THE STAINED-GLASS MAN
Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room. Thea
Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking. From the
look they gave him he saw that he had better never have been born;
he hastily withdrew. Descending to the hall, he came on Mr. Dennant
crossing to his study, with a handful of official-looking papers.
“Ah, Shelton!” said he, “you look a little lost. Is the shrine
invisible?”
Shelton grinned, said “Yes,” and went on looking. He was not fortunate.
In the dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list of books.
“Do give me your opinion, Dick,” she said. “Everybody 's readin' this
thing of Katherine Asterick's; I believe it's simply because she's got a
title.”
“One must read a book for some reason or other,” answered Shelton.
“Well,” returned Mrs. Dennant, “I hate doin' things just because other
people do them, and I sha'n'. get it.”
“Good!”
Mrs. Dennant marked the catalogue.
“Here 's Linseed's last, of course; though I must say I don't care
for him, but I suppose we ought to have it in the house. And there's
Quality's 'The Splendid Diatribes'. that 's sure to be good, he's always
so refined. But what am I to do about this of Arthur Baal's? They say
that he's a charlatan, but everybody reads him, don't you know”; and
over the catalogue Shelton caught the gleam of hare-like eyes.
Decision had vanished from her face, with its arched nose and slightly
sloping chin, as though some one had suddenly appealed to her to trust
her instincts. It was quite pathetic. Still, there was always the book's
circulation to form her judgment by.
“I think I 'd better mark it,” she said, “don't you? Were you lookin'
for Antonia? If you come across Bunyan in the garden, Dick, do say I
want to see him; he's gettin' to be a perfect nuisance. I can understand
his feelin's, but really he 's carryin' it too far.”
Primed with his message to the under-gardener, Shelton went. He took a
despairing look into the billiard-room. Antonia was not there. Instead,
a tall and fat-cheeked gentleman with a neat moustache, called Mabbey,
was practising the spot-stroke. He paused as Shelton entered, and,
pouting like a baby, asked in a sleepy voice,
“Play me a hundred up?”
Shelton shook his head, stammered out his sorrow, and was about to go.
The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the places where his
moustaches joined his pink and glossy cheeks, asked with an air of some
surprise,
“What's your general game, then?”
“I really don't know,” said Shelton.
The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and, moving his round,
knock-kneed legs in their tight trousers, took up his position for the
stroke.
“What price that?” he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his
well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition. “Curious dark
horse, Shelton,” they seemed to say.
Shelton hurried out, and was about to run down the lower lawn, when he
was accosted by another person walking in the sunshine--a slight-built
man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache, and a faint
bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a network
of thin veins. His face had something of the youthful, optimistic,
stained-glass look peculiar to the refined English type. He walked
elastically, yet with trim precision, as if he had a pleasant taste in
furniture and churches, and held the Spectator in his hand.
“Ah, Shelton!” he said in high-tuned tones, halting his legs in such an
easy attitude that it was impossible to interrupt it: “come to take the
air?”
Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but
dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the
stained-glass man.
“I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand for Parliament,” the
latter said.
Shelton, recalling Halidome's autocratic manner of settling other
people's business, smiled.
“Do I look like it?” he asked.
The eyebrows quivered on the stained-glass man. It had never occurred to
him, perhaps, that to stand for Parliament a man must look like it; he
examined Shelton with some curiosity.
“Ah, well,” he said, “now you mention it, perhaps not.” His eyes, so
carefully ironical, although they differed from the eyes of Mabbey, also
seemed to ask of Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.
“You 're still in the Domestic Office, then?” asked Shelton.
The stained-glass man stooped to sniff a rosebush. “Yes,” he said; “it
suits me very well. I get lots of time for my art work.”
“That must be very interesting,” said Shelton, whose glance was roving
for Antonia; “I never managed to begin a hobby.”
“Never had a hobby!” said the stained-glass man, brushing back his hair
(he was walking with no hat); “why, what the deuce d' you do?”
Shelton could not answer; the idea had never troubled him.
“I really don't know,” he said, embarrassed; “there's always something
going on, as far as I can see.”
The stained-glass man placed his hands within his pockets, and his
bright glance swept over his companion.
“A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest in life,” he said.
“An interest in life?” repeated Shelton grimly; “life itself is good
enough for me.”
“Oh!” replied the stained-glass man, as though he disapproved of
regarding life itself as interesting.
“That's all very well, but you want something more than that. Why don't
you take up woodcarving?”
“Wood-carving?”
“The moment I get fagged with office papers and that sort of thing I
take up my wood-carving; good as a game of hockey.”
“I have n't the enthusiasm.”
The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his
moustache.
“You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay,” he said; “you 'll get
old, then where 'll you be?”
It came as a surprise that he should use the words “it does n't
pay,” for he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern
jewellery which really seems unconscious of its market value.
“You've given up the Bar? Don't you get awfully bored having nothing to
do?” pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient sundial.
Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that
being in love was in itself enough to do. To do nothing is unworthy of
a man! But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation. His
silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.
“That's a nice old article of virtue,” he said, pointing with his chin;
and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from the other
side. Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow on the turf;
tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies clustered thick
around its base; it had acquired a look of growing from the soil. “I
should like to get hold of that,” the stained-glass man remarked; “I
don't know when I 've seen a better specimen,” and he walked round it
once again.
His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes were
almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened just
a little. A person with a keener eye would have said his face looked
greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read in the
Spectator a confession of commercialism.
“You could n't uproot a thing like that,” he said; “it would lose all
its charm.”
His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked wonderfully
genuine.
“Couldn't I?” he said. “By Jove! I thought so. 1690! The best period.”
He ran his forger round the sundial's edge. “Splendid line-clean as the
day they made it. You don't seem to care much about that sort of thing”;
and once again, as though accustomed to the indifference of Vandals, his
face regained its mask.
They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy
searching every patch of shade. He wanted to say “Can't stop,” and hurry
off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something that, while
stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them quite impossible.
“Feelings!” that person seemed to say; “all very well, but you want more
than that. Why not take up wood-carving? . . . Feelings! I was born in
England, and have been at Cambridge.”
“Are you staying long?” he asked Shelton. “I go on to Halidome's
to-morrow; suppose I sha'n'. see you there? Good, chap, old Halidome!
Collection of etchings very fine!”
“No; I 'm staying on,” said Shelton.
“Ah!” said the stained-glass man, “charming people, the Dennants!”
Shelton, reddening slowly, turned his head away; he picked a gooseberry,
and muttered, “Yes.”
“The eldest girl especially; no nonsense about her. I thought she was a
particularly nice girl.”
Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with an odd sensation; it gave him
the reverse of pleasure, as though the words had cast new light upon
her. He grunted hastily,
“I suppose you know that we 're engaged?”
“Really!” said the stained-glass man, and again his bright, clear,
iron-committal glance swept over Shelton--“really! I didn't know.
Congratulate you!”
It was as if he said: “You're a man of taste; I should say she would go
well in almost any drawing-room!”
“Thanks,” said Shelton; “there she' is. If you'll excuse me, I want to
speak to her.”