The conversation assumed a less anecdotal quality with the removal to
the drawing-room. On Mr. Magnet's initiative the gentlemen followed the
ladies almost immediately, and it was Mr. Magnet who remembered that
Marjorie could sing.
Both the elder sisters indeed had sweet clear voices, and they had
learnt a number of those jolly songs the English made before the dull
Hanoverians came. Syd accompanied, and Rom sat back in the low chair in
the corner and fell deeply in love with Mr. Wintersloan. The three
musicians in their green and sulphur-yellow and white made a pretty
group in the light of the shaded lamp against the black and gold
Broadwood, the tawdry screen, its pattern thin glittering upon darkness,
and the deep shadows behind. Marjorie loved singing, and forgot herself
as she sang.
"I love, and he loves me again,
Yet dare I not tell who;
For if the nymphs should know my swain,
I fear they'd love him too,"
she sang, and Mr. Magnet could not conceal the intensity of his
admiration.
Mr. Pope had fallen into a pleasant musing; several other ripe old
yarns, dear delicious old things, had come into his mind that he felt he
might presently recall when this unavoidable display of accomplishments
was overpast, and it was with one of them almost on his lips that he
glanced across at his guest. He was surprised to see Mr. Magnet's face
transfigured. He was sitting forward, looking up at Marjorie, and he had
caught something of the expression of those blessed boys who froth at
the feet of an Assumption. For an instant Mr. Pope did not understand.
Then he understood. It was Marjorie! He had a twinge of surprise, and
glanced at his own daughter as though he had never seen her before. He
perceived in a flash for the first time that this troublesome, clever,
disrespectful child was tall and shapely and sweet, and indeed quite a
beautiful young woman. He forgot his anecdotes. His being was suffused
with pride and responsibility and the sense of virtue rewarded. He did
not reflect for a moment that Marjorie embodied in almost equal
proportions the very best points in his mother and his mother-in-law,
and avoided his own more salient characteristics with so neat a
dexterity that from top to toe, except for the one matter of colour, not
only did she not resemble him but she scarcely even alluded to him. He
thought simply that she was his daughter, that she derived from him,
that her beauty was his. She was the outcome of his meritorious
preparations. He recalled all the moments when he had been kind and
indulgent to her, all the bills he had paid for her; all the stresses
and trials of the coach-building collapse, all the fluctuations of his
speculative adventures, became things he had faced patiently and
valiantly for her sake. He forgot the endless times when he had been
viciously cross with her, all the times when he had pished and tushed
and sworn in her hearing. He had on provocation and in spite of her
mother's protests slapped her pretty vigorously, but such things are
better forgotten; nor did he recall how bitterly he had opposed the
college education which had made her now so clear in eye and thought,
nor the frightful shindy, only three months since, about that identical
green dress in which she now stood delightful. He forgot these petty
details, as an idealist should. There she was, his daughter. An immense
benevolence irradiated his soul--for Marjorie--for Magnet. His eyes were
suffused with a not ignoble tenderness. The man, he knew, was worth at
least thirty-five thousand pounds, a discussion of investments had made
that clear, and he must be making at least five thousand a year! A
beautiful girl, a worthy man! A good fellow, a sound good fellow, a
careful fellow too--as these fellows went!
Old Daddy would lose his treasure of course.
Well, a father must learn resignation, and he for one would not stand in
the way of his girl's happiness. A day would come when, very beautifully
and tenderly, he would hand her over to Magnet, his favourite daughter
to his trusted friend. "Well, my boy, there's no one in all the
world----" he would begin.
It would be a touching parting. "Don't forget your old father, Maggots,"
he would say. At such a moment that quaint nickname would surely not be
resented....
He reflected how much he had always preferred Marjorie to Daffy. She was
brighter--more like him. Daffy was unresponsive, with a touch of
bitterness under her tongue....
He was already dreaming he was a widower, rather infirm, the object of
Magnet's and Marjorie's devoted care, when the song ceased, and the wife
he had for the purpose of reveries just consigned so carelessly to the
cemetery proposed that they should have a little game that every one
could play at. A number of pencils and slips of paper appeared in her
hands. She did not want the girls to exhaust their repertory on this
first occasion--and besides, Mr. Pope liked games in which one did
things with pencils and strips of paper. Mr. Magnet wished the singing
to go on, he said, but he was overruled.
So for a time every one played a little game in which Mr. Pope was
particularly proficient. Indeed, it was rare that any one won but Mr.
Pope. It was called "The Great Departed," and it had such considerable
educational value that all the children had to play at it whenever he
wished.
It was played in this manner; one of the pseudo twins opened a book and
dabbed a finger on the page, and read out the letter immediately at the
tip of her finger, then all of them began to write as hard as they
could, writing down the names of every great person they could think of,
whose name began with that letter. At the end of five minutes Mr. Pope
said Stop! and then began to read his list out, beginning with the first
name. Everybody who had that name crossed it out and scored one, and
after his list was exhausted all the surviving names on the next list
were read over in the same way, and so on. The names had to be the names
of dead celebrated people, only one monarch of the same name of the same
dynasty was allowed, and Mr. Pope adjudicated on all doubtful cases. It
was great fun.
The first two games were won as usual by Mr. Pope, and then Mr.
Wintersloan, who had been a little distraught in his manner, brightened
up and scribbled furiously.
The letter was _D_, and after Mr. Pope had rehearsed a tale of nine and
twenty names, Mr. Wintersloan read out his list in that curious voice of
his which suggested nothing so much as some mobile drink glucking out of
the neck of a bottle held upside down.
"Dahl," he began.
"Who was Dahl?" asked Mr. Pope.
"'Vented dahlias," said Mr. Wintersloan, with a sigh. "Danton."
"Forgot him," said Mr. Pope.
"Davis."
"Davis?"
"Davis Straits. Doe."
"Who?"
"John Doe, Richard Roe."
"Legal fiction, I'm afraid," said Mr. Pope.
"Dam," said Mr. Wintersloan, and added after a slight pause: "Anthony
van."
Mr. Pope made an interrogative noise.
"Painter--eighteenth century--Dutch. Dam, Jan van, his son. Dam,
Frederich van. Dam, Wilhelm van. Dam, Diedrich van. Dam, Wilhelmina,
wood engraver, gifted woman. Diehl."
"Who?"
"Painter--dead--famous. See Duesseldorf. It's all painters now--all
guaranteed dead, all good men. Deeds of Norfolk, the aquarellist,
Denton, Dibbs."
"Er?" said Mr. Pope.
"The Warwick Claude, _you_ know. Died 1823."
"Dickson, Dunting, John Dickery. Peter Dickery, William Dock--I beg your
pardon?"
Mr. Pope was making a protesting gesture, but Mr. Wintersloan's bearing
was invincible, and he proceeded.
In the end he emerged triumphant with forty-nine names, mostly painters
for whose fame he answered, but whose reputations were certainly new to
every one else present. "I can go on like that," said Mr. Wintersloan,
"with any letter," and turned that hard little smile full on Marjorie.
"I didn't see how to do it at first. I just cast about. But I know a
frightful lot of painters. No end. Shall we try again?"
Marjorie glanced at her father. Mr. Wintersloan's methods were all too
evident to her. A curious feeling pervaded the room that Mr. Pope didn't
think Mr. Wintersloan's conduct honourable, and that he might even go
some way towards saying so.
So Mrs. Pope became very brisk and stirring, and said she thought that
now perhaps a charade would be more amusing. It didn't do to keep on at
a game too long. She asked Rom and Daphne and Theodore and Mr.
Wintersloan to go out, and they all agreed readily, particularly Rom.
"Come on!" said Rom to Mr. Wintersloan. Everybody else shifted into an
audience-like group between the piano and the what-not. Mr. Magnet sat
at Marjorie's feet, while Syd played a kind of voluntary, and Mr. Pope
leant back in his chair, with his brows knit and lips moving, trying to
remember something.
The charade _was_ very amusing. The word was Catarrh, and Mr.
Wintersloan, as the patient in the last act being given gruel, surpassed
even the children's very high expectations. Rom, as his nurse, couldn't
keep her hands off him. Then the younger people kissed round and were
packed off to bed, and the rest of the party went to the door upon the
lawn and admired the night. It was a glorious summer night, deep blue,
and rimmed warmly by the afterglow, moonless, and with a few big
lamp-like stars above the black still shapes of trees.
Mrs. Pope said they would all accompany their guests to the gate at the
end of the avenue--in spite of the cockchafers.
Mr. Pope's ankle, however, excused him; the cordiality of his parting
from Mr. Wintersloan seemed a trifle forced, and he limped thoughtfully
and a little sombrely towards the study to see if he could find an
Encyclopaedia or some such book of reference that would give the names of
the lesser lights of Dutch, Italian, and English painting during the
last two centuries.
He felt that Mr. Wintersloan had established an extraordinarily bad
precedent.