Mrs. Leveret, on the eventful day, had arrived early at Mrs.
Ballinger’s, her volume of Appropriate Allusions in her pocket.
It always flustered Mrs. Leveret to be late at the Lunch Club: she liked
to collect her thoughts and gather a hint, as the others assembled, of
the turn the conversation was likely to take. To-day, however, she
felt herself completely at a loss; and even the familiar contact of
Appropriate Allusions, which stuck into her as she sat down, failed to
give her any reassurance. It was an admirable little volume, compiled
to meet all the social emergencies; so that, whether on the occasion
of Anniversaries, joyful or melancholy (as the classification ran),
of Banquets, social or municipal, or of Baptisms, Church of England
or sectarian, its student need never be at a loss for a pertinent
reference. Mrs. Leveret, though she had for years devoutly conned its
pages, valued it, however, rather for its moral support than for its
practical services; for though in the privacy of her own room she
commanded an army of quotations, these invariably deserted her at the
critical moment, and the only line she retained--CANST THOU DRAW OUT
LEVIATHAN WITH A HOOK?--was one she had never yet found the occasion to
apply.
To-day she felt that even the complete mastery of the volume would
hardly have insured her self-possession; for she thought it probable,
even if she DID, in some miraculous way, remember an Allusion, it would
be only to find that Osric Dane used a different volume (Mrs. Leveret
was convinced that literary people always carried them), and would
consequently not recognise her quotations.
Mrs. Leveret’s sense of being adrift was intensified by the appearance
of Mrs. Ballinger’s drawing-room. To a careless eye its aspect was
unchanged; but those acquainted with Mrs. Ballinger’s way of
arranging her books would instantly have detected the marks of recent
perturbation. Mrs. Ballinger’s province, as a member of the Lunch Club,
was the Book of the Day. On that, whatever it was, from a novel to
a treatise on experimental psychology, she was confidently,
authoritatively “up.” What became of last year’s books, or last week’s
even; what she did with the “subjects” she had previously professed with
equal authority; no one had ever yet discovered. Her mind was an hotel
where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their
address behind, and frequently without paying for their board. It was
Mrs. Ballinger’s boast that she was “abreast with the Thought of the
Day,” and her pride that this advanced position should be expressed by
the books on her drawing-room table. These volumes, frequently renewed,
and almost always damp from the press, bore names generally unfamiliar
to Mrs. Leveret, and giving her, as she furtively scanned them, a
disheartening glimpse of new fields of knowledge to be breathlessly
traversed in Mrs. Ballinger’s wake. But to-day a number of
maturer-looking volumes were adroitly mingled with the primeurs of the
press--Karl Marx jostled Professor Bergson, and the “Confessions of St.
Augustine” lay beside the last work on “Mendelism”; so that even to Mrs.
Leveret’s fluttered perceptions it was clear that Mrs. Ballinger didn’t
in the least know what Osric Dane was likely to talk about, and had
taken measures to be prepared for anything. Mrs. Leveret felt like a
passenger on an ocean steamer who is told that there is no immediate
danger, but that she had better put on her life-belt.
It was a relief to be roused from these forebodings by Miss Van Vluyck’s
arrival.
“Well, my dear,” the new-comer briskly asked her hostess, “what subjects
are we to discuss to-day?”
Mrs. Ballinger was furtively replacing a volume of Wordsworth by a copy
of Verlaine. “I hardly know,” she said somewhat nervously. “Perhaps we
had better leave that to circumstances.”
“Circumstances?” said Miss Van Vluyck drily. “That means, I suppose,
that Laura Glyde will take the floor as usual, and we shall be deluged
with literature.”
Philanthropy and statistics were Miss Van Vluyck’s province, and she
naturally resented any tendency to divert their guest’s attention from
these topics.
Mrs. Plinth at this moment appeared.
“Literature?” she protested in a tone of remonstrance. “But this is
perfectly unexpected. I understood we were to talk of Osric Dane’s
novel.”
Mrs. Ballinger winced at the discrimination, but let it pass. “We can
hardly make that our chief subject--at least not TOO intentionally,” she
suggested. “Of course we can let our talk DRIFT in that direction; but
we ought to have some other topic as an introduction, and that is what
I wanted to consult you about. The fact is, we know so little of Osric
Dane’s tastes and interests that it is difficult to make any special
preparation.”
“It may be difficult,” said Mrs. Plinth with decision, “but it is
absolutely necessary. I know what that happy-go-lucky principle
leads to. As I told one of my nieces the other day, there are certain
emergencies for which a lady should always be prepared. It’s in shocking
taste to wear colours when one pays a visit of condolence, or a last
year’s dress when there are reports that one’s husband is on the wrong
side of the market; and so it is with conversation. All I ask is that I
should know beforehand what is to be talked about; then I feel sure of
being able to say the proper thing.”
“I quite agree with you,” Mrs. Ballinger anxiously assented; “but--”
And at that instant, heralded by the fluttered parlour-maid, Osric Dane
appeared upon the threshold.
Mrs. Leveret told her sister afterward that she had known at a glance
what was coming. She saw that Osric Dane was not going to meet them
half way. That distinguished personage had indeed entered with an air of
compulsion not calculated to promote the easy exercise of hospitality.
She looked as though she were about to be photographed for a new edition
of her books.
The desire to propitiate a divinity is generally in inverse ratio to its
responsiveness, and the sense of discouragement produced by Osric Dane’s
entrance visibly increased the Lunch Club’s eagerness to please her. Any
lingering idea that she might consider herself under an obligation to
her entertainers was at once dispelled by her manner: as Mrs. Leveret
said afterward to her sister, she had a way of looking at you that made
you feel as if there was something wrong with your hat. This evidence
of greatness produced such an immediate impression on the ladies that a
shudder of awe ran through them when Mrs. Roby, as their hostess led
the great personage into the dining-room, turned back to whisper to the
others: “What a brute she is!”
The hour about the table did not tend to correct this verdict. It was
passed by Osric Dane in the silent deglutition of Mrs. Ballinger’s menu,
and by the members of the Club in the emission of tentative platitudes
which their guest seemed to swallow as perfunctorily as the successive
courses of the luncheon.
Mrs. Ballinger’s deplorable delay in fixing a topic had thrown the
Club into a mental disarray which increased with the return to the
drawing-room, where the actual business of discussion was to open. Each
lady waited for the other to speak; and there was a general shock
of disappointment when their hostess opened the conversation by the
painfully commonplace inquiry: “Is this your first visit to Hillbridge?”
Even Mrs. Leveret was conscious that this was a bad beginning; and a
vague impulse of deprecation made Miss Glyde interject: “It is a very
small place indeed.”
Mrs. Plinth bristled. “We have a great many representative people,” she
said, in the tone of one who speaks for her order.
Osric Dane turned to her thoughtfully. “What do they represent?” she
asked.
Mrs. Plinth’s constitutional dislike to being questioned was intensified
by her sense of unpreparedness; and her reproachful glance passed the
question on to Mrs. Ballinger.
“Why,” said that lady, glancing in turn at the other members, “as a
community I hope it is not too much to say that we stand for culture.”
“For art--” Miss Glyde eagerly interjected.
“For art and literature,” Mrs. Ballinger emended.
“And for sociology, I trust,” snapped Miss Van Vluyck.
“We have a standard,” said Mrs. Plinth, feeling herself suddenly secure
on the vast expanse of a generalisation: and Mrs. Leveret, thinking
there must be room for more than one on so broad a statement, took
courage to murmur: “Oh, certainly; we have a standard.”
“The object of our little club,” Mrs. Ballinger continued, “is to
concentrate the highest tendencies of Hillbridge--to centralise and
focus its complex intellectual effort.”
This was felt to be so happy that the ladies drew an almost audible
breath of relief.
“We aspire,” the President went on, “to stand for what is highest in
art, literature and ethics.”
Osric Dane again turned to her. “What ethics?” she asked.
A tremor of apprehension encircled the room. None of the ladies required
any preparation to pronounce on a question of morals; but when they
were called ethics it was different. The club, when fresh from
the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” the “Reader’s Handbook” or Smith’s
“Classical Dictionary,” could deal confidently with any subject; but
when taken unawares it had been known to define agnosticism as a heresy
of the Early Church and Professor Froude as a distinguished histologist;
and such minor members as Mrs. Leveret still secretly regarded ethics as
something vaguely pagan.
Even to Mrs. Ballinger, Osric Dane’s question was unsettling, and there
was a general sense of gratitude when Laura Glyde leaned forward to say,
with her most sympathetic accent: “You must excuse us, Mrs. Dane, for
not being able, just at present, to talk of anything but ‘The Wings of
Death.’”
“Yes,” said Miss Van Vluyck, with a sudden resolve to carry the war into
the enemy’s camp. “We are so anxious to know the exact purpose you had
in mind in writing your wonderful book.”
“You will find,” Mrs. Plinth interposed, “that we are not superficial
readers.”
“We are eager to hear from you,” Miss Van Vluyck continued, “if
the pessimistic tendency of the book is an expression of your own
convictions or--”
“Or merely,” Miss Glyde hastily thrust in, “a sombre background brushed
in to throw your figures into more vivid relief. ARE you not primarily
plastic?”
“I have always maintained,” Mrs. Ballinger interposed, “that you
represent the purely objective method--”
Osric Dane helped herself critically to coffee. “How do you define
objective?” she then inquired.
There was a flurried pause before Laura Glyde intensely murmured: “In
reading YOU we don’t define, we feel.”
Osric Dane smiled. “The cerebellum,” she remarked, “is not infrequently
the seat of the literary emotions.” And she took a second lump of sugar.
The sting that this remark was vaguely felt to conceal was almost
neutralised by the satisfaction of being addressed in such technical
language.
“Ah, the cerebellum,” said Miss Van Vluyck complacently. “The Club took
a course in psychology last winter.”
“Which psychology?” asked Osric Dane.
There was an agonising pause, during which each member of the Club
secretly deplored the distressing inefficiency of the others. Only Mrs.
Roby went on placidly sipping her chartreuse. At last Mrs. Ballinger
said, with an attempt at a high tone: “Well, really, you know, it was
last year that we took psychology, and this winter we have been so
absorbed in--”
She broke off, nervously trying to recall some of the Club’s
discussions; but her faculties seemed to be paralysed by the petrifying
stare of Osric Dane. What HAD the club been absorbed in lately? Mrs.
Ballinger, with a vague purpose of gaining time, repeated slowly: “We’ve
been so intensely absorbed in--”
Mrs. Roby put down her liqueur glass and drew near the group with a
smile.
“In Xingu?” she gently prompted.
A thrill ran through the other members. They exchanged confused
glances, and then, with one accord, turned a gaze of mingled relief
and interrogation on their unexpected rescuer. The expression of each
denoted a different phase of the same emotion. Mrs. Plinth was the first
to compose her features to an air of reassurance: after a moment’s hasty
adjustment her look almost implied that it was she who had given the
word to Mrs. Ballinger.
“Xingu, of course!” exclaimed the latter with her accustomed promptness,
while Miss Van Vluyck and Laura Glyde seemed to be plumbing the depths
of memory, and Mrs. Leveret, feeling apprehensively for Appropriate
Allusions, was somehow reassured by the uncomfortable pressure of its
bulk against her person.
Osric Dane’s change of countenance was no less striking than that of
her entertainers. She too put down her coffee-cup, but with a look of
distinct annoyance: she too wore, for a brief moment, what Mrs. Roby
afterward described as the look of feeling for something in the back
of her head; and before she could dissemble these momentary signs of
weakness, Mrs. Roby, turning to her with a deferential smile, had said:
“And we’ve been so hoping that to-day you would tell us just what you
think of it.”
Osric Dane received the homage of the smile as a matter of course; but
the accompanying question obviously embarrassed her, and it became clear
to her observers that she was not quick at shifting her facial scenery.
It was as though her countenance had so long been set in an expression
of unchallenged superiority that the muscles had stiffened, and refused
to obey her orders.
“Xingu--” she murmured, as if seeking in her turn to gain time.
Mrs. Roby continued to press her. “Knowing how engrossing the subject
is, you will understand how it happens that the Club has let everything
else go to the wall for the moment. Since we took up Xingu I might
almost say--were it not for your books--that nothing else seems to us
worth remembering.”
Osric Dane’s stern features were darkened rather than lit up by an
uneasy smile. “I am glad to hear there is one exception,” she gave out
between narrowed lips.
“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Roby said prettily; “but as you have shown us
that--so very naturally!--you don’t care to talk about your own things,
we really can’t let you off from telling us exactly what you think about
Xingu; especially,” she added, with a persuasive smile, “as some people
say that one of your last books was simply saturated with it.”
It was an IT, then--the assurance sped like fire through the parched
minds of the other members. In their eagerness to gain the least
little clue to Xingu they almost forgot the joy of assisting at the
discomfiture of Mrs. Dane.
The latter reddened nervously under her antagonist’s direct assault.
“May I ask,” she faltered out in an embarrassed tone, “to which of my
books you refer?”
Mrs. Roby did not falter. “That’s just what I want you to tell us;
because, though I was present, I didn’t actually take part.”
“Present at what?” Mrs. Dane took her up; and for an instant the
trembling members of the Lunch Club thought that the champion Providence
had raised up for them had lost a point. But Mrs. Roby explained herself
gaily: “At the discussion, of course. And so we’re dreadfully anxious to
know just how it was that you went into the Xingu.”
There was a portentous pause, a silence so big with incalculable dangers
that the members with one accord checked the words on their lips, like
soldiers dropping their arms to watch a single combat between their
leaders. Then Mrs. Dane gave expression to their inmost dread by saying
sharply: “Ah--you say THE Xingu, do you?”
Mrs. Roby smiled undauntedly. “It IS a shade pedantic, isn’t it?
Personally, I always drop the article; but I don’t know how the other
members feel about it.”
The other members looked as though they would willingly have dispensed
with this deferential appeal to their opinion, and Mrs. Roby, after a
bright glance about the group, went on: “They probably think, as I do,
that nothing really matters except the thing itself--except Xingu.”
No immediate reply seemed to occur to Mrs. Dane, and Mrs. Ballinger
gathered courage to say: “Surely every one must feel that about Xingu.”
Mrs. Plinth came to her support with a heavy murmur of assent, and Laura
Glyde breathed emotionally: “I have known cases where it has changed a
whole life.”
“It has done me worlds of good,” Mrs. Leveret interjected, seeming
to herself to remember that she had either taken it or read it in the
winter before.
“Of course,” Mrs. Roby admitted, “the difficulty is that one must give
up so much time to it. It’s very long.”
“I can’t imagine,” said Miss Van Vluyck tartly, “grudging the time given
to such a subject.”
“And deep in places,” Mrs. Roby pursued; (so then it was a book!) “And
it isn’t easy to skip.”
“I never skip,” said Mrs. Plinth dogmatically.
“Ah, it’s dangerous to, in Xingu. Even at the start there are places
where one can’t. One must just wade through.”
“I should hardly call it WADING,” said Mrs. Ballinger sarcastically.
Mrs. Roby sent her a look of interest. “Ah--you always found it went
swimmingly?”
Mrs. Ballinger hesitated. “Of course there are difficult passages,” she
conceded modestly.
“Yes; some are not at all clear--even,” Mrs. Roby added, “if one is
familiar with the original.”
“As I suppose you are?” Osric Dane interposed, suddenly fixing her with
a look of challenge.
Mrs. Roby met it by a deprecating smile. “Oh, it’s really not difficult
up to a certain point; though some of the branches are very little
known, and it’s almost impossible to get at the source.”
“Have you ever tried?” Mrs. Plinth enquired, still distrustful of Mrs.
Roby’s thoroughness.
Mrs. Roby was silent for a moment; then she replied with lowered lids:
“No--but a friend of mine did; a very brilliant man; and he told me it
was best for women--not to...”
A shudder ran around the room. Mrs. Leveret coughed so that the
parlour-maid, who was handing the cigarettes, should not hear; Miss Van
Vluyck’s face took on a nauseated expression, and Mrs. Plinth looked as
if she were passing some one she did not care to bow to. But the most
remarkable result of Mrs. Roby’s words was the effect they produced on
the Lunch Club’s distinguished guest. Osric Dane’s impassive features
suddenly melted to an expression of the warmest human sympathy, and
edging her chair toward Mrs. Roby’s she asked: “Did he really? And--did
you find he was right?”
Mrs. Ballinger, in whom annoyance at Mrs. Roby’s unwonted assumption
of prominence was beginning to displace gratitude for the aid she had
rendered, could not consent to her being allowed, by such dubious means,
to monopolise the attention of their guest. If Osric Dane had not enough
self-respect to resent Mrs. Roby’s flippancy, at least the Lunch Club
would do so in the person of its President.
Mrs. Ballinger laid her hand on Mrs. Roby’s arm. “We must not forget,”
she said with a frigid amiability, “that absorbing as Xingu is to US, it
may be less interesting to--”
“Oh, no, on the contrary, I assure you,” Osric Dane energetically
intervened.
“--to others,” Mrs. Ballinger finished firmly; “and we must not allow
our little meeting to end without persuading Mrs. Dane to say a few
words to us on a subject which, to-day, is much more present in all our
thoughts. I refer, of course, to ‘The Wings of Death.’”
The other members, animated by various degrees of the same sentiment,
and encouraged by the humanised mien of their redoubtable guest,
repeated after Mrs. Ballinger: “Oh, yes, you really MUST talk to us a
little about your book.”
Osric Dane’s expression became as bored, though not as haughty, as when
her work had been previously mentioned. But before she could respond
to Mrs. Ballinger’s request, Mrs. Roby had risen from her seat, and was
pulling her veil down over her frivolous nose.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, advancing toward her hostess with outstretched
hand, “but before Mrs. Dane begins I think I’d better run away.
Unluckily, as you know, I haven’t read her books, so I should be at a
terrible disadvantage among you all; and besides, I’ve an engagement to
play bridge.”
If Mrs. Roby had simply pleaded her ignorance of Osric Dane’s works as
a reason for withdrawing, the Lunch Club, in view of her recent prowess,
might have approved such evidence of discretion; but to couple this
excuse with the brazen announcement that she was foregoing the privilege
for the purpose of joining a bridge-party, was only one more instance of
her deplorable lack of discrimination.
The ladies were disposed, however, to feel that her departure--now
that she had performed the sole service she was ever likely to render
them--would probably make for greater order and dignity in the impending
discussion, besides relieving them of the sense of self-distrust which
her presence always mysteriously produced. Mrs. Ballinger therefore
restricted herself to a formal murmur of regret, and the other members
were just grouping themselves comfortably about Osric Dane when the
latter, to their dismay, started up from the sofa on which she had been
deferentially enthroned.
“Oh wait--do wait, and I’ll go with you!” she called out to Mrs. Roby;
and, seizing the hands of the disconcerted members, she administered
a series of farewell pressures with the mechanical haste of a
railway-conductor punching tickets.
“I’m so sorry--I’d quite forgotten--” she flung back at them from the
threshold; and as she joined Mrs. Roby, who had turned in surprise at
her appeal, the other ladies had the mortification of hearing her say,
in a voice which she did not take the pains to lower: “If you’ll let
me walk a little way with you, I should so like to ask you a few more
questions about Xingu...”