Next morning they found their hostess at breakfast in the dining-room
and now the sun was streaming through a high triple window that had been
curtained overnight, and they looked out through clean, bright
plate-glass upon mountains half-dissolved in a luminous mist, and a
mist-veiled lake below. Great stone jars upon the terrace bore a blaze
of urged and early blossom, and beyond were cypresses. Their hostess
presided at one of two round tables, at a side table various breakfast
dishes kept warm over spirit lamps, and two men servants dispensed tea
and coffee. In the bay of the window was a fruit table, with piled
fruit-plates and finger-bowls.
Mrs. Lee waved a welcoming hand, and drew Marjorie to a seat beside her.
Rex was consuming trout and Christabel peaches, and Solomonson, all his
overnight Orientalism abandoned, was in outspoken tweeds and quite under
the impression that he was interested in golf. Trafford got frizzled
bacon for Marjorie and himself, and dropped into a desultory
conversation, chiefly sustained by Christabel, about the peculiarly
exalting effect of beautiful scenery on Christabel's mind. Mrs. Lee was
as usual distraught, and kept glancing towards the steps that led up
from the hall. Lady Solomonson appeared with a rustle in a wrapper of
pink Chinese silk. "I came down after all," she said. "I lay in bed
weighing rolls and coffee and relaxed muscles against your English
breakfast downstairs. And suddenly I remembered your little sausages!"
She sat down with a distribution of handkerchief, bag, letters, a gold
fountain pen and suchlike equipments, and Trafford got her some of the
coveted delicacies. Mrs. Lee suddenly cried out, "_Here_ they come!
_Here_ they come!" and simultaneously the hall resonated with children's
voices and the yapping of a Skye terrier.
Then a gay little procession appeared ascending the steps. First came a
small but princely little boy of three, with a ruddy face and curly
black hair, behind him was a slender, rather awkward girl of perhaps
eleven, and a sturdier daughter of Israel of nine. A nurse in artistic
purple followed, listening inattentively to some private whisperings of
a knickerbockered young man of five, and then came another purple-robed
nurse against contingencies, and then a nurse of a different,
white-clad, and more elaborately costumed sort, carrying a sumptuous
baby of eight or nine months. "Ah! the _darlings!_" cried Christabel,
springing up quite beautifully, and Lady Solomonson echoed the cry. The
procession broke against the tables and split about the breakfast party.
The small boy in petticoats made a confident rush for Marjorie,
Christabel set herself to fascinate his elder brother, the young woman
of eleven scrutinized Trafford with speculative interest and edged
towards him coyly, and Mrs. Lee interviewed her youngest born. The
amiable inanities suitable to the occasion had scarcely begun before a
violent clapping of hands announced the appearance of Lee.
It was Lee's custom, Mrs. Lee told Marjorie over her massively robed
baby, to get up very early and work on rolls and coffee; he never
breakfasted nor joined them until the children came. All of them rushed
to him for their morning kiss, and it seemed to Trafford that Lee at
least was an altogether happy creature as he accepted the demonstrative
salutations of this struggling, elbowing armful of offspring, and
emerged at last like a man from a dive, flushed and ruffled and smiling,
to wish his adult guests good morning.
"Come upstairs with us, daddy," cried the children, tugging at him.
"Come upstairs!"
Mrs. Lee ran her eye about her table and rose. "It's the children's
hour," she said to Marjorie. "You don't I hope, mind children?"
"But," said Trafford incredulous, and with a friendly arm about his
admirer, "is this tall young woman yours?"
The child shot him a glance of passionate appreciation for this scrap of
flattery.
"We began young," said Mrs. Lee, with eyes of uncritical pride for the
ungainly one, and smiled at her husband.
"Upstairs," cried the boy of five and the girl of nine. "Upstairs."
"May we come?" asked Marjorie.
"May we all come?" asked Christabel, determined to be in the movement.
Rex strolled towards the cigars, with disentanglement obviously in his
mind.
"Do you really care?" asked Mrs. Lee. "You know, I'm so proud of their
nursery. Would you care----? Always I go up at this time."
"I've my little nursery, too," said Marjorie.
"Of course!" cried Mrs. Lee, "I forgot. Of course;" and overwhelmed
Marjorie with inquiries as she followed her husband. Every one joined
the nurseryward procession except Rex, who left himself behind with an
air of inadvertency, and escaped to the terrace and a cigar....
It was a wonderful nursery, a suite of three bedrooms, a green and
white, well-lit schoolroom and a vast playroom, and hovering about the
passage Trafford remarked a third purple nurse and a very efficient and
serious-looking Swiss governess. The schoolroom and the nursery
displayed a triumph of judicious shopping and arrangement, the best of
German and French and English things had been blended into a harmony at
once hygienic and pedagogic and humanly charming. For once Marjorie had
to admire the spending of another woman, and admit to herself that even
she could not have done better with the money.
There were clever little desks for the elder children to work at,
adjustable desks scientifically lit so that they benefited hands and
shoulders and eyes; there were artistically coloured and artistically
arranged pictures, and a little library held all the best of Lang and
Lucas, rare good things like "Uncle Lubin," Maurice Baring's story of
"Forget-me-not," "Johnny Crow's Garden," "The Bad Child's Book of
Beasts," animal books and bird books, costume books and story books,
colour books and rhyme books, abundant, yet every one intelligently
chosen, no costly meretricious printed rubbish such as silly Gentile
mothers buy. Then in the great nursery, with its cork carpet on which
any toy would stand or run, was an abundance of admirable possessions
and shelving for everything, and great fat cloth elephants to ride, and
go-carts, and hooks for a swing. Marjorie's quick eye saw, and she
admired effusively and envied secretly, and Mrs. Lee appreciated her
appreciation. A skirmishing romp of the middle children and Lee went on
about the two of them, and Trafford was led off by his admirer into a
cubby-house in one corner (with real glass windows made to open) and the
muslin curtains were drawn while he was shown a secret under vows. Lady
Solomonson discovered some soldiers, and was presently on her knees in a
corner with the five-year old boy.
"These are like my Teddy's," she was saying. "My Billy has some of
these."
Trafford emerged from the cubby-house, which was perhaps a little
cramped for him, and surveyed the room, with his admirer lugging at his
arm unheeded, and whispering: "Come back with me."
Of course this was the clue to Lee and Solomonson. How extremely happy
Lee appeared to be! Enormous vistas of dark philoprogenitive parents and
healthy little Jews and Jewesses seemed to open out to Trafford,
hygienically reared, exquisitely trained and educated. And he and
Marjorie had just one little daughter--with a much poorer educational
outlook. She had no cloth elephant to ride, no elaborate cubby-house to
get into, only a half-dozen picture books or so, and later she wouldn't
when she needed it get that linguistic Swiss.
He wasn't above the normal human vanity of esteeming his own race and
type the best, and certain vulgar aspects of what nowadays one calls
Eugenics crossed his mind.