VISITORS AT THE DEANERY.
Eddy, while they played coon-can that evening (a horrid game prevalent
at this time) approached his parents on the subject of the visitors he
wanted. He mentioned to them the facts already retailed to Daphne and
Molly concerning their accomplishments and virtues (omitting those
concerning their domestic arrangements). And these eulogies are a
mistake when one is asking friends to stay. One should not utter them.
To do so starts a prejudice hard to eradicate in the minds of parents
and brothers and sisters, and the visit may prove a failure. Eddy was
intelligent and should have known this, but he was in an unthinking mood
this Christmas, and did it.
His mother kindly said, “Very well, dear. Which day do you want them to
come?”
“I’d rather like them to be here for New Year’s day, if you don’t mind.
They might come on the thirty-first.”
Eddy put down three twos in the first round, for the excellent reason
that he had collected them. Daphne, disgusted, said, “Look at Teddy
saving six points off his damage! I suppose that’s the way they play in
your slum.”
Mrs. Oliver said, “Very well. Remember the Bellairs’ are coming to
dinner on New Year’s Day. It will make rather a large party, but we can
manage all right.”
“Your turn, mother,” said Daphne, who did not like dawdling.
The Dean, who had been looking thoughtful, said, “Le Moine, did you say
one of your friends was called? No relation, I suppose, to that writer
Le Moine, whose play was censored not long ago?”
“Yes, that’s her husband. But he’s a delightful person. And it was a
delightful play, too. Not a bit dull or vulgar or pompous, like some
censored plays. He only put in the parts they didn’t like just for fun,
to see whether it would be censored or not, and partly because someone
had betted him he couldn’t get censored if he tried.”
The Dean looked as if he thought that silly. But he did not mean to talk
about censored plays, because of Daphne, who was young. So he only said,
“Playing with fire,” and changed the subject. “Is it raining outside,
Daffy?” he inquired with humorous intention, as his turn came round to
play. As no one asked him why he wanted to know, he told them. “Because,
if you don’t mind, I’m thinking of going out,” and he laid his hand on
the table.
“Oh, I say, father! Two jokers! No wonder you’re out.” (This jargon of
an old-time but once popular game perhaps demands apology; anyhow no one
need try to understand it. _Tout passe, tout lasse_.... Even the Tango
Tea will all too soon be out of mode).
The Dean rose from the table. “Now I must stop this frivolling. I’ve any
amount of work to get through.”
“Don’t go on too long, Everard.” Mrs. Oliver was afraid his head would
ache.
“Needs must, I’m afraid, when a certain person drives. The certain
person in this case being represented by poor old Taggert.”
Poor old Taggert was connected with another Church paper, higher than
the _Guardian_, and he had been writing in this paper long challenges to
the Dean “to satisfactorily explain” what he had meant by certain
expressions used by him in his last letter on Revision. The Dean could
satisfactorily explain anything, and found it an agreeable exercise, but
one that took time and energy.
“Frightful waste of time, _I_ call it,” said Daphne, when the door was
shut. “Because they never will agree, and they don’t seem to get any
further by talking. Why don’t they toss up or something, to see who’s
right? Or draw lots. Long one, revise it all, middle one, revise it as
father and his lot want, short one, let it alone, like the _Church
Times_ and Canon Jackson want.”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” said her mother, absently.
“Some day,” added Eddy, “you may be old enough to understand these
difficult things, dear. Till then, try and be seen and not heard.”
“Anyhow,” said Daphne, “I go out.... I believe this is rather a footling
game, really. It doesn’t amuse one more than a week. I’d rather play
bridge, or hide and seek.”
Christmas passed, as Christmas will pass, only give it time. They kept
it at the deanery much as they keep it at other deaneries, and, indeed,
in very many homes not deaneries. They did up parcels and ran short of
brown paper, and bought more string and many more stamps, and sent off
cards and cards, and received cards and cards and cards, and hurried to
send off more cards to make up the difference (but some only arrived on
Christmas Day, a mean trick, and had to wait to be returned till the new
year), and took round parcels, and at last rested, and Christmas Day
dawned. It was a bright frosty day, with ice, etcetera, and the Olivers
went skating in the afternoon with the Bellairs, round and round
oranges. Eddy taught Molly a new trick, or step, or whatever those who
skate call what they learn, and Daphne and the Bellairs boys flew about
hand-in-hand, graceful and charming to watch. In the night it snowed,
and next day they all tobogganed.
“I haven’t seen Molly looking so well for weeks,” said Molly’s mother to
her father, though indeed Molly usually looked well.
“Healthy weather,” said Colonel Bellairs, “and healthy exercise. I like
to see all those children playing together.”
His wife liked it too, and beamed on them all at tea, which the Olivers
often came in to after the healthy exercise.
Meanwhile Arnold Denison and Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine all wrote to
say they would come on the thirty-first, which they proceeded to do.
They came by three different trains, and Eddy spent the afternoon
meeting them, instead of skating with the Bellairs. First Arnold came,
from Cambridge, and twenty minutes later Jane, from Oxford, without her
bag, which she had mislaid at Rugby. Meanwhile Eddy got a long telegram
from Eileen to the effect that she had missed her train and was coming
by the next. He took Jane and Arnold home to tea.
Daphne was still skating. The Dean and his wife were always charming to
guests. The Dean talked Cambridge to Arnold. He had been up with
Professor Denison, and many other people, and had always kept in touch
with Cambridge, as he remarked. Sometimes, while a canon of Ely, he had
preached the University Sermon. He did not wholly approve of the social
and theological, or non-theological, outlook of Professor Denison and
his family; but still, the Denisons were able and interesting and
respect-worthy people, if cranky. Arnold the Dean suspected of being
very cranky indeed; not the friend he would have chosen for Eddy in the
improbable hypothesis of his having had the selection of Eddy’s
friends. Certainly not the person he would have chosen for Eddy to share
rooms with, as was now their plan. But nothing of this appeared in his
courteous, if not very effusive, manner to his guest.
To Jane he talked about her father, a distinguished Oxford scholar, and
meanwhile eyed her a little curiously, wondering why she looked somehow
different from the girls he was used to. His wife could have told him it
was because she had on a grey-blue dress, rather beautifully embroidered
on the yoke and cuffs, instead of a shirt and coat and skirt. She was
not surprised, being one of those people whose rather limited experience
has taught them that artists are often like that. She talked to Jane
about Welchester, and the Cathedral, and its windows, some of which were
good. Jane, with her small sweet voice and pretty manners and charming,
friendly smile, was bound to make a pleasant impression on anybody not
too greatly prejudiced by the grey-blue dress. And Mrs. Oliver was
artistic enough to see that the dress suited her, though she herself
preferred that girls should not make themselves look like early Italian
pictures of St. Ursula. It might be all right in Oxford or Cambridge
(one understands that this style is still, though with decreasing
frequency, occasionally to be met with in our older Universities), or no
doubt, at Letchworth and the Hampstead Garden City, and possibly beyond
Blackfriars Bridge (Mrs. Oliver was vague as to this, not knowing that
part of London well); but in Welchester, a midland cathedral country
town, it was unsuitable, and not done. Mrs. Oliver wondered whether Eddy
didn’t mind, but he didn’t seem to. Eddy had never minded the things
most boys mind in those ways; he had never, when at school, betrayed the
least anxiety concerning his parents’ clothes or manners when they had
visited him; probably he thought all clothes and all manners, like all
ideas, were very nice, in their different ways.
But when Daphne came in, tweed-skirted, and clad in a blue golfer and
cap, and prettily flushed by the keen air to the colour of a pink shell,
her quick eyes took in every detail of Jane’s attire before she was
introduced, and her mother guessed a suppressed twinkle in her smile.
Mrs. Oliver hoped Daphne was going to be polite to these visitors. She
was afraid Daphne was in a rather perverse mood towards Eddy’s friends.
Denison, of course, she frankly disliked, and did not make much secret
of it. He was conceited, plain, his hair untidy, his collar low, and his
manners supercilious. Denison was well equipped for taking care of
himself; those who came to blows with him rarely came off best. He
behaved very well at tea, knowing, as Eddy had said, that it was a
Deanery. But he was annoying once. Someone had given Mrs. Oliver at
Christmas a certain book, containing many beautiful and tranquil
thoughts about this world, its inhabitants, its origin, and its goal, by
a writer who had produced, and would, no doubt, continue to produce,
very many such books. Many people read this writer constantly, and got
help therefrom, and often wrote and told him so; others did not read him
at all, not finding life long enough; others, again, read him sometimes
in an idle moment, to get a little diversion. Of these last was Arnold
Denison. When he put his tea-cup down on the table at his side, his eye
chanced on the beautiful book lying thereon, and he laughed a little.
“Which one is that? Oh, _Garden Paths_. That’s the last but two, isn’t
it.” He picked it up and turned the leaves, and chuckled at a certain
passage, which he proceeded to read aloud. It had, unfortunately, or was
intended to have, a philosophical and more or less religious bearing
(the writer was a vague but zealous seeker after truth); also, more
unfortunately still, the Dean and his wife knew the author; in fact, he
had stayed with them often. Eddy would have warned Arnold of that had he
had time, but it was too late. He could only now say, “I call that very
interesting, and jolly well put.”
The Dean said, genially, but with acerbity, “Ah, you mustn’t make game
of Phil Underwood here, you know; he’s a _persona grata_ with us. A dear
fellow. And not in the least spoilt by all his tremendous success. As
candid and unaffected as he was when we were at Cambridge together, five
and thirty years ago. And look at all he’s done since then. He’s walked
straight into the heart of the reading public--the more thoughtful and
discriminating part of it, that is, for of course he’s not any man’s
fare--not showy enough; he’s not one of your smart paradox-and-epigram-mongers.
He leads one by very quiet and delightful paths, right out of the noisy
world. A great rest and refreshment for busy men and women; we want more
like him in this hurrying age, when most people’s chief object seems to
be to see how much they can get done in how short a time.”
“_He’s_ fairly good at that, you know,” suggested Arnold, innocently
turning to the title-page of the last but two, to find its date.
Mrs. Oliver said, gently, but a little distantly, “I always feel it
rather a pity to make fun of a writer who has helped so many people so
very greatly as Philip Underwood has,” which was damping and final, and
the sort of unfair thing, Arnold felt, that shouldn’t be said in
conversation. That is the worst of people who aren’t clever; they
suddenly turn on you and score heavily, and you can’t get even. So he
said, bored, “Shall I come down with you to meet Eileen, Eddy?” and
Daphne thought he had rotten manners and had cheeked her parents. He and
Eddy went out together, to meet Eileen.
It was characteristic of Jane that she had given no contribution to this
conversation, never having read any Philip Underwood, and only very
vaguely and remotely having heard of him. Jane was marvellously good at
concerning herself only with the first-rate; hence she never sneered at
the second or third-rate, for it had no existence for her. She was not
one of those artists who mock at the Royal Academy; she never saw most
of the pictures there exhibited, but only the few she wished to see, and
went on purpose to see. Neither did she jeer at even our most popular
writers of fiction, nor at Philip Underwood. Jane was very cloistered,
very chaste. Whatsoever things were lovely, she thought on these things,
and on no others. At the present moment she was thinking of the Deanery
hall, how beautifully it was shaped, and how good was the curve of the
oak stairs up from it, and how pleasing and worth drawing Daphne’s long,
irregular, delicately-tinted face, with the humorous, one-sided,
half-reluctant smile, and the golden waves of hair beneath the blue cap.
She wondered if Daphne would let her make a sketch. She would draw her
as some little vagabond, amused, sullen, elfish, half-tamed, wholly
spoilt, preferably in rags, and bare-limbed--Jane’s fingers itched to be
at work on her.
Rather a silent girl, Mrs. Oliver decided, and said, “You must go over
the Cathedral to-morrow.”
Jane agreed that she must, and Daphne hoped that Eddy would do that
business. For her, she was sick of showing people the Cathedral, and
conducting them to the Early English door and the Norman arches, and the
something else Lady-chapel, and all the rest of the tiresome things the
guide-book superfluously put it into people’s heads to inquire after.
One took aunts round.... But whenever Daphne could, she left it to the
Dean, who enjoyed it, and had, of course, very much more to say about
it, knowing not only every detail of its architecture and history, but
every detail of its needed repairs and pinnings-up, and general
improvements, and how long they would take to do, and how little money
was at present forthcoming to do them with. The Dean was as keen on his
Cathedral as on revision. Mrs. Oliver had the knowledge of it customary
with people of culture who live near cathedrals, and Eddy that and
something more, added by a great affection. The Cathedral for him had a
glamour and glory.
The Dean began to tell Jane about it.
“You are an artist, Eddy tells us,” he said, presently; “well, I think
certain bits of our Cathedral must be an inspiration to any artist. Do
you know Wilson Gavin’s studies of details of Ely? Very exquisite and
delicate work.”
Jane thought so too.
“Poor Gavin,” the Dean added, more gravely; “we used to see something of
him when he came down to Ely, five or six years ago. It’s an
extraordinary thing that he could do work like that, so marvellously
pure and delicate, and full, apparently of such reverent love of
beauty--and at the same time lead the life he has led since, and I
suppose is leading now.”
Jane looked puzzled.
The Dean said, “Ah, of course, you don’t know him. But one hears sad
stories....”
“I know Mr. Gavin a little,” said Jane. “I always like him very much.”
The Dean thought her either not nearly particular enough, or too
ignorant to be credible. She obviously either had never heard, had quite
forgotten, or didn’t mind, the sad stories. He hoped for the best, and
dropped the subject. He couldn’t well say straight out, before Miss Dawn
and Daphne, that he had heard that Mr. Gavin had eloped with someone
else’s wife.
It was perhaps for the best that Eddy and Arnold and Eileen arrived at
this moment.
At a glance the Olivers saw that Mrs. Le Moine was different from Miss
Dawn. She was charmingly dressed. She had a blue travelling-coat, grey
furs, deep blue eyes under black brows, and an engaging smile. Certainly
“rather beautiful,” as Eddy had said to Daphne, and of a charm that they
all felt, but especially the Dean.
Mrs. Oliver, catching Eddy’s eye as he introduced her, saw that he was
proud of this one among his visitors. She knew the look, radiant, half
shy, the look of a nice child introducing an admired school friend to
his people, sure they will get on, thinking how jolly for both of them
to know each other. The less nice child has a different look,
mistrustful, nervous, anxious, lest his people should disgrace
themselves....
Mrs. Oliver gave Mrs. Le Moine tea. They all talked. Eileen had brought
in with her a periodical she had been reading in the train, which had in
it a poem by Billy Raymond. Arnold picked it up and read it, and said
he was sorry about it. Eddy then read it and said, “I rather like it.
Don’t you, Eileen? It’s very much Billy in a certain mood, of course.”
Arnold said it was Billy reacting with such violence against
Masefield--a very sensible procedure within limits--that he had all but
landed himself in the impressionist preciosity of the early Edwardians.
Eileen said, “It’s Billy when he’s been lunching with Cecil. He’s often
taken like that then.”
The Dean said, “And who’s Cecil?”
Eileen said, “My husband,” and the Dean and Mrs. Oliver weren’t sure if,
given one was living apart from one’s husband, it was quite nice to
mention him casually at tea like that; more particularly when he had
just written a censored play.
The Dean, in order not to pursue the subject of Mr. Le Moine, held out
his hand for the _Blue Review_, and perused Billy’s production, which
was called “The Mussel Picker.”
He laid it down presently and said, “I can’t say I gather any very
coherent thought from it.”
Arnold said, “Quite. Billy hadn’t any just then. That is wholly obvious.
Billy sometimes has, but occasionally hasn’t, you know. Billy is at
times, though by no means always, a shallow young man.”
“Shallow young men produce a good deal of our modern poetry, it seems to
me from my slight acquaintance with it,” said the Dean. “One misses the
thought in it that made the Victorian giants so fine.”
As a good many of the shallow young producers of our modern poetry were
more or less intimately known to his three guests, Arnold suspected the
Dean of trying to get back on him for his aspersions on Philip
Underwood. He with difficulty restrained himself from saying, gently but
aloofly, _a la_ Mrs. Oliver, “I always think it rather a pity to
criticize writers who have helped so many people so very greatly as our
Georgian poets have,” and said instead, “But the point about this thing
of Billy’s is that it’s not modern in the least. It breathes of fifteen
years back--the time when people painted in words, and were all for
atmosphere. Surely whatever you say about the best modern people, you
can’t deny they’re full of thought--so full that sometimes they forget
the sound and everything else. Of course you mayn’t _like_ the thought,
that’s quite another thing; but you can’t miss it; it fairly jumps out
at you.... Did you read John Henderson’s thing in this month’s _English
Review_?”
This was one of the periodicals not taken in at the Deanery, so the Dean
hadn’t read it. Nor did he want to enter into an argument on modern
poetry, with which he was less familiar than with the Victorian giants.
Arnold, talking too much, as he often did when not talking too little,
said across the room to Daphne, “What do _you_ think of John Henderson,
Miss Oliver?”
It amused him to provoke her, because she was a match for him in
rudeness, and drew him too by her attractive face and abrupt speech. She
wasn’t dull, though she might care nothing for John Henderson or any
other poet, and looked on and yawned when she was bored.
“Never thought about him at all,” she said now. “Who is he?” though she
knew quite well.
Arnold proceeded to tell her, with elaboration and diffuseness.
“I can lend you his works, if you’d like,” he added.
She said, “No, thanks,” and Mrs. Oliver said, “I’m afraid we don’t find
very much time for casual reading here, Mr. Denison,” meaning that she
didn’t think John Henderson proper for Daphne, because he was sometimes
coarse, and she suspected him of being free-thinking, though as a matter
of fact he was ardently and even passionately religious, in a way hardly
fit for deaneries.
“_I_ don’t read John’s things, you know, Arnold,” put in Jane. “I don’t
like them much. He said I’d better not try, as he didn’t suppose I
should ever get to like them better.”
“That’s John all over,” said Eileen. “He’s so nice and untouchy. Fancy
Cecil saying that--except in bitter sarcasm. John’s a dear, so he is.
Though he read worse last Tuesday at the Bookshop than I’ve ever heard
anyone. You’d think he had a plum in his mouth.”
Obviously these young people were much interested in poets and poetry.
So Mrs. Oliver said, “On the last night of the year, the Dean usually
reads us some poetry, just before the clock strikes. Very often he reads
Tennyson’s ‘Ring out, wild bells.’ It is an old family custom of ours,”
she added, and they all said what a good one, and how nice it would be.
Then Mrs. Oliver told them that they weren’t to dress for dinner,
because there was evensong afterwards in the Cathedral, on account of
New Year’s Eve.
“But you needn’t go unless you want to,” Daphne added, enviously.
Herself she had to go, whether she wanted to or not.
“I’d like to,” Eileen said.
“It’s a way of seeing the Cathedral, of course,” said Eddy. “It’s rather
beautiful by candlelight.”
So they all settled to go, even Arnold, who thought that of all the ways
of seeing the Cathedral, that was the least good. However, he went, and
when they came back they settled down for a festive night, playing
coon-can and the pianola, and preparing punch, till half-past eleven,
when the Dean came in from his study with Tennyson, and read “Ring out,
wild bells.” At five minutes to twelve they began listening for the
clock to strike, and when it had struck and been duly counted, they
drank each other a happy new year in punch, except Jane, who disliked
whisky too much to drink it, and had lemonade instead. In short, they
formed one of the many happy homes of England who were seeing the old
year out in the same cheerful and friendly manner. Having done so, they
went to bed.
“Eddy in the home is entirely a dear,” Eileen said to Jane, lingering a
moment by Jane’s fire before she went to her own. “He’s such--such a
good boy, isn’t he?” She leant on the words, with a touch of tenderness
and raillery. Then she added, “But, Jane, we shall have his parents
shocked before we go. It would be easily done. In fact, I’m not sure
we’ve not done it already, a little. Arnold is so reckless, and you so
ingenuous, and myself so ambiguous in position. I’ve a fear they think
us a little unconventional, no less, and are nervous about our being too
much with the pretty little sulky sister. But I expect she’ll see to
that herself; we bore her, do you know. And Arnold insists on annoying
her, which is tiresome of him.”
“She looks rather sweet when she’s cross,” said Jane, regarding the
matter professionally. “I should like to draw her then. Eddy’s people
are very nice, only not very peaceful, somehow, do you think? I don’t
know why, but one feels a little tired after talking much to them;
perhaps it’s because of what you say, that they might easily be shocked;
and besides, one doesn’t quite always understand what they say. At
least, I don’t; but I’m stupid at understanding people, I know.”
Jane sighed a little, and let her wavy brown hair fall in two smooth
strands on either side of her small pale face. The Deanery was full of
strange standards and codes and values, alien and unintelligible. Jane
didn’t know even what they were, though Eileen and Arnold, living in a
less rarefied, more in-the-world atmosphere, could have enlightened her
about many of them. It mattered in the Deanery what one’s father was;
quite kindly but quite definitely note was taken of that; Mrs. Oliver
valued birth and breeding, though she was not snobbish, and was quite
prepared to be kind and friendly to those without it. Also it mattered
how one dressed; whether one had on usual, tidy, and sufficiently
expensive clothes; whether, in fact, one displayed good taste in the
matter, and was neither cheap nor showy, but suitable to the hour and
occasion. These things do matter, it is very certain. Also it mattered
that one should be able to find one’s way about a Church of England
Prayer Book during a service, a task at which Jane and Eileen were both
incompetent. Jane had not been brought up to follow services in a book,
only to sit in college ante-chapels and listen to anthems; and Eileen,
reared by an increasingly anti-clerical father, had drifted fitfully in
and out of Roman Catholic churches as a child in Ireland, and had since
never attended any. Consequently they had helplessly fumbled with their
books at evening service. Arnold, who had received the sound Church
education (sublimely independent of personal fancies as to belief or
disbelief) of our English male youth at school and college, knew all
about it, and showed Jane how to find the Psalms, while Eddy performed
the same office for Eileen. Daphne looked on with cynical amusement, and
Mrs. Oliver with genuine shocked feeling.
“Anyhow,” said Daphne to her mother afterwards, “I should think they’ll
agree with father that it wants revising.”
Next day they all went tobogganing, and met the Bellairs family. Eddy
threw Molly and Eileen together, because he wanted them to make friends,
which Daphne resented, because she wanted to talk to Molly herself, and
Eileen made her feel shy. When she was alone with Molly she said, “What
do you think of Eddy’s friends?”
“Mrs. Le Moine is very charming,” said Molly, an appreciative person.
“She’s so awfully pretty, isn’t she? And Miss Dawn seems rather sweet,
and Mr. Denison’s very clever, I should think.”
Daphne sniffed. “He thinks so, too. I expect they all think they’re
jolly clever. But those two”--she indicated Eileen and Jane--“can’t find
their places in their Prayer Books without being shown. I don’t call
that very clever.”
“How funny,” said Molly.
Acrimony was added to Daphne’s view of Eileen by Claude Bellairs, who
looked at her as if he admired her. Claude as a rule looked at Daphne
herself like that; Daphne didn’t want him to, thinking it silly, but it
was rather much to have his admiration transferred to this Mrs. Le
Moine. Certainly anyone might have admired Eileen; Daphne grudgingly
admitted that, as she watched her. Eileen’s manner of accepting
attentions was as lazy and casual as Daphne’s own, and considerably less
provocative; she couldn’t be said to encourage them. Only there was a
charm about her, a drawing-power....
“_I_ don’t think it’s nice, a married person letting men hang round
her,” said Daphne, who was rather vulgar.
Molly, who was refined, coloured all over her round, sensitive face.
“Daffy! How can you? Of course it’s all right.”
“Well, Claude would be flirting in no time if she let him.”
“But of course she wouldn’t. How could she?” Molly was dreadfully
shocked.
Daphne gave her cynical, one-sided smile. “Easily, I should think. Only
probably she doesn’t think him worth while.”
“Daffy, I think it’s horrible to talk like that. I do wish you
wouldn’t.”
“All right. Come on and have a go down the hill, then.”
The Bellairs’ came to dinner that evening. Molly was a little subdued,
and with her usual flow of childish high spirits not quite so
spontaneous as usual. She sat between Eddy and the Dean, and was rather
quiet with both of them. The Dean took in Eileen, and on her other side
was Nevill Bellairs, who, having deduced in the afternoon that she was
partly Irish, very naturally mentioned the Home Rule Bill, which he had
been spending last session largely in voting against. Being Irish, Mrs.
Le Moine presumably felt strongly on this subject, which he introduced
with the complacency of one who had been fighting in her cause. She
listened to him with her half railing, inscrutable smile, until Eddy
said across the table, “Mrs. Le Moine’s a Home Ruler, Nevill; look out,”
and Nevill stopped abruptly in full flow and said, “You’re not!” and
pretended not to mind, and to be only disconcerted for himself, but was
really indignant with her for being such a thing, and a little with Eddy
for not having warned him. It dried up his best conversation, as one
couldn’t talk politics to a Home Ruler. He wondered was she a Papist,
too. So he talked about hunting in Ireland, and found she knew nothing
of hunting there or indeed anywhere. Then he tried London, but found
that the London she knew was different from his, except externally, and
you can’t talk for ever about streets and buildings, especially if you
do not frequent the same eating-places. From different eating-places the
world is viewed from different angles; few things are a more significant
test of a person’s point of view.
Meanwhile the Dean was telling Jane about places of interest, such as
Roman camps, in the neighbourhood. The Dean, like many deans, talked
rather well. He thought Jane prettily attentive, and more educated than
most young women, and that it was a pity she wore such an old-fashioned
dress. He did not say so, but asked her if she had designed it from
Carpaccio’s St. Ursula, and she said no, from an angel playing the
timbrel by Jacopo Bellini in the Accademia. So after that they talked
about Venice, and he said he must show her his photographs of it after
dinner. “It must be a wonderful place for an artist,” he told her, and
she agreed, and then they compared notes and found that he had stayed at
the Hotel Europa, and had had a lovely view of the Giudecca and Santa
Maria Maggiore from the windows (“most exquisite on a grey day”), and
she had stayed in the flat of an artist friend, looking on to the Rio
delle Beccarie, which is a _rio_ of the poor. Like Eileen and Nevill,
they had eaten in different places; but, unlike London, Venice is a
coherent whole, not rings within rings, so they could talk, albeit with
reservations and a few cross purposes. The Dean liked talking about
pictures, and Torcello, and Ruskin, and St. Mark’s, and the other things
one talks about when one has been to Venice. Perhaps too he even wanted
a little to hear her talk about them, feeling interested in the
impressions of an artist. Jane was rather disappointingly simple and
practical on these subjects; artists, like other experts, are apt to
leave rhapsodies to the layman, and tacitly assume admiration of the
beauty that is dilated on by the unprofessional. They are baffling
people; the Dean remembered that about poor Wilson Gavin.
While he thus held Jane’s attention, Eddy talked to Molly about
skating, a subject in which both were keenly interested, Daphne sparred
with Claude, and Arnold entertained Mrs. Oliver, whom he found a little
_difficile_ and rather the _grande dame_. Frankly, Mrs. Oliver did not
like Arnold, and he saw through her courtesy as easily as through
Daphne’s rudeness. She thought him conceited (which he was), irreverent
(which he was also), worldly (which he was not), and a bad influence
over Eddy (and whether he was that depended on what you meant by “bad”).
On the whole it was rather an uncomfortable dinner, as dinners go. There
was a sense of misfit about it. There were just enough people at
cross-purposes to give a feeling of strain, a feeling felt most strongly
by Eddy, who had perceptions, and particularly wanted the evening to be
a success. Even Molly and he had somehow come up against something, a
rock below the cheerful, friendly stream of their intercourse, that
pulled him up, though he didn’t understand what it was. There was a
spiritual clash somewhere, between nearly every two of them. Between him
and Molly it was all her doing; he had never felt friendlier; it was she
who had put up a queer, vague wall. He could not see into her mind, so
he didn’t bother about it much but went on being cheerful and friendly.
They were all happier after dinner, when playing the pianola in the hall
and dancing to it.
But on the whole the evening was only a moderate success.
The Bellairs’ told their parents afterwards that they didn’t much care
about the friends Eddy had staying.
“_I_ believe they’re stuck up,” said Dick (the Guards), who hadn’t been
at dinner, but had met them tobogganing. “That man Denison’s for ever
trying to be clever. I can’t stand that; it’s such beastly bad form.
Don’t think he succeeds, either, if you ask me. I can’t see it’s
particularly clever to be always sneering at things one knows nothing
about. Can’t think why Eddy likes him. He’s not a bit keen on the things
Eddy’s keen on--hunting, or shooting, or games, or soldiering.”
“There are lots like him at Oxford,” said Claude. “I know the type.
Balliol’s full of it. Awfully unwholesome, and a great bore to meet.
They write things, and admire each other’s. I suppose it’s the same at
Cambridge. Only I should have thought Eddy would have kept out of the
way of it.”
Claude had been disgusted by what he considered Arnold’s rudeness to
Daphne. “I thought Mrs. Le Moine seemed rather nice, though,” he added.
“Well, I must say,” Nevill said, “she was a little too much for me.
English Home Rulers are bad enough, but at least they know nothing about
it and are usually merely silly; but Irish ones are more than I can
stand. Eddy told me afterwards that her father was that fellow Conolly,
who runs the _Hibernian_--the most disloyal rag that ever throve in a
Dublin gutter. It does more harm than any other paper in Ireland, I
believe. What can you expect of his daughter, let alone a woman married
to a disreputable play-writer, and not even living with him? I rather
wonder Mrs. Oliver likes to have her in the house with Daphne.”
“Miss--what d’you call her--Morning--seemed harmless, but a little off
it,” said Dick. “She doesn’t talk too much, anyhow, like Denison. Queer
things she wears, though. And she doesn’t know much about London, for a
person who lives there, I must say. Doesn’t seem to have seen any of the
plays. Rather vague, somehow, she struck me as being.”
Claude groaned. “So would her father if you met him. A fearful old
dreamer. I coach with him in Political Science. He’s considered a great
swell; I was told I was lucky to get him; but I can’t make head or tail
of him or his books. His daughter has just his absent eye.”
“Poor things,” said Mrs. Bellairs, sleepily. “And poor Mrs. Oliver and
the Dean. I wonder how long these unfortunate people are staying, and if
we ought to ask them over one day?”
But none of her children appeared to think they ought. Even Molly,
always loyal, always hospitable, always generous, didn’t think so. For
stronger in Molly’s child-like soul than even her loyalty and her
hospitality, and her generosity, was her moral sense, and this was
questioning, shamefacedly, reluctantly, whether these friends of Eddy’s
were really “good.”
So they didn’t ask them over.