way down from hers in the other direction.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry we began without you," said the culprits
+simultaneously.
+
+John murmured something about a trying interview with Janet Bond, lit a
+cigar, realized it was rude to light cigars when people were still
+eating, threw the cigar away, and sat down with an appearance of
+exhaustion in one of those dining-room armchairs that stand and wait all
+their lives to serve a moment like this.
+
+"I'm sorry, but I must ask you to go off as soon as you've finished
+your lunch, Hugh. I've a lot of important business to transact with Miss
+Hamilton."
+
+"Oh, but I've finished already," she exclaimed, jumping up from the
+table.
+
+It was the first pleasant moment in John's day, and he smiled,
+gratefully. He felt he could even afford to be generous to this
+intrusive brother, and before he left the room with Miss Hamilton he
+invited him to have some more celery.
+
+"And you'll find a cigar in the sideboard," he added. "But Maud will
+look after you. Maud, look after Mr. Hugh, please, and if anybody calls
+this afternoon, I'm not at home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+John's first impulse had been to pour out in Miss Hamilton's ears the
+tale of his wrongs, and afterward, when he had sufficiently impressed
+her with the danger of the position in which the world was trying to
+place them, to ask her to marry him as the only way to escape from it.
+On second thoughts, he decided that she might be offended by the
+suggestion of having been compromised by him and that she might resent
+the notion of their marriage's being no more than a sop to public
+opinion. He therefore abandoned the idea of enlarging upon the scandal
+their association had apparently created and proposed to substitute the
+trite but always popular scene of the prosperous middle-aged man's
+renunciation of love and happiness in favor of a young and penurious
+rival. He recalled how many last acts in how many sentimental comedies
+had owed their success to this situation, which never failed with an
+audience. But then the average audience was middle-aged. Thinking of the
+many audiences on which from private boxes he had looked down, John was
+sure that bald heads always predominated in the auditorium; and
+naturally those bald heads had been only too ready to nod approval of a
+heroine who rejected the dashing jeune premier to fling herself into the
+arms of the elderly actor-manager. It was impossible to think of any
+infirmity severe enough to thwart an actor-manager. Yet a play was
+make-believe: in real life events would probably turn out quite
+differently. It would be very depressing, if he offered to make Doris
+and Hugh happy together by settling upon them a handsome income, to find
+Doris jumping at the prospect. Perhaps it would be more prudent not to
+suggest any possibility of a marriage between them. It might even be
+more prudent not to mention the subject of marriage at all. John looked
+at his secretary with what surely must have been a very eloquent glance
+indeed, because she dropped her pencil, blushed, and took his hand.
+
+"How much simpler life is than art," John murmured. He would never have
+dared to allow one of his heroes in a moment of supreme emotion like
+this to crane his neck across a wide table in order to kiss the heroine.
+Any audience would have laughed at such an awkward gesture; yet, though
+he only managed to reach her lips with half an inch to spare, the kiss
+was not at all funny somehow. No, it ranked with Paolo's or Anthony's or
+any other famous lover's kiss.
+
+"And now of course I can't be your secretary any longer," she sighed.
+
+"Why? Do you disapprove of wives' helping their husbands?"
+
+"I don't think you really want to get married, do you?"
+
+"My dear, I'm absolutely dying to get married."
+
+"Truly?"
+
+"Doris, look at me."
+
+And surely she looked at him with more admiration than he had ever
+looked at himself in a glass.
+
+"What a time I shall have with mother," she gasped with the gurgling
+triumphant laugh of a child who has unexpectedly found the way to open
+the store-cupboard.
+
+"Oh, no, you won't," John prophesied, confidently. "I'm not going to
+have such an excellent last scene spoilt by unnecessary talk. We'll get
+married first and tell everybody afterwards. I've lately discovered what
+an amazing capacity ordinary human nature has for invention. It really
+frightens me for the future of novelists, who I cannot believe will be
+wanted much longer. Oh no, Doris, I'm not going to run the risk of
+hearing any preliminary gossip about our marriage. Neither your mother
+nor my relations nor the general public are going to have any share in
+it before or after. In fact to be brief I propose to elope.
+Notwithstanding my romantic plays I have spent a private life of utter
+dullness. This is my last opportunity to do anything unusual. Please, my
+dearest girl, let me experience the joys of an actual elopement before
+I relapse into eternal humdrummery."
+
+"A horrid description of marriage!" she protested.
+
+"Comparative humdrummery, I should have said, comparative, that is to
+say, with the excesses attributed to me by rumor. I've often wanted to
+write a play about Tiberius, and I feel well equipped to do so now. But
+I'm serious about the elopement. I really do want to avoid my relations'
+tongues."
+
+"I believe you're afraid of them."
+
+"I am. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm in terror of them," he said.
+
+"But where are we going to elope to?"
+
+John picked up the _Times_.
+
+"If only the _Murmania_," he began. "And by Jove, she will too," he
+cried. "Yes, she's due to sail from Liverpool on April 1st."
+
+"But that's your birthday," she objected.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And I've already sent out those invitations."
+
+"Exactly. For some years my relations have made an April fool of me by
+dining at my expense on that day. I have two corner-cupboards
+overflowing with their gifts--the most remarkable exhibition of
+cheapness and ingenuity ever known. This year I am going to make April
+fools of them."
+
+"By marrying me?" she laughed.
+
+"Well, of course it's no use pretending that they'll be delighted by
+that joke, though I intend to play another still more elaborately
+unpleasant. At the back of all their minds exists one anxiety--the
+dispositions of my last will and testament. Very well. I am going to
+cure that worry forever by leaving them Ambles. I can't imagine anything
+more irritating than to be left a house in common with a number of
+people whom you hate. Oh, it's an exquisite revenge. Darling secretary,
+take down for dictation as your last task the following:
+
+"'I, John Touchwood, playwright, of 36 Church Row, Hampstead, N.W., and
+Ambles, Wrottesford, Hants, do hereby will and bequeathe.'"
+
+"I don't understand," she said. "Are you really making a will? or are
+you only playing a joke?"
+
+"Both."
+
+"But is this really to take effect when you're dead? Oh dear, I wish you
+wouldn't talk about death when I've just said I'll marry you."
+
+John paused thoughtfully:
+
+"It does seem rather a challenge to fate," he agreed. "I know what I'll
+do. I'll make over Ambles to them at once. After all, I am dead to them,
+for I'll never have anything more to do with any of them. Cross out what
+you took down. I'll alter the form. Begin as for a letter:
+
+     "'My dear relations,
+
+     "'When you read this I shall be far away.' ... I think that's the
+     correct formula?" he asked.
+
+     "It sounds familiar from many books," she assured him.
+
+     "'Far away on my honeymoon with Miss Doris Hamilton.' Perhaps that
+     sounds a little ambiguous. Cross out the maiden name and substitute
+     'with Mrs. John Touchwood, my former secretary. Since you have
+     attributed to us every link except that of matrimony you will no
+     doubt be glad of this opportunity to contradict the outrageous
+     tales you have most of you' ... I say most of you," John explained,
+     "because I don't really think the children started any scandal ...
+     'you have most of you been at such pains to invent and circulate.
+     Realizing that this announcement will come as a sad blow, I am
+     going to soften it as far as I can by making you a present of my
+     country house in Hampshire, and I am instructing my solicitors to
+     effect the conveyance in due form. From now onwards therefore one
+     fifth of Ambles will belong to James and Beatrice, one fifth to
+     George, Eleanor, Bertram, and Viola, and one fifth to Hilda and
+     Harold, one fifth to Edith, Laurence, and Frida, and one fifth to
+     Hugh.' ... I feel that Hugh is entitled to a proportionately larger
+     share," he said with his eyes on the ceiling, "because I understand
+     that I've robbed him of you."
+
+     "Who on earth told you that?" she demanded, putting down her
+     pencil.
+
+     "Never mind," said John, humming gayly his exultation. "Continue
+     please, Miss Hamilton! 'I shall make no attempt to say which fifth
+     of the house shall belong to whom. Possibly Laurence and Hilda will
+     argue that out between them, and if any structural alterations are
+     required no doubt Hugh will charge himself with them. The
+     twenty-acre field is included in the gift, so that there will be
+     plenty of ground for any alterations or extensions deemed necessary
+     by the future owners.'"
+
+     "How ridiculous you are ... John," she laughed. "It all sounds so
+     absurdly practical--as if you really meant it."
+
+     "My dear girl, I do mean it. Continue please, Miss Hamilton! 'I
+     have long felt that the collection of humming-birds made by Daniel
+     Curtis in the Brazils should be suitably housed, and I propose that
+     a portion of the stables should be put in order for their reception
+     together with what is left of the collection of British
+     dragon-flies made by James. My solicitors will supply a sum of L50
+     for this purpose and Harold can act as curator of what will be
+     known as the Touchwood Museum. With regard to Harold's future, the
+     family knows that I have invested L2000 in the mahogany plantations
+     of Mr. Sydney Ricketts in British Honduras, and if Hugh does not
+     take up his post within three months I shall ask Mr. Ricketts to
+     accept Harold as a pupil in five years' time. He had better begin
+     to study Hondurasian or whatever the language is called at once.
+     Until Harold is called upon to make his decision I shall instruct
+     Mr. Ricketts to put the interest with the capital. While on the
+     subject of nephews and nieces, I may as well say that the family
+     pictures and family silver will be sent back to Ambles to be held
+     in trust for Bertram upon his coming of age. Furthermore, I am
+     prepared to pay for the education of Bertram, Harold, Frida, and
+     Viola at good boarding-schools. Viola can practice her dancing in
+     the holidays. Bertram's future I will provide for when the time
+     comes. I do not wish George to have any excuse for remaining at
+     Halma House--and I have no doubt that a private sitting-room will
+     be awarded to him at Ambles. In the event of undue congestion his
+     knitting would not disturb Laurence's poetic composition, and his
+     system of backing second favorites in imagination can be carried on
+     as easily at Ambles as in London. If he still hankers for a sea
+     voyage, the river with Harold and himself in a Canadian canoe will
+     give him all the nautical adventure he requires. My solicitors have
+     been instructed to place a canoe at his disposal. To James who has
+     so often reproved me for my optimism I would say-once more "Beware
+     of new critical weeklies" and remind him that a bird in the hand is
+     worth two in the bush. In other words, he has got a thousand pounds
+     out of me, and he won't get another penny. Eleanor has shown
+     herself so well able to look after herself that I am not going to
+     insult her by offering to look after her. Hilda with her fifth of
+     the house and her small private income will have nothing to do but
+     fuss about the proportionate expenses of the various members of the
+     family who choose to inhabit Ambles. I am affording her an unique
+     opportunity for being disagreeable, of which I'm sure she will take
+     the fullest advantage. I may say that no financial allowance will
+     be made to those who prefer to live elsewhere. As for Laurence, his
+     theatrical future under the patronage of Sir Percy Mortimer is no
+     doubt secure. However, if he grows tired of playing butlers, I hope
+     that his muse will welcome him back to Ambles as affectionately as
+     his wife.
+
+     "'I don't think I have anything more to say, my dear relations,
+     except that I hope the presents you are bringing me for my birthday
+     will come in useful as knick-knacks for your delightful house. You
+     can now circulate as many stories about me as you like. You can
+     even say that I have founded a lunatic asylum at Ambles. I am so
+     happy in the prospect of my marriage that I cannot feel very hardly
+     towards you all, and so I wish you good luck.
+
+     "'Your affectionate brother, brother-in-law, and uncle,
+
+     "'JOHN TOUCHWOOD.'
+
+"Type that out, please, Miss Hamilton, while I drive down to Doctors
+Commons to see about the license and book our passage in the
+_Murmania_."
+
+John had never tasted any success so sweet as the success of these two
+days before his forty-third birthday; and he was glad to find that Doris
+having once made up her mind about getting married showed no signs of
+imperilling the adventure by confiding her intention to her mother.
+
+"Dear John," she said, "I bolted to America with Ida Merritt last year
+without a word to Mother until I sent her a wireless from on board.
+Surely I may elope with you ... and explain afterwards."
+
+"You don't think it will kill her," suggested John a little anxiously.
+"People are apparently quite ready to accuse one of breaking a maternal
+heart as lightly as they would accuse one of breaking an appointment."
+
+"Dear John, when we're married she'll be delighted."
+
+"Not too delighted, eh, darling? I mean not so delighted that she'll
+want to come and gloat over us all day. You see, when the honeymoon's
+over, I shall have to get to work again on that last act, and your
+mother does talk a good deal. I know it's very intelligent talk, but it
+would be rather an interruption."
+
+The only person they took into their confidence about the wedding,
+except the clergyman, the verger, and a crossing-sweeper brought in to
+witness the signing of the register was Mrs. Worfolk.
+
+"Well, that's highly satisfactory! You couldn't have chosen a nicer
+young lady. Well, I mean to say, I've known her so long and all. And you
+expect to be back in June? Oh well, I shall have everything nice and
+tidy you may be sure. And this letter you want handed to Mr. James to
+be read to the family on your birthday? And I'm to give them their
+dinners the same as if you were here yourself? I see. And how many
+bottles of champagne shall I open? Oh, not to stint them? No, I quite
+understand. Of course, they would want to drink your healths. Certainly.
+And so they ought! Well, I'm bound to say I wish Mr. Worfolk could have
+been alive. It makes me quite aggravated to think he shouldn't be here.
+Well, I mean to say, he being a family carpenter had helped at so many
+weddings."
+
+The scene on the _Murmania_ did not differ much from the scene on board
+the same ship six months ago. John had insisted that Doris should wear
+her misty green suit of Harris tweed; but he himself had bought at the
+Burlington Arcade a traveling cap that showed plainly the sobering
+effects of matrimony. In the barber's saloon he invested in a pair of
+rope-soled shoes; he wanted to be sure of being able to support his wife
+even upon a heeling deck. Before dinner they went forward to watch the
+stars come out in the twilight--stars that were scarcely as yet more
+luminous in the green April sky than daisies in a meadow. They stood
+silent listening to the splash of the dusky sea against the bows, until
+the shore lamps began to wink astern.
+
+"How savage the night looks coming after us," said John. "It's jolly to
+think that in the middle of all that blackness James is reading my
+birthday welcome to the family."
+
+"Poor dears!"
+
+"Oh, they deserve all they've got," he said, fiercely. "And to think
+that only six months ago I was fool enough to read their letters of
+congratulation quite seriously in this very ship. It was you with your
+remark about poor relations that put your foot through my picture."
+
+"You're very much married already, aren't you, John?"
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Yes, for you're already blaming me for everything."
+
+"I suppose this is what James would call one of my confounded
+sentimental endings," John murmured.
+
+"Whatever he called it, he couldn't invent a better ending himself," she
+murmured back. "You know, critics are very like disappointed old maids."
+
+The great ship trembled faintly in the deeper motion, and John holding
+Doris to him felt that she too trembled faintly in unison. They stood
+like this in renewed silence until the stars shone clearly, and the
+shore lamps were turning to a gold blur. John may be excused for
+thinking that the bugle for dinner sounded like a flourish from
+_Lohengrin_. He had reason to feel romantic now.
+
+THE END
+
+[Illustration: image of the book's back cover]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following typogrphical errors have been corrected by the etext
+transcriber:
+
+light of a setting moor.=> light of a setting moon.
+
+the attenuated spinsters of Halam=> the attenuated spinsters of Halma
+
+Do you thing Stevie wants=> Do you think Stevie wants
+
+walk to Chealsea=> walk to Chelsea
+
+"It is bcoming every day=> "It is becoming every day
+
+that it it worth while making another attempt=> that it is worth while
+making another attempt
+
+taken up a stauesque=> taken up a statuesque
+
+caught a faint mumur about=> caught a faint murmur about
+
+The tax buzzed off.=> The taxi buzzed off.
+
+But I'm serious about the elopment.=> But I'm serious about the
+elopement.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Relations, by Compton Mackenzie
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR RELATIONS ***
+
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