IV

Three days later, Miss Haddon and Claude Melville were feeding

chickens--under protest.

"I mean to give it up, of course," the former said. "It's a degrading

pursuit; it's almost as bad as the 'things that Jimmy does,' the things

that give him such a marvellous complexion and keep his figure so

magnificent."

She threw a handful of grain to the frenzied denizens of the enlarged

meat-safe before them, and added in a tone of pensive reflectiveness:

"Why is it, I wonder, that these actions which, as you have taught me,

are unworthy of thinking people, tend to make the body so beautiful, the

eyes so bright and clear, the cheeks rose-tinted, the limbs straight and

supple?"

All the time that she was speaking her glance crept musingly over

Claude's tall, but weak-looking and rather flaccid form, seeming to

pause on his thin undeveloped arms, his lanky legs, and his slightly

yellow face. That face began to flush. She sighed.

"There must be something radically wrong in the scheme of the universe,"

she continued. "But, of course, one ought to live for the mind and for

subtle sensations, even though they do make one look an object."

Her eyes were on the chickens now, who were fighting like feathered

furies, pouncing, clucking, running for safety, grain in beak, or, with

a fiery anxiety, chasing the favoured brethren who had secured a morsel

and were hoping to be permitted to swallow it. Claude glanced at her

furtively out of the corner of his eye, and endeavoured, for the first

time in his life, to stand erect and broaden his rather narrow chest.

Silently he resolved to give instructions to his tailor not to spare the

padding in his future coats. He was glad, too, that knee-breeches, for

which he had occasionally sighed, had not come into fashion again. After

all, modern dress had its little advantages. Miss Haddon was still

scattering grain, rather in the attitude of Millet's "_Sower_," and

still talking reflectively.

"We must try to convert Jimmy," she said. "I have a good deal of

influence over him, Mr Melville. We must try to make him more like you,

more thoughtful, more inactive, more frankly sensual, more fond of

sofas, in the future than he has been in the past. Do you know, I am

ashamed to say it, but I don't believe I have ever seen Jimmy lying on a

sofa. Poor Jimmy! Look at that hen! She is choking. Hens gulp their food

so! And then, he's inclined to be persistently unselfish. That must be

stopped too. I have learnt from you that to be decadent one must be

acutely and untiringly selfish. The blessings of selfishness! What a

volume might be written upon them! Mr Melville, all chickens must be

decadent, for all chickens are entirely selfish. It is strange to think

that the average fowl is more advanced in ethics--is it ethics I

mean?--than the average man or woman, is it not? And we ate a decadent

at dinner last night. I feel almost like a cannibal."

She threw away the last grain, and was silent. But suddenly Claude

spoke.

"Miss Haddon," he said, and his voice had never sounded so boyish to her

before, "you have been laughing at me for nearly a week." He paused,

then he went on, rather unevenly, in the up-and-down tones induced by

stifled excitement, "and I have never found it out until this moment. I

suppose you think me a great fool. I daresay I have been one. But please

don't--I mean, please let us give up acting our farce."

"But have we reached the third act?" she said.

They were walking through the garden, among the crocuses and violets

now.

"I am sure I don't know," he answered, trying to seem easy. "Perhaps it

is a farce in one act."

"Perhaps it is not a farce at all, my dear boy," she said very gently

and with a sudden old-world gravity that was not without its grace.

They reached the house. She put her basket down on the oak table in the

wide hall, and faced him in the eager way that was natural to her, and

that was so youthful.

"Mr Melville--Claude," she said, as she held out her hand, clad in a

very countrified brown glove, with a fan-like gauntlet, "of all Jimmy's

friends I think I shall like you the best. People who have acted

together ought to be good comrades."

He took the hand. That seemed necessary.

"But I haven't been acting," he said.

"Oh, yes, you have," she answered, "and I have only been on the stage

for a week; while you--well, I suppose you have been on it for at least

two or three years. I am taking my farewell of it this morning, and

you--?"

The boy's face was deeply flushed, but he did not look, or feel,

actually angry.

"I don't know about myself yet," he said.

"Think it all over," the old lady exclaimed. "And now let us have lunch.

I am hungry."

* * * * *

Jimmy arrived that evening.

"How old are you, Claude?" he exclaimed, clapping his friend on the

back.

"I am not sure," Claude replied. "But I almost begin to wish that I were

sixty-four."