When after lunch on Wednesday afternoon John relinquished Miss Hamilton
to the company of her friend Miss Merritt at Charing Cross Station, he
was relinquishing a secretary from whom he had received an assurance
that the very next morning she would be at his elbow, if he might so
express himself. In his rosiest moments he had never expected so swift a
fulfilment of his plan, and he felt duly grateful to Miss Merritt, to
whose powers of persuasion he ascribed the acceptance in spite of Mrs.
Hamilton's usually only too effective method of counteracting any kind
of independent action on her daughter's part. On the promenade deck of
the _Murmania_ Miss Merritt had impressed John with her resolute
character; now she seemed to him positively Napoleonic, and he was more
in awe of her than ever, so much so indeed that he completely failed to
convey his sense of obligation to her good offices and could only beam
at her like a benevolent character in a Dickens novel. Finally he did
manage to stammer out his desire that she would charge herself with the
financial side of the agreement and was lost in silent wonder when she
had no hesitation in suggesting terms based on the fact that Miss
Hamilton had no previous experience as a secretary.
"Later on, if you're satisfied with her," she said, "you must increase
her salary; but I will be no party to over-payment simply because she is
personally sympathetic to you."
How well that was put, John thought. Personally sympathetic! How
accurately it described his attitude toward Miss Hamilton. He took leave
of the young women and walked up Villiers Street, cheered by the
pleasant conviction that the flood of domestic worries which had
threatened to destroy his peace of mind and overwhelm his productiveness
was at last definitely stayed.
"She's exactly what I require," he kept saying to himself, exultantly.
"And I think I may claim without unduly flattering myself that the post
I have offered her is exactly what she requires. From what that very
nice girl Miss Merritt said, it is evidently a question of asserting
herself now or never. With what a charming lack of self-consciousness
she agreed to the salary and even suggested the hours of work herself.
Oh, she's undoubtedly practical--very practical; but at the same time
she has not got that almost painfully practical exterior of Miss
Merritt, who must have broken in a large number of difficult employers
to acquire that tight set of her mouth. Probably I shall be easy to
manage, so working for me won't spoil her unbusinesslike appearance.
To-morrow we are to discuss the choice of a typewriter; and by the way,
I must arrange which room she is to use for typing. The noise of a
machine at high speed would be as prejudicial to composition as Viola's
step-dancing. Yes, I must arrange with Mrs. Worfolk about a room."
John's faith in his good luck was confirmed by the amazing discovery
that Mrs. Worfolk had known his intended secretary as a child.
"Her old nurse in fact!" he exclaimed joyfully, for such a melodramatic
coincidence did not offend John's romantic palate.
"No, sir, not her nurse. I never was not what you might call a nurse
proper. Well, I mean to say, though I was always fond of children I
seemed to take more somehow to the house itself, and so I never got
beyond being a nursemaid. After that I gave myself up to rising as high
as a housemaid _can_ rise until I married Mr. Worfolk. Perhaps you may
remember me once passing the remark that I'd been in service with a
racing family? Well, after I left them I took a situation as upper
housemaid with a very nice family in the county of Unts, and who came up
to London for the season to Grosvenor Gardens. Then I met Mr. Worfolk
who was a carpenter and he made packing-cases for Mr. Hamilton who was
your young lady's pa. Oh, I remember him well. There was a slight
argument between Mr. Worfolk and I--well, not argument, because ours was
a very happy marriage, but a slight conversation as to whether he was to
make cases for Chi-ner or Chi-nese knick-knacks, and Mr. Worfolk was
wrong."
"But were you in service with Mr. Hamilton? Did he live in
Huntingdonshire?"
"No, no, sir. You're getting very confused, if you'll pardon the
obsivation. Very confused, you're getting. This Mr. Hamilton was a
customer of Mr. Worfolk and through him coming to superintend his
Chi-nese valuables being packed I got to know his little girl--your
secretary as is to be. Oh, I remember her perfickly. Why, I mended a
hole in her stocking once. Right above the garter it was, and she was so
fond of our Tom. Oh, but he _was_ a beautiful mouser. I've heard many
people say they never saw a finer cat nowhere."
"You have a splendid memory, Mrs. Worfolk."
"Yes, sir. I have got a good memory. Why, when I was a tiny tot I can
remember my poor grandpa being took sudden with the colic and rolling
about on the kitchen hearth-rug, groaning, as you might say, in a agony
of pain. Well, he died the same year as the Juke of Wellington, but
though I was taken to the Juke's funeral by my poor mother, I've
forgotten that. Well, one can't remember everything, and that's a fact;
one little thing will stick and another little thing won't. Well, I mean
to say, it's a good job anybody can't remember everything. I'm shaw
there's enough trouble in the world as it is."
Mrs. Worfolk startled the new secretary when she presented herself at 36
Church Row next day by embracing her affectionately in the hall before
she had explained the reason for such a demonstration. It soon
transpired, however, that Miss Hamilton's memory was as good as Mrs.
Worfolk's and that she had not forgotten those jolly visits to the
carpenter long ago, nor even the big yellow Tomcat. As for the master
of the house, he raised his housekeeper's salary to show what importance
he attached to a good memory.
For a day or two John felt shy of assigning much work to his secretary;
but she soon protested that, if she was only going to type thirty to
fifty lines of blank verse every other morning, she should resign her
post on the ground that it was an undignified sinecure.
"What about dictating your letters? You made such a point of my knowing
shorthand."
"Yes, I did, didn't I?" John agreed.
Dictation made him very nervous at first; but with a little practice he
began to enjoy it, and ultimately it became something in the nature of a
vice. He dictated immensely long letters to friends whose very existence
he had forgotten for years, the result of which abrupt revivals of
intercourse was a shower of appeals to lend money to these companions of
his youth. Yet this result did not discourage him from the habit of
dictating for dictation's sake, and every night before he turned over to
go to sleep he used to poke about in the rubbish-heap of the past for
more forgotten friends. As a set off to incommoding himself with a host
of unnecessary correspondents he became meticulously businesslike, and
after having neglected Miss Janet Bond for several weeks he began to
write to her daily about the progress of the play, which notwithstanding
his passion for dictation really was progressing at last. Indeed he
worked up the manageress of the Parthenon to such a pitch of excitement
that one morning she appeared suddenly at Church Row and made a dramatic
entrance into the library when John, who had for the moment exhausted
his list of friends, was dictating a letter to _The Times_ about the
condition of some trees on Hampstead Heath.
"I've broken in upon your inspiration," boomed Miss Bond in tones that
she usually reserved for her most intensely tragic moments.
In vain did the author asseverate that he was delighted to see her; she
rushed away without another word; but that evening she wrote him an
ecstatic letter from her dressing-room about what it had meant to her
and what it always would mean to her to think of his working like that
for her.
"But we mustn't deride Janet Bond," said the author to his secretary,
who was looking contemptuously at the actress's heavy caligraphy. "We
must remember that she will create Joan of Arc."
"Yes, it's a pity, isn't it?" Miss Hamilton commented, dryly.
"Oh, but won't you allow that she's a great actress?"
"I will indeed," she murmured with an emphatic nod.
Carried along upon his flood of correspondence John nevertheless managed
to steer clear of his relations, and in his present frame of mind he was
inclined to attribute his successful course like everything else that
was prospering just now to the advent of Miss Hamilton. However, it was
too much to expect that with his newly discovered talent he should
resist dictating at any rate one epistolary sermon to his youngest
brother, of whose arrival at Ambles he had been sharply notified by
Hilda. This weighty address took up nearly a whole morning, and when it
was finished John was disconcerted by Miss Hamilton's saying:
"You don't really want me to type all this out?"
"Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me that whatever he's done this won't
make him repent. You don't mind my criticizing you?"
"I asked you to," he reminded her.
"Well, it seems to me a little false--a little, if I may say so,
complacently wrathful. It's the sort of thing I seem to remember reading
and laughing at in old-fashioned books. Of course, I'll type it out at
once if you insist, but it's already after twelve o'clock, and we have
to go over the material for the third act. I can't somehow fit in what
you've just been dictating with what you were telling me yesterday about
the scene between Gilles de Rais and Joan. I'm so afraid that you'll
make Joan preach, and of course she mustn't preach, must she?"
"All right," conceded John, trying not to appear mortified. "If you
think it isn't worth sending, I won't send it."
He fancied that she would be moved by his sensitiveness to her judgment;
but, without a tremor, she tore the pages out of her shorthand book and
threw them into the waste-paper basket. John stared at the ruthless
young woman in dismay.
"Didn't you mean me to take you at your word?" she asked, severely.
He was not altogether sure that he had, but he lacked the courage to
tell her so and checked an impulse to rescue his stillborn sermon from
the grave.
"Though I don't quite like the idea of leaving my brother at Ambles with
nothing to occupy his energies," John went on, meditatively, "I'm
doubtful of the prudence of exposing him to the temptations of
idleness."
"If you want to give him something to do, why don't you intrust him with
getting ready the house for your Christmas party? You are always
worrying about its emptiness."
"But isn't that putting in his way temptations of a more positive kind?"
he suggested.
"Not if you set a limit to your expenditure. Can you trust his taste? He
ought to be an adept at furnishings."
"Oh, I think he'd do the actual furnishing very well. But won't it seem
as if I am overlooking his abominable behavior too easily?"
With a great effort John kept his eyes averted from the waste-paper
basket.
"You must either do that or refuse to have anything more to do with
him," Miss Hamilton declared. "You can't expect him to be the mirror of
your moral superiority for the rest of his life."
"You seem to take quite an interest in him," said John, a little
resentfully.
Miss Hamilton shrugged her shoulders.
"All right," he added, hurriedly. "I'll authorize him to prepare the
house for Christmas. He must fight his own battles with my sister,
Hilda. At any rate, it will annoy her."
Miss Hamilton shook her head in mock reproof.
"Act Three. Scene One," the dramatist announced in the voice of a mystic
who has at last shaken himself free from earthly clogs and is about to
achieve levitation. It was consoling to perceive that his secretary's
expression changed in accord with his own, and John decided that she
really was a most attractive young woman and not so unsympathetic as he
had been upon the verge of thinking. Moreover, she was right. The
important thing at present, the only thing, in fact, was the progress of
the play, and it was for this very purpose that he had secured her
collaboration--well, perhaps collaboration was too strong a word--but,
indeed, so completely had she identified herself with his work that
really he could almost call it collaboration. He ought not to tax his
invention at this critical point with such a minor problem as the
preparation of Ambles for a family reunion. Relations must go to the
deuce in their own way, at any rate until the rough draft of the third
act was finished, which, under present favorable conditions, might
easily happen before Christmas. His secretary was always careful not to
worry him with her own domestic bothers, though he knew by the way she
had once or twice referred to her mother that she was having her own
hard fight at home. He had once proposed calling upon the old lady; but
Doris had quickly squashed the suggestion. John liked to think about
Mrs. Hamilton, because through some obscure process of logic it gave him
an excuse to think about her daughter as Doris. In other connections he
thought of her formally as Miss Hamilton, and often told himself how
lucky it was that so charming and accomplished a young woman should be
so obviously indifferent to--well, not exactly to himself, but surely he
might allege to anything except himself as a romantic playwright.
Meanwhile, the play itself marched on with apparent smoothness, until
one morning John dictated the following letter to his star:
* * * * *
MY DEAR MISS BOND,--Much against my will, I have come to the conclusion
that without a human love interest a play about Joan of Arc is
impossible. You will be surprised by my abrupt change of front, and you
will smile to yourself when you remember how earnestly I argued against
your suggestion that I might ultimately be compelled to introduce a
human love interest. The fact of the matter is that now I have arrived
at the third act I find patriotism too abstract an emotion for the
stage. As you know, my idea was to make Joan so much positively
enamoured of her country that the ordinary love interest would be
superseded. I shall continue to keep Joan herself heart free; but I do
think that it would be effective to have at any rate two people in love
with her. My notion is to introduce a devoted young peasant who will
follow her from her native village, first to the court at Chinon, and so
on right through the play until the last fatal scene in the market place
at Rouen. I'm sure such a simple lover could be made very moving, and
the contrast would be valuable; moreover, it strikes me as a perfectly
natural situation. Further, I propose that Gilles de Rais should not
only be in love with her, but that he should actually declare his love,
and that she should for a brief moment be tempted to return it, finally
spurning him as a temptation of the Devil, and thereby reducing him to
such a state of despair that he is led into the horrible practices for
which he was finally condemned to death. Let me know your opinion soon,
because I am at this moment working on the third act.
Yours very sincerely,
JOHN TOUCHWOOD.
* * * * *
To which Miss Bond replied by telegram:
* * * * *
Complete confidence in you, and think suggestion magnificent, there
should be exit speech of renunciation for Joan to bring down curtain of
third act.
JANET BOND.
* * * * *
"You agree with these suggestions?" John asked his secretary.
"Like Miss Bond, I have complete confidence in you," she replied.
He looked at her earnestly to see if she was laughing at him, and put
down his pen.
"Do you know that in some ways you yourself remind me of Joan?"
It was a habit of John's, who had a brain like a fly's eye, to perceive
historical resemblances that were denied to an ordinary vision.
Generally he discovered these reincarnations of the past in his own
personality. While he was writing _The Fall of Babylon_ he actually
fretted himself for a time over a fancied similarity between his
character and Nebuchadnezzar's, and sometimes used to wonder if he was
putting too much of himself into his portrayal of that dim potentate;
and during his composition of _Lucretia_ he was so profoundly convinced
that Caesar Borgia was simply John Touchwood over again in a more
passionate period and a more picturesque costume that, as the critics
pointed out, he presented the world with an aspect of him that would
never have been recognized by Machiavelli. Yet, even when Harold was
being most unpleasant, or when Viola and Bertram were deafening his
household, John could not bring himself to believe that he and Gilles de
Rais, who was proved to have tortured over three hundred children to
death, had many similar traits; nor was he willing to admit more than a
most superficial likeness to the feeble Dauphin Charles. In fact, at one
time he was so much discouraged by his inability to adumbrate himself in
any of his personages that he began to regret his choice of Joan of Arc
and to wish that he had persevered in his intention to write a play
about Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom, allowing for the sundering years,
he felt he had more in common than with any other historical figure.
Therefore he was relieved to discover this resemblance between his
heroine and his secretary, in whom he was beginning to take nearly as
much interest as in himself.
"Do you mean outwardly?" asked Miss Hamilton, looking at an engraving of
the bust from the church of St. Maurice, Orleans. "If so, I hope her
complexion wasn't really as scaly as that."
"No, I mean in character."
"I suppose a private secretary ought not to say 'what nonsense' to her
employer, but really what else can I say? You might as well compare Ida
Merritt to Joan of Arc; in fact, she really is rather like my conception
of her."
"I'm sorry you find the comparison so far-fetched," John said, huffily.
"It wasn't intended to be uncomplimentary."
"Have you decided to introduce those wolves in the first act, because I
think I ought to begin making inquiries about suitable dogs?"
When Miss Hamilton rushed away from the personal like this, John used to
regret that he had changed their relationship from one of friendship to
one of business. Although he admired practicalness, he realized that it
was possible to be too practical, and he sighed sometimes for the tone
that his unknown admirers took when they wrote to him about his work.
Only that morning he had received a letter from one of these, which he
had tossed across the table for his secretary's perusal before he
dictated a graceful reply.
* * * * *
HILLCREST,
Highfield Road,
Hornsey, N.,
_Dec. 14, 1910_.
DEAR SIR:--I have never written to an author before, but I cannot help
writing to ask you _when_ you are going to give us another play. I
cannot tell you how much I enjoy your plays--they take me into another
world. Please do not imagine that I am an enthusiastic schoolgirl. I am
the mother of four dear little children, and my husband and I both act
in a dramatic club at Hornsey. We are very anxious to perform one of
your plays, but the committee is afraid of the expense. I suppose it
would be asking too much of you to lend us some of the costumes of _The
Fall of Babylon_. I think it is your greatest work up till now, and I
simply live in all those wonderful old cities now and read everything I
can find about them. I was brought up very strictly when I was young and
grew to hate the Bible--please do not be shocked at this--but since I
saw _The Fall of Babylon_ I have taken to reading it again. I went nine
times--twice in the gallery, three times in the pit, twice in the upper
circle and twice in the dress circle, once in the fifth row at the side
and once right in the middle of the front row! I cut out the enclosed
photo of you from _The Tatler_, and, would it be asking too much to sign
your name? Hoping for the pleasure of a reply, I remain,
Your sincere admirer,
(MRS.) ENID FOSTER.
* * * * *
"What extraordinary lunatics there are in this world," Miss Hamilton had
commented. "Have you noticed the one constant factor in these letters?
All the women begin by saying that it is the first time they have ever
written to an author; of course, they would say the same thing to a man
who kissed them. The men, however, try to convey that they're in the
habit of writing to authors. I think there's a moral to be extracted
from that observation."
Now, John had not yet attained--and perhaps it was improbable that he
ever would attain--those cold summits of art out of reach alike of the
still, sad music and the hurdy-gurdies of humanity, so that these
letters from unknown men and women, were they never so foolish,
titillated his vanity, which he called "appealing to his imagination."
"One must try to put oneself in the writer's place," he had urged,
reproachfully.
"Um--yes, but I can't help thinking of Mrs. Enid Foster living in those
wonderful old cities. Her household will crash like Babylon if she isn't
careful, and her family will be reduced to eating grass like
Nebuchadnezzar, if the green-grocer's book is neglected any longer."
"You won't allow the suburbs to be touched by poetry?"
John had tried to convey in his tone that Miss Hamilton in criticizing
the enthusiasm of Mrs. Foster was depreciating his own work. But she had
seemed quite unconscious of having rather offended him and had taken
down his answer without excusing herself. Now when in a spirit that was
truly forgiving he had actually compared her to his beloved heroine, she
had scoffed at him as if he was a kind of Mrs. Foster himself.
"You're very matter-of-fact," he muttered.
"Isn't that a rather desirable quality in a secretary?"
"Yes, but I think you might have waited to hear why you reminded me of
Joan of Arc before you began talking about those confounded wolves,
which, by the way, I have decided to cut out."
"Don't cut out a good effect just because you're annoyed with me," she
advised.
"Oh no, there are other reasons," said John, loftily. "It is possible
that in an opening tableau the audience may not appreciate that they are
wolves, and if they think they're only a lot of stray dogs, the effect
will go for nothing. It was merely a passing idea, and I have discarded
it."
Miss Hamilton left him to go and type out the morning's correspondence,
and John settled down to a speech by the Maid on the subject of
perpetual celibacy: he wrote a very good one.
"She may laugh at me," said the author to himself, "but she _is_ like
Joan--extraordinarily like. Why, I can hear her making this very
speech."
Miss Hamilton might sometimes profane John's poetic sanctuaries and
sometimes pull his leg when he was on tiptoe for a flight like Mr.
Keats' sweetpeas, but she made existence much more pleasant for him, and
he had already reached the stage of wondering how he had ever managed to
get along without her. He even went so far in his passion for historical
parallels as to compare his situation before she came to the realm of
France before Joan of Arc took it in hand. He knew in his heart that
these weeks before Christmas were unnaturally calm; he had no hope of
prolonging this halcyon time much further; but while it lasted he would
enjoy it to the full. Any one who had overheard John announcing to his
reflection in the glass an unbridled hedonism for the immediate future
might have been pardoned for supposing that he was about to amuse
himself in a very desperate fashion. As a matter of fact, the averred
intention was due to nothing more exciting than the prospect of a long
walk over the Heath with Miss Hamilton to discuss an outline of the
fourth act, which John knew would gradually be filled in with his plans
for writing other plays and finally be colored by a conversation, or,
anyhow, a monologue about himself as a human being without reference to
himself as an author.
"What is so delightful about Miss Hamilton," he assured that credulous
and complaisant reflection, "is the way one can talk to her without
there being the least danger of her supposing that one has any ulterior
object in view. Notwithstanding all the rich externals of the past, I'm
bound to confess that the relations between men and women are far more
natural nowadays. I suppose it was the bicycle that began female
emancipation; had bicycles been invented in the time of Joan of Arc she
would scarcely have had to face so much ecclesiastical criticism of her
behavior."
The walk was a success; amongst other things, John discovered that if he
had had a sister like Miss Hamilton, most of his family troubles would
never have arisen. He shook his head sadly at the thought that once upon
a time he had tried to imagine a Miss Hamilton in Edith, and in a burst
of self-revelation, like the brief appearance of two or three acres of
definitely blue sky overhead, he assured his secretary that her coming
had made a difference to his whole life.
"Well, of course you get through much more in the day now," she agreed.
John would have liked a less practical response, but he made the best of
it.
"I've got so much wrapped up in the play," he said, "that I'm wondering
now if I shall be able to tear myself away from London for Christmas. I
dread the idea of a complete break--especially with the most interesting
portion just coming along. I think I must ask you to take your holiday
later in the year, if you don't mind."
He had got it out, and if he could have patted himself on the back
without appearing ridiculous in a public thoroughfare he would have done
so. His manner might have sounded brusque, but John was sure that the
least suggestion of any other attitude except that of an employer
compelled against his will to seem inconsiderate would have been fatal.
"That would mean leaving my mother alone," said Miss Hamilton,
doubtfully.
John looked sympathetic, but firm, when he agreed with her.
"She would understand that literary work takes no account of the church
calendar," he pointed out. "After all, what is Christmas?"
"Unfortunately, my mother is already very much offended with me for
working with you at all. Oh, well, bother relations!" she exclaimed,
vehemently. "I'm going to be selfish in future. All right, if you
insist, I must obey--or lose my job, eh?"
"I might have to engage a locum tenens. You see, now that I've got into
the habit of dictating my letters and relying upon somebody else to keep
my references in order and--"
"Yes, yes," she interrupted. "I quite see that it would put you to great
inconvenience if I cried off. All the same, I can't help being worried
by the notion of leaving mother alone on Christmas Day itself. Why
shouldn't I join you on the day after?"
"The very thing," John decided. "I will leave London on Christmas Eve,
and you shall come down on Boxing Day. But I should travel in the
morning, if I were you. It's apt to be unpleasant, traveling in the
evening on a Bank Holiday. Hullo, here we are! This walk has given me a
tremendous appetite, and I do feel that we've made a splendid start with
the fourth act, don't you?"
"The fourth act?" repeated his secretary. "It seems to me that most of
the time you were talking about the position of women in modern life."
John laughed gayly.
"Ah, I see you haven't even yet absolutely grasped my method of work. I
was thinking all the while of Joan's speech to her accusers. I can
assure you that all my remarks were entirely relevant to what I had in
my head. That's the way I get my atmosphere. I told you that you
reminded me of her, but you wouldn't believe me. In doublet and hose you
would be Joan."
"Should I? I think I should look more like Dick Whittington in a touring
pantomime. My legs are too thin for tights."
"By the way, I wonder if Janet Bond has good legs?" said John,
pensively.
It was charming to be able to talk about women's legs like this without
there being the slightest suggestion that they had any; yet, somehow the
least promising topics were rehabilitated by the company of Miss
Hamilton, and most of them, even the oldest, acquired a new and
absorbing interest. John had registered a vow on the first day his
secretary came that he would watch carefully for the least signs of
rosifying her and he had renewed this vow every morning before his
glass; but it was sometimes difficult not to attribute to her all sorts
of mysterious fascinations, as on those occasions when he would have
kept her working later than usual in the afternoon and when she would
have been persuaded to stay for tea, for which she made a point of
getting home to please her mother, who gave it a grand importance. John
was convinced that even James would forgive him for thinking that in all
England there was not a more competent, a more charming, a more--he used
to pull himself up guiltily at about the third comparative and stifle
his fancies in the particularly delicious cake that Mrs. Worfolk always
seemed to provide on the days when his secretary stayed to tea.
It was on one of these rosified afternoons, full of candlelight and
firelight and the warmed scent of hyacinths that Miss Hamilton rallied
John about his exaggerated dread of his relations.
"For I've been working with you now for nearly three weeks, and you've
not been bothered by them once," she declared.
"My name! My name!" he cried. "Touchwood?"
"I begin to think it's nothing but an affectation," she persisted.
"_You're_ not pestered by charitable uncles who want to boast of what
they've done for their poor brother's only daughter. _You're_ not made
to feel that you've wrecked your mother's old age by earning your own
living."
"Yes, they have been quiet recently," he admitted. "But there was such a
terrible outbreak of Family Influenza just before you came that some
sort of prostration for a time was inevitable. I hope you don't expect
my brother, Hugh, to commit a forgery every week. Besides, that
excellent suggestion of yours about preparing Ambles for Christmas has
kept him busy, and probably all the rest of them down there too. But
it's odd you should raise the subject, because I was going to propose
your having supper here some Sunday soon and inviting my eldest brother
and his wife to meet you."
"To-morrow is the last Sunday before Christmas. The Sunday after is
Christmas Day."
"Is it really? Then I must dictate an invitation for to-morrow, and I
must begin to see about presents on Monday. By Jove, how time has
flown!"
"After all, what is Christmas?" she laughed.
"Oh, you must expect children to be excited about it," John murmured. "I
don't like to disappoint _them_. But I'd no idea Christmas was on top of
us like this. You'll help me with my shopping next week? I hope to
goodness Eleanor won't come and bother me. She'll be getting back to
town to-morrow. It's really extraordinary, the way the time has passed."
John dictated an urgent invitation to James and Beatrice to sup with
them the following evening, and since it was too late to let them know
by post, he decided to see Miss Hamilton as far as the tube and leave
the note in person at Hill Road.
James arrived for supper in a most truculent mood, and this being
aggravated by his brother's burgundy, of which he drank a good deal,
referring to it all the while as poison, much to John's annoyance,
embroiled him half way through supper in an argument with Miss Hamilton
on the subject of feminine intelligence.
"Women are not intelligent," he shouted. "The glimmering intelligence
they sometimes appear to exhibit is only one of their numerous sexual
allurements. A woman thinks with her nerves, reasons with her emotions,
and speculates with her sensations."
"Rubbish," said Miss Hamilton, emphatically.
"Now, Jimmie dear," his wife put in, "you'll only have indigestion if
you get excited while you're eatin'."
"I shall have indigestion anyway," growled her husband. "My liver will
be like dough to-morrow after this burgundy. I ought to drink a light
moselle."
"Well, you can have moselle," John began.
"I loathe moselle. I'd as soon drink syrup of squills," James bellowed.
"All right, you shall have syrup of squills next time."
"Oh, Johnnie," Beatrice interposed with a wide reproachful smile.
"Jimmie's only joking. He doesn't really like syrup of squills."
"For heaven's sake, don't try to analyze my tastes," said James to his
wife.
John threw a glance at Miss Hamilton, which was meant to express "What
did I tell you?" But she was blind to his signal and only intent upon
attacking James on behalf of her sex.
"Women have not the same kind of intelligence as men," she began,
"because it is denied to them by their physical constitution. But they
have, I insist, a supplementary intelligence without which the great
masculine minds would be as ineffective as convulsions of nature. Women
work like the coral polyps...."
"Bravo!" John cried. "A capital comparison!"
"An absurd comparison!" James contradicted. "A ludicrous comparison!
Woman is purely individualistic. The moment she begins to take up with
communal effort, she tends to become sterile."
"Do get on with your supper, dear," urged Beatrice, who had only
understood the last word and was anxious not "to be made to feel small,"
as she would have put it, in front of an unmarried woman.
John perceived her mortification and jumped through the argument as a
clown through a paper hoop.
"Remember I'm expecting you both at Ambles on Christmas Eve," he said,
boisterously. "We're going to have a real old-fashioned Christmas
party."
James forgot all about women in his indignation; but before he could
express his opinion Beatrice held up another paper hoop for the
distraction of the audience.
"I'm simply longin' for the country," she declared. "Christmas with a
lot of children is the nicest thing I know."
John went through the hoop with aplomb and refused to be unseated by his
brother.
"James will enjoy it more than any of us," he chuckled.
"What!" shouted the critic. "I'd sooner be wrecked on a desert island
with nothing to read but a sixpenny edition of the Christmas Carol.
Ugh!"
John looked at Miss Hamilton again, and this time his appeal was not
unheeded; she said no more about women and let James rail on at
sentimental festivities, which, by the time he had finished with them,
looked as irreparable as the remains of the tipsy-cake. There seemed no
reason amid the universal collapse of tradition to conserve the habit of
letting the ladies retire after dinner. As there was no drawing-room in
his bachelor household, it would have been more comfortable to smoke
upstairs in the library; but James returned to Fielding after
demolishing Dickens and protested against being made to hurry over his
port; so his host had to watch Beatrice escort Miss Hamilton from the
dining-room with considerable resentment at what he thought was her
unjustifiably protective manner.
"As my secretary," he felt, "Miss Hamilton is more at home in my house
than Beatrice is. I suppose, though, that like everything else I have my
relations are going to take possession of her now."
"Where did you pick up your lady-help?" James asked, when he and his
brother were left alone with the wine.
"If you're alluding to Miss Hamilton," John said, sharply, "I met her on
board the _Murmania_, crossing the Atlantic."
"I never heard any good come of traveling acquaintances. She has a good
complexion; I suppose she took your eye by not being seasick. Beware of
women with good complexions who aren't seasick, Johnnie. They always
flirt."
"Are you supposed to be warning me against my secretary?"
"Any woman who finds herself at a man's elbow is dangerous. Nurses, of
course, are the most notoriously dangerous--but a secretary who isn't
seasick is nearly as bad."
"Thanks very much for your brotherly concern," said John, sarcastically.
"You will be relieved to hear that the relationship between Miss
Hamilton and myself is a purely practical one, and likely to remain
so."
"Platonism was never practical," James answered with a snort. "It was
the most impractical system ever imagined."
"Fortunately Miss Hamilton is sufficiently interested in her work and in
mine not to bother her head about the philosophy of the affections."
James was irritating when he was criticizing contemporary literature;
but his views of modern life were infuriating.
"I'm not accusing your young woman--how old is she, by the way? About
twenty-nine, I should guess. A damned dangerous age, Johnnie. However,
as I say, I'm not accusing her of designs upon you. But a man who writes
the kind of plays that you do is capable of any extravagance, and you're
much too old by now to be thinking about marriage."
"I don't happen to be thinking about marriage," John retorted. "But I
refuse to accept your dictum about my age. I consider that the effects
of age have been very much exaggerated by the young. You cannot call a
man of forty-two old."
"You look much more than forty-two. However, one can't write plays like
yours without exposing oneself to a good deal of emotional wear and
tear. No, no, you're making a great mistake in introducing a woman into
the house. Believe me, Johnnie, I'm speaking for your good. If I hadn't
married, I might have preserved my illusions about women and compounded
just as profitable a dose of dramatic nux vomica as yourself."
"What do you mean by a dose of dramatic nux vomica?"
"That's my name for the sort of plays you write, which unduly accelerate
the action of the heart and make a sane person retch. However, don't
take my remarks in ill part. I was simply commenting on the danger of
letting a good-looking young woman make herself indispensable."
"I'm glad you allow her good looks," John said, witheringly. "Any one
who was listening to our conversation would get the impression that she
was as ugly and voracious as a harpy."
"Yes, yes. She's quite good-looking. Very nice ankles."
"I haven't noticed her ankles," John said, austerely.
"You will, though," his brother replied with an encouraging laugh. "By
the way, what's that rascal, Hugh, been doing? I hear you've replanted
him in the bosom of the family. Isn't Hugh rather too real for one of
your Christmas parties?"
John, after some hesitation, had decided not to tell any of the others
the details of Hugh's misdemeanor; he had even denied himself the
pleasure of holding him up to George as a warning; hence the renewal of
his interest in Hugh had struck the family as a mere piece of
sentimentality.
"Crutchley didn't seem to believe he'd ever make much of architecture,"
he explained to James. "And I'm thinking of helping him to establish
himself in British Honduras."
"Bah! For less than he'll cost you in British Honduras you could
establish me as the editor of a new critical weekly," James grunted.
"There is still time for Hugh to make something of his life," John
replied. He had not had the slightest intention of trying to score off
his eldest brother by this remark, and he was shocked to see what a
spasm of ill will twisted up his face.
"I suppose your young woman is responsible for this sudden solicitude
for Hugh's career? I suppose it's she who has persuaded you that he has
possibilities? You take care, Johnnie. You can't manipulate the villain
in life as you can on the stage."
Now, Miss Hamilton, though she had not met him, had shown just enough
interest in Hugh to give these remarks a sting; and John must have been
obviously taken aback, for the critic at once recovered his good humor
and proposed joining the ladies upstairs. Beatrice was sitting by the
fire; her husband's absence had allowed her to begin the digestion of an
unusually good dinner in peace, and the smoothness of her countenance
made her look more than ever like a cabinet photograph of the early
'nineties. Miss Hamilton, on the other hand, seemed bored, and very
soon she declared that she must go home lest her mother should be
anxious.
"Oh, you have a mother?" James observed in such a tone that John thought
it was the most offensive remark of the many he had heard him make that
evening. He hoped that Miss Hamilton would not abandon him after this
first encounter with his relations, and he tried to ascertain her
impressions while she was putting on her things in the hall.
"I'm afraid you've had a very dull evening," he murmured,
apologetically. "I hope my sister-in-law wasn't more tiresome than
usual. What did she talk about?"
"She was warning me--no, I won't be malicious--she was explaining to me
the difficulties of an author's wife."
"Yes, poor thing; I'm afraid my brother must be very trying to live
with. I hope you were sympathetic?"
"So sympathetic," Miss Hamilton replied, with a mocking glance, "that I
told her I was never likely to make the experiment. Good night, Mr.
Touchwood. To-morrow as usual."
She hurried down the steps and was gone before he could utter a word.
"I don't think she need have said that," he murmured to himself on his
way back to the library. "I've no doubt Beatrice was very trying; but I
really don't think she need have said that to me. It wasn't worth
repeating such a stupid remark. That's the way things acquire an undue
importance."
With John's entrance the conversation returned to Miss Hamilton; but,
though it was nearly all implied criticism of his new secretary, he had
no desire to change the topic. She was much more interesting than the
weekly bills at Hill Road, and he listened without contradiction to his
brother's qualms about her experience and his sister-in-law's regrets
for her lack of it.
"However," said John to his reflection when he was undressing, "they've
got to make the best of her, even if they all think the worse. And the
beauty of it is that they can't occupy her as they can occupy a house. I
must see about getting Hugh off to the Colonies soon. If I don't find
out about British Honduras, he can always go to Canada or Australia. It
isn't good for him to hang about in England."