THE WORLD
A few days later James Ollerenshaw was alone in the front room, checking
various accounts for repairs of property in Turnhill, when twin letters
fell into the quietude of the apartment. The postman--the famous old
postman of Bursley, who on fine summer days surmounted the acute
difficulty of tender feet by delivering mails in worsted slippers--had
swiftly pushed the letters, as usual, through the slit in the door; but,
nevertheless, their advent had somehow the air of magic, as, indeed, the
advent of letters always had. Mr. Ollerenshaw glanced curiously from his
chair, over his spectacles, at the letters as they lay dead on the
floor. Their singular appearance caused him to rise at once and pick
them up. They were sealed with a green seal, and addressed in a large
and haughty hand--one to Helen and the other to himself. Obviously they
came from the world which referred to him as "Jimmy." He was not used to
being thrilled by mere envelopes, but now he became conscious of a
slight quickening of pulsation. He opened his own envelope--the paper
was more like a blanket than paper, and might have been made from the
material of a child's untearable picture-book. He had to use a stout
paper-knife, and when he did get into the envelope he felt like a
burglar.
The discerning and shrewd ancient had guessed the contents. He had
feared, and he had also hoped, that the contents would comprise an
invitation to Mrs. Prockter's house at Hillport. They did; and more than
that. The signature was Mrs. Prockter's, and she had written him a
four-page letter. "My dear Mr. Ollerenshaw." "Believe me, yours most
cordially and sincerely, Flora Prockter."
Flora!
The strangest thing, perhaps, in all this strange history is that he
thought the name suited her.
He had no intention of accepting the invitation. Not exactly! But he
enjoyed receiving it. It constituted a unique event in his career. And
the wording of it was very agreeable. Mrs. Prockter proceeded thus: "In
pursuance of our plan"--our plan!--"I am also inviting your niece.
Indeed, I have gathered from Emanuel that he considers her as the prime
justification of the party. We will throw them together. She will hear
him sing. She has never heard him sing. If this does not cure her,
nothing will, though he has a nice voice. I hope it will be a fine
night, so that we may take the garden. I did not thank you half enough
for the exceedingly kind way in which you received my really
unpardonable visit the other evening," etc.
James had once heard Emanuel Prockter sing, at a concert given in aid of
something which deserved every discouragement, and he agreed with Mrs.
Prockter; not that he pretended to know anything about singing.
He sat down again, to compose a refusal to the invitation; but before he
had written more than a few words it had transformed itself into an
acceptance. He was aware of the entire ridiculousness of his going to an
evening party at Mrs. Prockter's; still an instinct, powerful but
obscure (it was the will-to-live and naught else), persuaded him by
force to say that he would go.
"Have you had an invitation from Mrs. Prockter?" Helen asked him at tea.
"Yes," said he. "Have you?"
"Yes," said she. "Shall you go?"
"Ay, lass, I shall go."
She seemed greatly surprised.
"Us'll go together," he said.
"I don't think that I shall go," said she, hesitatingly.
"Have ye written to refuse?"
"No."
"Then I should advise ye to go, my lass."
"Why?"
"Unless ye want to have trouble with me," said he, grimly.
"But, uncle----"
"It's no good butting uncle," he replied. "If ye didna' mean to go, why
did ye give young Prockter to understand as ye would go? I'll tell ye
why ye changed your mind, lass. It's because you're ashamed o' being
seen there with yer old uncle, and I'm sorry for it."
"Uncle!" she protested. "How can you say such a thing? You ought to know
that no such idea ever entered my head."
He did know that no such idea had ever entered her head, and he was
secretly puzzling for the real reason of her projected refusal. But,
being determined that she should go, he had employed the surest and the
least scrupulous means of achieving his end.
He tapped nervously on the table, and maintained the silence of the
wounded and the proud.
"Of course, if you take it in that way," she said, after a pause, "I
will go."
And he went through the comedy of gradually recovering from a wound.
His boldness in accepting the invitation and in compelling Helen to
accompany him was the audacity of sheer ignorance. He had not surmised
the experiences which lay before him. She told him to order a cab. She
did not suggest the advisability of a cab. She stated, as a platitude,
the absolute indispensability of a cab. He had meant to ride to Hillport
in the tramcar, which ran past Mrs. Prockter's gates. However, he
reluctantly agreed to order a cab, being fearful lest she might, after
all, refuse to go. It was remarkable that, after having been opposed to
the policy of throwing Helen and Emanuel together, he was now in favour
of it.
On the evening, when at five minutes past nine she came into the front
room clad for Mrs. Prockter's party, he perceived that the tramcar would
have been unsuitable. A cab might hold her. A hansom would certainly not
have held her. She was all in white, and very complicated. No hat;
simply a white, silver-spangled bandage round her head, neck, and
shoulders!
She glanced at him. He wore his best black clothes. "You look very
well," said she, surprisingly. "That old-fashioned black necktie is
splendid."
So they went. James had the peculiar illusion that he was going to a
belated funeral, for except at funerals he had never in his life ridden
in a cab.
When he descended with his fragile charge in Mrs. Prockter's illuminated
porch, another cab was just ploughing up the gravel of the drive in
departure, and nearly the whole tribe of Swetnams was on the doorstep;
some had walked, and were boasting of speed. There were Sarah Swetnam,
her brother Ted, the lawyer, her brother Ronald, the borough surveyor,
her brother Adams, the bank cashier, and her sister Enid, aged
seventeen. This child was always called "Jos" by the family, because
they hated the name "Enid," which they considered to be "silly." Lilian,
the newly-affianced one, was not in the crowd.
"Where's Lilian?" Helen asked, abruptly.
"Oh, she came earlier with the powerful Andrew," replied the youthful
and rather jealous Jos. "She isn't an ordinary girl now."
Sarah rapidly introduced her brothers and sisters to James. They were
all very respectful and agreeable; and Adams Swetnam pressed his hand
quite sympathetically, and Jos's frank smile was delicious. What
surprised him was that nobody seemed surprised at his being there. None
of the girls wore hats, he noticed, and he also noticed that the three
men (all about thirty in years) wore silk hats, white mufflers, and blue
overcoats.
A servant--a sort of special edition of James's Georgiana--appeared, and
robbed everybody of every garment that would yield easily to pulling.
And then those lovely creatures stood revealed. Yes, Sarah herself was
lovely under the rosy shades. The young men were elegantly slim, and
looked very much alike, except that Adams had a beard--a feeble beard,
but a beard. It is true that in their exact correctness they might have
been mistaken for toast-masters, or, with the slight addition of silver
neck-chains, for high officials in a costly restaurant. But
great-stepuncle James could never have been mistaken for anything but a
chip of the early nineteenth century flicked by the hammer of Fate into
the twentieth. His wide black necktie was the secret envy of the Swetnam
boys.
The Swetnam boys had the air of doing now what they did every night of
their lives. With facile ease, they led the way through the long hall to
the drawing-room. James followed, and _en route_ he observed at the
extremity of a side-hall two young people sitting with their hands
together in a dusky corner. "Male and female created He them!" reflected
James, with all the tolerant, disdainful wisdom of his years and
situation.
A piano was then heard, and as Ronald Swetnam pushed open the
drawing-room door for the women to enter, there came the sound of a
shocked "S-sh!"
Whereupon the invaders took to the tips of their toes and crept in as
sinners. At the farther end a girl was sitting at a grand piano, and in
front of the piano, glorious, effulgent, monarchical, stood Emanuel
Prockter, holding a piece of music horizontally at the level of his
waist. He had a white flower in his buttonhole, and, adhering to a
quaint old custom which still lingers in the Five Towns, and possibly
elsewhere, he showed a crimson silk handkerchief tucked in between his
shirt-front and his white waistcoat. He had broad bands down the sides
of his trousers. Not a hair of his head had been touched by the
accidental winds of circumstance. He surveyed the couple of dozen people
in the large, glowing room with a fixed smile and gesture of benevolent
congratulation.
Mrs. Prockter was close to the door. "Emanuel is just going to sing,"
she whispered, and shook hands silently with James Ollerenshaw first.