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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/38816-8.txt b/38816-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9d1f0b --- /dev/null +++ b/38816-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13138 @@ +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR RELATIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 38816-8.txt or 38816-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/8/1/38816/ + +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.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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's cover" title="image of the book's cover" /></a> +</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>POOR<br /> +RELATIONS</h1> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p class="hang"><b><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i><br /> +POOR RELATIONS<br /> +SYLVIA & MICHAEL<br /> +PLASHERS MEAD<br /> +SYLVIA SCARLETT</b></p> + +<p class="hang">————————————<br /> +<b>Harper & Brothers <i>Publishers</i></b></p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </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 & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS<br /> +NEW YORK AND LONDON</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p class="cb"><small>POOR RELATIONS<br /> +Copyright, 1919, by Harper & 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—yes—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—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—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<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>—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—you see I followed your advice and read him up—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>—<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>,—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>,—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>,—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 +<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>,—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 <i>very</i> 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<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>,—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—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—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—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—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—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—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.</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—er—come down and give a look<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> round yourself, +Mrs. Worfolk? My sister, Mrs. Curtis—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I should prefer not to intrude in any way, sir. But if you insist, +why, of course—"</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—"</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—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—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—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—the value of which by the way has just gone down another £2 an +acre—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—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—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—er—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—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—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—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—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—ah—the moral help, of which I stand in +need—ah—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—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."</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—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—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 <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—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—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."</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,—ah—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—ah—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—ah—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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."</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—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.</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—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<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—<i>And you shall see King Charles</i>—no—<i>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.</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—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."<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—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."</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—ah—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—ah—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>—" the conjunction fizzed from his mouth +like soda from a syphon, "<i>if</i> 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."</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—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—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."</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—ah—<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—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 ..."</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>—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.</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—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—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—er—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—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>"—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—" 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—" 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—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—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—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.</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—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—he used to vow that she was more resplendent than even <i>Anax +Imperator</i>—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.</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—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—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."</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—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<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—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—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—" 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—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—no, I believe you're honest—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—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.</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—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—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."</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—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.</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—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."</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—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."</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—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—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<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—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—and by the way an uncle came into that—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—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<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> 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....</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—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—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—<i>your</i> children—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—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,<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—"</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—I think it was—"</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—er—she was so much upset," George went on, "that +she's—well—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—these +actress-managers are awful harpies—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—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—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—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—er—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—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?"</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—"</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—the<a +name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> 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.</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—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—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 <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—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—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—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—I mean—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—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—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?"</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—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?"</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—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...."</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—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—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—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."</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—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.</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—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 <i>he'd</i> 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>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—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—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>—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—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—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—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 <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—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."</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—or should I say a Norwood jacket?—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—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 <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—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.<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—in other words—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—pleasure?"</p> + +<p>"Shut up—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—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>,—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—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—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—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—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—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—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<a +name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> be so obviously indifferent to—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> </p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Miss Bond</span>,—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> <a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a></p> + +<p>To which Miss Bond replied by telegram:</p> + +<p> </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> </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> </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>:—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—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—please do not be shocked at this—but since I +saw <i>The Fall of Babylon</i> 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 <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> </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—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."<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—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—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—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—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—"</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—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—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—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—no, I won't be malicious—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—oh, I am so bad at proper +names—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—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."</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—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—ah—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—ah—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—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—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—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—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—" 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—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—though when I was young +women didn't think it necessary to be clever—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—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."</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—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—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—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—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—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."</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—</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> </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—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—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—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.</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—or +perhaps compensation would be a better word—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—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—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—ah—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—ah—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—ah—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—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?"</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—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—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."</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> </p> + +<p>D<small>EAR</small> L<small>AURENCE</small>,—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> </p> + +<p>D<small>EAR</small> E<small>LEANOR</small>,—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> </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—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."</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—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<a +name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> thereby adjudicate—yes, I think that is +the word—without any—no, forgive me—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—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—<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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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.</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—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<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—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<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—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.</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—"</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—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."</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—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."</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—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—"</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—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."</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—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."</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—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<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—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<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—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'œuvres 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—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—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—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—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—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> </p> +<p> </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's back cover" title="image of the book'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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR RELATIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 38816-h.htm or 38816-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/8/1/38816/ + +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.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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 *** + +***** This file should be named 38816.txt or 38816.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/8/1/38816/ + +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.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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