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.