There were ducks, green peas, and adolescent new potatoes for supper,
and afterwards stewed fruit and cream and junket and cheese, bottled
beer, Gilbey's Burgundy, and home-made lemonade. Mrs. Pope carved,
because Mr. Pope splashed too much, and bones upset him and made him
want to show up chicken in the _Times_. So he sat at the other end and
rallied his guests while Mrs. Pope distributed the viands. He showed not
a trace of his recent umbrage. Theodore sat between Daffy and his mother
because of his table manners, and Marjorie was on her father's right
hand and next to Mr. Wintersloan, while Mr. Magnet was in the middle of
the table on the opposite side in a position convenient for looking at
her. Both maids waited.
The presence of Magnet invariably stirred the latent humorist in Mr.
Pope. He felt that he who talks to humorists should himself be humorous,
and it was his private persuasion that with more attention he might have
been, to use a favourite form of expression, "no mean jester." Quite a
lot of little things of his were cherished as "Good" both by himself
and, with occasional inaccuracies, by Mrs. Pope. He opened out now in a
strain of rich allusiveness.
"What will you drink, Mr. Wintersloan?" he said. "Wine of the country,
yclept beer, red wine from France, or my wife's potent brew from the
golden lemon?"
Mr. Wintersloan thought he would take Burgundy. Mr. Magnet preferred
beer.
"I've heard there's iron in the Beer,
And I believe it,"
misquoted Mr. Pope, and nodded as it were to the marker to score. "Daffy
and Marjorie are still in the lemonade stage. Will you take a little
Burgundy to-night, Mummy?"
Mrs. Pope decided she would, and was inspired to ask Mr. Wintersloan if
he had been in that part of the country before. Topography ensued. Mr.
Wintersloan had a style of his own, and spoke of the Buryhamstreet
district as a "pooty little country--pooty little hills, with a swirl in
them."
This pleased Daffy and Marjorie, and their eyes met for a moment.
Then Mr. Magnet, with a ray full on Marjorie, said he had always been
fond of Surrey. "I think if ever I made a home in the country I should
like it to be here."
Mr. Wintersloan said Surrey would tire him, it was too bossy and curly,
too flocculent; he would prefer to look on broader, simpler lines, with
just a sudden catch in the breath in them--if you understand me?
Marjorie did, and said so.
"A sob--such as you get at the break of a pinewood on a hill."
This baffled Mr. Pope, but Marjorie took it. "Or the short dry cough of
a cliff," she said.
"Exactly," said Mr. Wintersloan, and having turned a little deliberate
close-lipped smile on her for a moment, resumed his wing.
"So long as a landscape doesn't _sneeze_" said Mr. Magnet, in that
irresistible dry way of his, and Rom and Sydney, at any rate, choked.
"Now is the hour when Landscapes yawn," mused Mr. Pope, coming in all
right at the end.
Then Mrs. Pope asked Mr. Wintersloan, about his route to Buryhamstreet,
and then Mr. Pope asked Mr. Magnet whether he was playing at a new work
or working at a new play.
Mr. Magnet said he was dreaming over a play. He wanted to bring out the
more serious side of his humour, go a little deeper into things than he
had hitherto done.
"Mingling smiles and tears," said Mr. Pope approvingly.
Mr. Magnet said very quietly that all true humour did that.
Then Mrs. Pope asked what the play was to be about, and Mr. Magnet, who
seemed disinclined to give an answer, turned the subject by saying he
had to prepare an address on humour for the next dinner of the
_Literati_. "It's to be a humourist's dinner, and they've made me the
guest of the evening--by way of a joke to begin with," he said with that
dry smile again.
Mrs. Pope said he shouldn't say things like that. She then said "Syd!"
quietly but sharply to Sydney, who was making a disdainful, squinting
face at Theodore, and told the parlourmaid to clear the plates for
sweets. Mr. Magnet professed great horror of public speaking. He said
that whenever he rose to make an after-dinner speech all the ices he had
ever eaten seemed to come out of the past, and sit on his backbone.
The talk centered for awhile on Mr. Magnet's address, and apropos of
Tests of Humour Mr. Pope, who in his way was "no mean raconteur,"
related the story of the man who took the salad dressing with his hand,
and when his host asked why he did that, replied: "Oh! I thought it was
spinach!"
"Many people," added Mr. Pope, "wouldn't see the point of that. And if
they don't see the point they can't--and the more they try the less they
do."
All four girls hoped secretly and not too confidently that their
laughter had not sounded hollow.
And then for a time the men told stories as they came into their heads
in an easy, irresponsible way. Mr. Magnet spoke of the humour of the
omnibus-driver who always dangled and twiddled his badge "by way of a
joke" when he passed the conductor whose father had been hanged, and Mr.
Pope, perhaps, a little irrelevantly, told the story of the little boy
who was asked his father's last words, and said "mother was with him to
the end," which particularly amused Mrs. Pope. Mr. Wintersloan gave the
story of the woman who was taking her son to the hospital with his head
jammed into a saucepan, and explained to the other people in the
omnibus: "You see, what makes it so annoying, it's me only saucepan!"
Then they came back to the Sense of Humour with the dentist who shouted
with laughter, and when asked the reason by his patient, choked out:
"Wrong tooth!" and then Mr. Pope reminded them of the heartless husband
who, suddenly informed that his mother-in-law was dead, exclaimed "Oh,
don't make me laugh, please, I've got a split lip...."