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.