Parliament met early that year, and when Tom and May migrated to London
the two Houses were already sitting. London was consequently fairly
full, and the Wrexhams, among others, were installed there. Lord Chatham
was one of those quietly effective men whose opinion is held to be safe
and reliable, chiefly because they support everything of the old order,
and oppose, not vehemently, but steadily, everything of the new. Lady
Chatham and Maud were with him, and the excellent arrangements which her
ladyship was in the habit of making were very frequently thrown
completely out of gear by the fog. In fact, she had serious thoughts now
and then of permanently allowing twenty minutes extra per mile for the
carriage, and fifteen for pedestrians.
Maud was very well pleased to be in London again. Measures of
considerable material import were being debated, and she liked to feel
the heart of the country beating. She had never been more interested in
life generally, and the Chathams’ house was becoming famous in a manner
for the large number of clever people whom she collected round her. She
had a certain gift of making people talk, without letting them know they
were being made. The autumn she would have confessed was dull, but the
reason why she found it so she would not have confessed, even to
herself. She had attended Tom’s wedding, and had behaved delightfully,
but when it was over she found herself, as it were, facing a blank wall.
Blank walls are not inspiriting things to contemplate, and after a few
weeks of contemplation she arrived at the sensible conclusion that she
would face it no longer, and she had spent the autumn in demolishing it
stone by stone. And now by dint of real exertion, which was almost
heroic in its untiringness, she could conscientiously say there was not
one stone left on another, and in consequence the advent of May and Tom
was an event which she regarded with pure pleasure. In other words, she
considered she had “got over it.” Tom, she felt sure, was completely
unconscious of what had been going on, and they could meet again with
perfect frankness and unreserve. She had met May once or twice before
the marriage, and thought of her as a sort of exceedingly beautiful cow.
Maud was just writing a note to accept Mrs. Carlingford’s invitation to
dinner. There were only to be four of them, the fourth being Manvers,
who had come to England for a week or two, and whom May thought Maud had
met at Athens. May had got a slight cold and was going to wear a
tea-gown, and would Maud do the same? She called her “Dear Miss
Wrexham,” and remained “hers truly.”
Manvers had been to see Tom already that day immediately on his arrival
in London, and Tom had scouted the idea of his going to a hotel, and
insisted on his staying with them. Manvers made sundry efforts to talk
to May and make himself agreeable to her, but he did not think he had
succeeded very well. Like Maud, he thought of her as a sort of cow, and
he did not appreciate her style of beauty. But Tom was as nice as ever,
and still quite mad, which was, he confessed, disappointing, but it
would certainly pass off.
The three had gone together to see Tom’s studio and the herald of the
Golden Age in clay. The pose he had chosen was admirably simple and
wonderfully successful. The goddess stood with one foot trailing behind,
the heel off the ground, resting on her foremost foot; the arms hung
limply by her sides, and her head was drooped in sorrow for her lost
child. The face was the face of his wife, subtly idealized, but
preserving the look of portraiture. Tom had been working very hard at
it, and in the clay it was sufficiently finished to allow one to see
what it would be like. He worked in his old desultory manner, with fits
of complete idleness and spells of almost superhuman exertion, with the
difference that the fits of complete idleness were now the exception,
not the rule.
The studio was an enormous room at the top of the house, with an
admirable north light. It had been furnished by Tom without the least
regard to expense or coherency. Things of all ages and styles were
jumbled up together, but everything was good of its kind. It was the
sort of room which, if you did not happen to think it perfectly hideous,
you would think entirely charming. The furniture itself was Louis
Quinze, for Tom’s taste told him that there was no furniture but
French; the walls were hung with Algerian and Cairene embroideries; in
one corner of the room stood a cast of the Hermes, in another a bronze
Japanese dragon. Two wide shelves ran round three sides of the room, and
on these were massed together, with fine artistic catholicity, spoils
from half the world. There were Tanagra statuettes from Greece, blue
hawk-headed porcelain gods from Egypt, earthenware from Cabylia, a great
copper Russian samovar, “laborious orient ivory” from India, plates from
Rhodes, and embroidery from Arachova, a bronze helmet fished out of the
river at Olympia, a great tortoiseshell box from Capri, a bronze
Narcissus from Naples, blue-bead mummy nets, hideous German silver
pipes, and amber and arrows from the Soudan. The platform where the
model stood was covered with a great tiger skin, with grinning jaws and
snarling teeth, and in the middle of the room stood the clay sketch of
the mourning goddess. The incongruity of the whole touched completeness
when May, Tom, and Manvers stood there side by side and looked at it.
Manvers’s first impulse was to laugh. His appreciation of contrasts was
strong, and the contrasts here were really picturesque. What was this
poor _passée_ goddess doing in this atmosphere of complete modernity?
She was as much out of place as a Quaker at a music-hall. But he was far
too much of an artist not to admire and wonder at the extraordinary
power of the thing. Tom seemed to have learned _technique_ not by
experience, but by instinct. He was an artist by nature, not by
practice; like Walter, he sang because he must. To Manvers this was
puzzling, because he held firmly to the creed that an artist makes
beautiful things because he chooses to, not because his artistic nature
compels him. They stood silent for some moments, and then Manvers spoke.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It seems to me almost perfectly Greek.”
Though the prophet has no honour in his own country, it is at least
gratifying for him to find it in another. Tom had been almost painfully
anxious that he should say that, but now it was said he had an
unreasoning fear that Manvers had not meant it.
“Do you mean that?” he cried. “Are you sure you are not saying it to
please me?”
“My dear Tom, I am saying it neither to please you nor myself. I don’t
like Greek things, you know.”
May turned on him gravely.
“Surely it is admirable?” she asked.
“It is admirable surely,” replied Manvers, “but it is my nature not to
admire it. You should hear Tom heap abuse on my little things. His
tongue was an unruly member whenever he looked at _La Dame qui
s’amuse_,--by the way, she is finished, Tom. It would have pleased him
in what he calls his unregenerate days, and I his Paradisiacal days,
before the fall.”
“We’ve got a little statuette of his downstairs which I’ll show you,”
said May. “It is of a boy shooting. He never quite finished it.”
“That beast of a thing which was in my room at Applethorpe?” said Tom.
“I shall smash it.”
“No, dear, you won’t: you gave it me. I shall go and get it.”
“No, it shan’t come up here,” said Tom. “We’ll all go down. This Temple
is no place for Manvers.”
But Manvers was interested, and he stayed some minutes more, advising,
suggesting, and praising. It was as impossible for him not to admire the
prodigious skill of the work, as it was not to dislike the spirit of it.
The whole thing he regarded as a most lamentable waste of time and skill
which might have been most profitably employed.
But before the statuette of the boy shooting his praise was of a very
different order. It was thoroughly modern, and though not ugly, was
undeniably pretty. The figure represented a lad in volunteer uniform,
lying on the ground, shooting, or rather aiming, with a rifle. The head
was bent over to the back-sight of the gun, the mouth slightly open, one
eye shut, and one leg lightly crossing the other just above the ankle.
The thing was marvellously fresh and unstudied. May claimed it as her
possession, and showed it with just pride. Tom really had succeeded, as
he had vowed he would, in making trousers beautiful.
May left the two friends together, and went off to pay some calls, and
in her absence Manvers talked more freely. He had felt something of a
traitor in her grey eyes when he had said that the Demeter was not in
his line.
“It’s the best thing you’ve ever done, Tom,” he said, handing the
statuette respectfully. “It really is abominably good, from the top of
the forage cap down to the bootlace tag, and that bottom of the trouser
rucking up slightly over the other boot is an inspiration. You really
are an unfortunate devil to be saddled with the grand style. As for that
horror in the studio--you call my things horrors, so why shouldn’t I
call yours?--the sooner you pitch it out of the window the better. Not
that I don’t think it good--I think it is admirable--and as I said,
almost perfectly Greek, but it simply won’t do. If you are to do
anything nowadays you must be intelligible--that is to say, modern. You
must not produce exercises, however good, in an art that is past. You
are like those estimable people--I think they are archdeacons as a
rule--who are always writing Latin translations in elegiac verses of
‘Hymns Ancient and Modern’ in the pages of the _Guardian_. Nobody cares
for interesting survivals. Why should they? People will not cudgel their
brains to see what things mean. You have to label them!”
“Yes, you have to label a thing like _La Dame qui s’amuse_,” said Tom,
“or else no one would know whether it was meant for a woman of fashion
or a _cocotte_.”
“No, I don’t mean that,” said Manvers. “I don’t care what they call it,
but you must make them understand the spirit of the thing. The spirit of
Demeter is out of date. But that boy shooting is intelligible. Any one
can see how good it is, and yet somehow it is not vulgar. To be vulgar
is to be popular. You haven’t seen my ballet girl dancing. It is
incomparably vulgar. I think it is the vulgarest thing I ever saw, and
I’m not boasting when I say all Paris raves about it.”
“All Paris!” broke in Tom; “all the cities of the plain!”
“Not at all: all the most civilized people of the most civilized town in
the world. You really had better smash the Demeter. What will you do
with her? They will probably take her at the Academy--in fact, I should
think they certainly would, and in the autumn they will send her back to
you, or rather you will have to go with a drayman’s cart and fetch her.
She’ll be very heavy. If you were an academician, and got a very good
piece of Carrara for her, Pears might buy her, ‘after using our soap,’
you know.”
Tom grew more and more impatient, and could contain himself no longer.
“Don’t talk blasphemy here!” he shouted. “The only object of art,
according to you, is to make fifty silly women look at the abortions you
produce for five minutes while they are racking their brainless heads
for a new piece of scandal. You are welcome to them. And if no one else
cares for my Demeter, May does, and the rest of the world may go to the
deuce for all we care. You are a rank heretic, and when you die you will
go to a place entirely peopled with the types you love, while I shall
sit at wine with gods and goddesses.”
“What will happen to your other people? The boy shooting, for instance?”
“If he shows so much as the muzzle of his ugly gun, I shall kick him
downstairs to join you and your fellows.”
“Many thanks. I have your promise. He will be a charming addition, and
I shall be delighted to see him.”
Tom burst out laughing.
“Do you know I’m delighted to see you, heretic or no heretic. We won’t
talk shop any more. Miss Wrexham is coming to dinner to-night. You
remember her, don’t you?”
“Very well. She flattered me about my statuette. I never forget any one
who flatters me.”
“You flattered yourself, you mean. She was fonder of the Parthenon.”
“I am not jealous of the Parthenon,” said Manvers; “she may flirt with
the whole Acropolis if she likes. But you’ll have to let me go at ten.
Wallingthorpe has a gathering. He is very refreshing.”
“He is a social Narcissus,” said Tom. “It is so silly to be Narcissus.”
“Not if other people agree with you.”
“But nobody admires Wallingthorpe as much as he admires himself.”
“No; but he never ceases to hope that they soon will. Hope springs
eternal, you know. He is very sanguine. Whether they will or not has
nothing to do with the question; the only point is whether he sincerely
believes they will, and he certainly does that.”
“His motto is, ‘The proper study of mankind is me.’”
“That’s not grammar,” said Manvers.
“Possibly not; but the sublimity of the theme is sufficient excuse.”
Manvers took out a cigarette-case, and then paused.
“Is it allowed here?” he asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter if we open the windows afterwards,” said Tom;
“but May doesn’t like smoke all over the house.”
Manvers shut his cigarette case up with a click.
“My dear Tom, if one fails in the small decencies of life, one is lost.
Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.”
“That’s a silly proverb,” said Tom; “it is tithing the mint and anise
and cummin.”
“No; that’s just what it is not doing. It is keeping them intact, and
not tithing them.”
Tom laughed.
“I don’t think that means anything,” he said. “But let’s go to the
smoking-room; we’ll have tea sent there. No, you shan’t come to the
studio; I don’t wish to force my uninteresting survivals on you. I’m
quite delighted to see you again. And this evening it will be the dear
old Athens party over again, only we shan’t have Arthur Wrexham to peck
at!”
Maud Wrexham, as her custom was, came rather late, and began making
excuses before she was well inside the room.
“It really wasn’t my fault this time,” she said; “all the conceivable
accidents happened, and where the carriage in which I was to have come
is now, I can’t say. Mother made a beautiful plan--it seemed to work all
right on paper--that the brougham was to drop three of us in different
parts of London at the same moment. But the laws of time and space
intervened. Ah! how do you do, Mr. Manvers? It’s charming to see you
again, and there was a block at the corner, and I had to go back for my
gloves.”
Tom laughed.
“You must have started wonderfully early,” he said, “because you are
only ten minutes late. May I take you in?”
Maud, Tom, and Manvers had much to say to each other, and May a good
deal to listen to. They all rather tended to talk at once. Every now and
then one of the others would drop out of the conversation and pick her
up, but naturally enough Tom did not talk much to her; Manvers made
several well-meaning efforts, but was unable to sustain the conversation
long, as he was listening to what the other two were saying, and talking
himself, and Maud sat on the opposite side of the table, and the candles
and flowers made communication difficult. It must be confessed that May
found the dinner a little wearisome, for in her somewhat isolated life
she had not had any opportunities of acquiring that most useful
accomplishment of talking nonsense, or of talking naturally and fluently
about nothing particular.
Manvers was maintaining a new and startling theory that the only
readable descriptions of any place on the face of the earth were written
by people who had never set eyes on the place in question, and supported
his theory by his own experiences at Athens.
“I knew,” he said, “as we all know, that there was an Acropolis with
buildings of white marble on it, and when you looked out from it you
gazed over the grey olive groves, and the plain of Attica, and the
violet crown of mountains, and the sea, and Salamis. Before I went to
Athens, I could have described it in beautiful language, and talked of
the delicate air, and the rose gardens. But now I’ve been there it is
all spoiled for me.”
“There aren’t any rose gardens,” objected Maud, “and there is usually
sirocco.”
“Exactly so. It is folly to be wise. The rose gardens are part of the
spirit of Greece, just as much as the plane-trees by the Ilyssus and the
_soi-disant_ delicate air.”
“And there are no plane-trees,” said Maud.
Tom laughed.
“So much the worse for the Ilyssus. If there are not, there ought to
be.”
“Yes; but when some one who has been to Athens reads your description,”
said Maud, “he will know that it doesn’t resemble Athens at all.”
“But one doesn’t write descriptions for people who have been there, nor
do people who have been there read them,” said Manvers. “Books of travel
are written for people who have never been abroad, and who will never
go. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Carlingford?”
May crumbled her bread attentively.
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” she said; “but go on. Won’t you
tell us more?”
Manvers frowned. If one never takes one’s self seriously, it is terribly
disconcerting to find that other people do.
“What I mean is that the literal accuracy of a description does not
matter at all,” he said. “When Turner painted a picture, he arranged
Nature as suited him. He raised the level of the sea two hundred feet,
and made a valley where there was a hill. He made the crooked straight,
and the rough places plain.”
“So you would have Greek maidens and Greek youths walking about the
streets in your description of Athens?” asked Maud.
“Yes, if I thought they should be there, but I don’t. They must have
been so uncivilized. Fancy dressing in a yard and a half of
bath-towelling.”
“Then all you do is to reconstruct Athens as it seems to you it ought to
be?”
“Yes; that is just what I mean,” said Manvers. “Unfortunately, I have
been there now, and I know that there are square, white hotels, and
dirty streets, and ugly little boot-blacks, and horrible smells. All
that warps the original and typical conception. I have an idea of what
Athens ought to be, and if I write about it at all, it would be my duty
to memorialize that.”
“All the same,” said Tom, “your conception of what it ought to be may
not tally with that of any one else; and if such a person goes there, he
will see that your conception is not only false, but, according to his
ideas, not characteristic.”
“But if there is some one--and who shall assure me there is not?--who
never has been, and never will go, whose conception tallies with mine,
think of his infinite delight! It would more than counter-balance the
cold accuracies of all those people who say I am a liar. He will say,
‘Here am I who never set eyes on Athens and never will, and behold, it
is exactly as I hoped and thought it would be.’”
Tom laughed uproariously.
“I believe you are right,” he said. “I shall write a description of
America.”
“Do, do,” said Manvers. “Describe New York, with 716 avenues, and
telephones and telegraph wires making a fine network of the sky, and
elevated roadways--whatever they are--every hundred yards, with Pullman
cars, containing gentlemen playing lacrosse, running on them every
hundred seconds at a hundred miles an hour. Describe the
molasses-stores, and Vanderbilt driving Maud V. down Broadway,
scattering gold to the Irish constabulary; describe the omnibuses in the
street, and the omniboats on the river, with their cargo of hams, which
but ten minutes before were pigs. And describe the backwoods, with the
solitary redskin burying his tomahawk under a primeval banana tree
against the sunset sky. America is a magnificent subject. Half England
will say that it is exactly what they thought it was, and that there is
no longer any need of going there. After all, the great point of books
of travel is to save one going anywhere.”
May’s feeling of being out of all this was strong upon her. Manvers, she
felt sure, was talking sheer nonsense, but how was it that Tom and Maud
evidently felt amused by it all? As he was speaking, she found herself
going rapidly over in her own mind what he had said--of course he did
not mean it, but to her that was an argument in its disfavour. She had
finished dessert, and glanced across at Maud. But Maud did not catch her
eye, and was sitting with her elbows on the table, and evidently no
thought of going into the next room had entered her head.
A man came in with coffee and cigarettes, and handed them round. Maud
raised her hand to the box, but looked suddenly across to May, and
dropped her hand again.
Tom caught and intercepted her look.
“May doesn’t mind--do you, May?” he said. “Miss Wrexham wants a
cigarette. It was I who taught her to smoke out in Athens.”
“Yes, it’s quite true,” said Maud.
“Oh, please smoke if you want to,” said May. “I don’t mind the smell in
the least. Tom wanted to teach me, but he gave it up. But why shouldn’t
we go into the studio or the library? It is more comfortable.”
“Oh, let’s stop here,” said Tom, “it’s just like Athens. We all used to
sit with our elbows on the table after dinner, and drink coffee, while
Manvers talked to us.”
But Maud interposed. Her passion for being nice to everybody had
suffered no cooling. She saw, too, that May was rather put out at the
possible transgression of that wonderful English custom of women leaving
the men at the dinner-table not to drink wine. She pushed her chair back
and got up.
“Oh, I think the library would be much nicer,” she said. “Those big
chairs you have got there are made for talking in. And it’s so nice and
dark in there. Every one is more amusing in the dark.”
Tom and Manvers rose too, and they all went into the library. Maud
looked round the room until she had found what she called “her chair,”
and sank down into it with a little contented sigh.
“That’s so nice,” she said; “and now let’s go on exactly where we left
off.”
The room was lighted by a couple of heavily shaded lamps on the table,
which cast a small brilliant circle of light on to the near surrounding
objects, and left the rest of the room in darkness. Maud was sitting
opposite the fire; Manvers and Tom on a low settee on each side of it,
and May at some little distance off.
“Really life is becoming beautifully simple and easy,” said Manvers.
“One can get almost anything one wants if one pays for it. And usually
one has to pay so little. Look at Niagara in London! I am told by people
who have been to the real one, that it is exactly like. You can see
Niagara for a shilling, and allowing eighteenpence for a cab, you have
seen one of the greatest marvels of Nature, purified by art, for the
ridiculously small sum of two-and-six.”
“How purified by art?” asked Maud.
“Well, there are no mosquitoes, and no beggars, and no American
tourists. And if only they would bottle up the noise of Niagara in a
phonograph and have it sent to London, the thing would be quite
perfect--a complete triumph of Art over Nature.”
“It’s all very well to talk about an equal distribution of wealth,” said
Tom, “but an unequal distribution is the only possible working
arrangement. If every one had enough, or was equally rich, you couldn’t
get anything unpleasant done for you.”
“It’s too terrible to think of,” said Manvers. “You would have to brush
your own boots, and cook your own dinner, and make your own bed. It is
only because we hope to receive rewards, perishable or imperishable,
that we ever do anything at all. Nirvana will be all very well when we
don’t wear boots, or sleep in beds. If a man is poor enough he will do
anything for a sovereign. It’s so nice that the pauper class should be
so numerous.”
“But there’s plenty of room for improvement yet,” said Maud. “One can’t
give a man a sovereign to go to the dentist for one, or have one’s hair
cut. Those are the really unpleasant things.”
Manvers stared pensively at the fire.
“Of course one’s body is a most rough and ill-made machine,” he said.
“An oculist told me the other day that the lens of the eye was a very
imperfect instrument, and that they could make much better lenses
nowadays. Our bodies are the only natural things there are left, and we
see in them how very inferior Nature is.”
May sat silent. The whole tone of the conversation, especially Manvers’
last speech, grated on her. She longed to get up and say what she
thought, but somehow she felt awkward and uncultivated. Manvers’ glib
tongue and easy sentences seemed to her like the buzzing of a mosquito
in the dark--a little thing, no doubt, but sufficient to make one very
uncomfortable. Was life with its hopes, fears, aims, its possibilities
and limitations, just food for an epigram or a paradox spoken between
two cigarettes and a cup of coffee? Were the poor, the drudges, the
unhappy of this world, no more to any of these three than a peg on which
to hang an idle joke about the conveniences of modern life? If Manvers
did not mean what he said, it was terrible enough, but if he did, it was
more terrible still. And why did not Tom say something and stop this
unseemly jesting? The feeling she had had at dinner that they were
talking about things she did not understand or care for, had given place
to a keener and more poignant indignation that they were talking of
things of which they knew nothing, but which she loved and cared for
with all her soul. Were the poor poor, simply in order to administer to
the pleasures of the rich? Was there no mighty all-merciful plan working
behind and through misery and poverty, and wealth and happiness?
At last she could bear it no longer, and she got up out of her chair and
walked slowly up to the fireplace. Manvers instantly rose and drew a
chair up for her.
“I was afraid you would find it cold over there,” he said.
“Thanks! Please don’t get up,” said May.
She stood warming her hands for a moment, and then turned to him.
“I think it is terrible to talk like that,” she said; “turning the
frightful suffering and poverty we see around us into a mere jest. Of
course you did not mean what you said, but it is no subject for
jesting.”
Manvers was vexed and angry. To take things seriously appeared to him an
almost unpardonable breach of social etiquette: it really was not
decent.
“I assure you I meant all I said,” he replied; “though of course you are
quite right about the terrible misery and poverty round us. I don’t deny
the tragic side of it for a moment. But I am an optimist; I prefer to
look on the brighter side of things, and instead of dwelling on the
tragedy and horror of poverty, I like to dwell on its more cheerful
aspect, namely, the immense conveniences which it affords to people who
are not poor. In that I am bound to say I find a certain consolation.”
The room was dark, and Maud did not see how grave May’s face was. She
listened to what Manvers said, and laughed. Then for a moment there was
a dead silence until May spoke again.
“Then do you really think that three-quarters of the world is poor in
order that one-quarter may be able to make them do distasteful work for
them?”
“Oh, I don’t go as far as that,” said Manvers. “I don’t attempt to
account for poverty or misery. I only notice a perfectly obvious effect
of the unequal distribution of wealth, namely, that the rich can get
almost all unpleasant things done for them by proxy, in exchange for
varying quantities of gold and silver.”
“You can never have seen the real misery of poverty if you can talk
about it like that,” said May.
Manvers lit another cigarette.
“Ah, there you are wrong,” he said. “I have known it myself, real
grinding poverty, when you don’t know how or where you will get your
next meal. I don’t ever speak of it, because, as I said, I prefer the
cheerful side of life. It was unpleasant, I confess, but I did not make
a martyr of myself--I don’t like martyrs--so why should I look on others
in the same state as martyrs?”
Tom had left the room some moments before, and came back during this
last speech. He knew what Manvers’ early history had been, but was
surprised to hear him mention it. He regarded it, he knew, as sensitive
people regard some slight deformity.
May looked up at Manvers.
“I am sorry,” she said; “of course I didn’t know. But I feel very deeply
about these things.”
“Then you will spare a little pity for my early years too,” he said,
laughing. “That is charming of you. Good heavens, it’s after ten, Tom; I
must go at once, and if you will lend me a latchkey, I needn’t wake
anybody up.”
Maud got up.
“And I’ve got to go down to the House,” she said. “My father is making a
statistical speech, and there will be a division. It is so tiresome his
speaking to-night. I should have liked to sit in that armchair for ever.
Good-night, Mrs. Carlingford. Do you know, I can’t call you Mrs.
Carlingford any longer. Good-night, May. Do come and see me again soon.”
Tom went to see Maud off, and came back to the library. May was sitting
in one of the big chairs with her hands idle on her lap. Tom threw
himself down on the sofa near her and stared at the ceiling.
“London suits me,” he said, “and to-night I had London and Athens and
you altogether. What had you and Manvers been talking about when I came
in? You looked so grave.”
“Oh, nothing. He told me that he had known what fearful poverty was
like.”
“Poor chap, yes. He doesn’t often speak of it. I’m awfully fond of him.
He is nearly always amusing.”
“Yes, he seems clever,” said May.
Tom was silent a moment.
“Really I am a lucky devil,” he said. “I have everything I want. I have
you first of all, and all life interests me and amuses me. And I’ve just
paid my annual visit to the dentist.”
“Shall we go to Applethorpe for the Sunday?” asked May.
“Oh, I think not,” said Tom, “at least, unless you want to. I think
Applethorpe would seem a little dull, don’t you?”
“Well, there are not so many things to do there as here, certainly,”
said May, “and I suppose Mr. Manvers will be with us still.”
“I hope he will stop for a fortnight or more. It’s absurd his going to a
hotel if we are in London.”
“Oh, of course,” said May, “but I want to go to Applethorpe soon. We
didn’t go last Saturday or the Saturday before.”
Tom gave no answer for a moment.
“I’ll do exactly as you like,” he said; “we’ll go on Saturday if you
wish.”
“Let’s go,” said May. “Mr. Manvers can come with us or go to the
Chathams’. I know they want him to stay there a day or two.”
“Why not get Maud Wrexham as well, then?” said Tom. “If they would both
come it would be delightful.”
May paused a moment. This was not exactly what she meant by a Sunday at
Applethorpe.
“I expect they have people with them,” she said.
Tom was a little perplexed, but assumed that for some reason May did not
want Maud Wrexham to come.
“Well, there’s no need to ask her unless you like,” he said, rising.
“I never said I didn’t want her.”
“No, dear, but I thought from your manner that perhaps you didn’t.”
May made a grab at the skirts of her retreating serenity.
“No, it would be delightful if she would come,” she said with an effort.
“I’ll write a note to her to-night.”