A CARPET KNIGHT
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
First door on the right after passing into New Court, Trinity College,
Cambridge, by the river door. It is a small door, leading directly on to
a narrow, winding stone staircase. For some reason, known possibly to the
architect responsible for New Court (may his bones know no rest!), the
ground-floor rooms have a door of their own within the archway.
On the first floor Arthur Agar, to use the affected phraseology of an
affected generation, “kept” in the days with which we have to deal. What
he kept transpireth not. There were many things which he did not keep,
the first among these being his money. In these rooms he dispensed an
open-handed, carefully considered hospitality which earned for him a
certain bubble popularity.
There are, one finds, always plenty of men (and women too) ready to lick
the blacking off one's boots provided always that that doubtful fare be
varied by champagne or truffles at appropriate intervals. Men came to
Arthur Agar's rooms, and brought their friends. Mark well the last item.
They brought their friends. There is more in that than meets the eye.
There is a subtle difference between the invitation for “Mr. Jones” and
the invitation for “Mr. Jones and friends”--a difference which he who
runs the social race may read. If Jones is worth his salt he will discern
the difference in a week.
“Oh, come to Agar's,” one man (save the mark) would say to another.
“Ripping coffee, topping cigarettes.”
So they went; they drank the ripping coffee, smoked the topping
cigarette, and if they happened to be men of stomach ventured on a
clinking cigar. Moreover, they were made welcome. Agar was like a vain
woman who loved to see a full saloon. And he paid for his pleasure in
more honourable coin than many a vain woman has laid down since daughters
of Eve commenced drawing fops around them--namely, the adjectived items
of hospitality above mentioned.
It did not matter much who the guests were, provided that they filled the
diminutive room in those spaces left vacant by _bric-a-brac_ and
furniture of the spindle-legged description. So the men came. There were
freshmen who fell over the footstools and bumped their heads against the
painted sabots on the wall containing ever-fresh flowers, as per
florist's bill; who were rather over-powered by the profusion of painted
photograph frames, fans, and fal-lals. There was the man who sang a comic
song and dined out on it at least twice a week. There was the calculating
son of a poor North-country parson, who liked coffee after dinner and
knew the value of sixpence. There was the man who came to play his own
valse, and he who came to hear his own voice, _und so weiter_. Do we not
know them all? Have we not run against them in after-life, despite many
attempts to pass by on the other side? The habitual acceptors of
hospitality have no objection to crossing the road through the thickest
mud.
“By their rooms ye shall know them,” might well, if profanely, be written
large over any college gate. Arthur Agar's rooms were worthy of the man.
There was, even on the little stone staircase, a faint odour of pastille
or scent spray, or something of feminine suggestion. The unwary visitor
would as likely as not catch some part of his person against a silk
hanging or a lurking _portière_ on crossing the threshold; and the
impression which struck (as all rooms do strike) from the threshold was
one of oppressive drapery. A man, by the way, should never know anything
about drapery or draping. Such knowledge undermines his virility. This is
an age of undermining knowledge. We all, from the lowest to the highest,
learn many things of which we were better ignorant. The school-board
infant acquires French; Arthur Agar and his like bring away from
Cambridge a pretty knack of draping chair-backs.
There were little screens in the room, with shelves specially constructed
to hold little gimcracks, which in their turn were specially shaped to
stand upon the little shelves. There was a portentous standing-lamp, six
feet high in its bare feet, with a shade like a crinoline. There were
settees and _poufs_ and _des prie-Dieu_, and strange things hanging on
the wall without rhyme, reason, or beauty. And nowhere a pipe, or a
tennis racket, or even a pair of boots--not so much as a single manly
indiscretion in the way of a cricket-bat in the corner, or a sporting
novel on the table.
In the midst of this the temporary proprietor of the rooms sat
disconsolately at an inlaid writing-table with his face buried in his
arms--weeping.
The outer door was shut. Arthur Agar had sported his rare oak, not to
work but to weep. It sometimes does happen to men, this shedding of the
idle tear, even to Englishmen, even to Cambridge men. Moreover, it was
infinitely to the credit of Arthur Agar that he should bury his face in
the sleeve of his perfectly-fitting coat thus and sob, for he was weeping
(quietly and to himself) the advent of three thousand pounds per annum.
At his elbow lay a telegram--that flimsy pink paper which, with all our
progress, all our knowledge, the bravest of us fear still.
“Jem killed in India; come home at once.--AGAR.”
Honour to whom honour. Arthur Agar's only thought had been one of sudden
horror. He had read the telegram over twice before going out to close his
outer door. Then he came back and sat weakly down at the table where he
had written more scented notes than noted themes, deliberately,
womanlike, to cry.
To his credit be it noted that he never thought of Stagholme, which was
now his. He only thought of Jem--his no longer--Jem the open-handed,
elder brother who tolerated much and said little. Having had everything
that he wanted since childhood, Arthur Agar had never been in the habit
of thinking about money matters. His florist's bills (and Cambridge
horticulturists seem to water their flowers with Château Lafitte), his
confectioner's account, and his tailor's little note had always been paid
without a murmur. Thus, want of money--the chief incentive to crime and
criminal thought--had never come within measurable distance of this
gentle undergraduate.
Truth to tell, he had never devoted much thought to the future. He had
always vaguely concluded that his mother and Jem would “do something”;
and in the meantime there were important matters requiring his attention.
There was the _menu_ to prepare for an approaching little dinner. There
was always an approaching dinner, and always a _menu_ in execrable French
on a satin-faced card with the college arms in a coat of many colours.
There was the florist to be interviewed and the arrangement of the table
to be superintended; the finishing touch to be given to the floral
decoration thereof by the master-hand.
Jem's death seemed to knock away one of the supports of the future, and
Arthur Agar even in his grief was conscious of the impending necessity of
having to act for himself some day.
At length he lifted his head, and through the intricate pattern of the
very newest design in art muslins the daylight fell on his face. It was a
face which in France is called _chiffonné_; but the term is never applied
to the visage masculine. A diminutive and slightly _retrousse_ nose,
gentle grey eyes of the drowning-fly description, and a sensitive mouth
scarcely hidden by a fair moustache of downward tendency.
Here was a man made to be ruled all his life--probably by a woman. With a
little more strength it might have been a melancholy face; as it stood,
it was suggestive of nothing stronger than fretfulness. There was a vague
distress in the eyes and in the whole countenance which mistaken and
practical souls would probably put down to a defective digestion or a
feeble vitality. More than one enthusiastic disciple of Aesculapius
studying at Caius professed to have discovered the evidence of some
internal disease in Arthur Agar's distressed eyes; but his complaint was
not of the body at all.
Presently the necessity for action forced itself upon his understanding,
and he rose with a jerk. It is worth noting that his first thought was
connected with dress. He passed into the inner room and there exchanged
his elegant morning suit for a black one, replacing a delicate heliotrope
necktie by another of sombre hue. He mentally reviewed his mourning
wardrobe while doing so, and gathered much spiritual repose from the
diversion.
In the meantime the Rector of Stagholme, having breakfasted, proceeded to
light a cigarette and open the _Times_ with the leisurely sense of
enjoyment of one who takes an interest in all things without being keenly
concerned in any.
“God help us!” he exclaimed suddenly; and Mrs. Glynde, who alone happened
to be present, dropped a handful of housekeeping money on the floor.
“What is it, dear?” she gasped.
“There,” was the answer; “read that. 'Disaster in Northern India.' Not
there--higher up!”
In her eagerness Mrs. Glynde had plunged headlong into the consumption of
Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her
glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside
down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult
way she were responsible for the disaster in Northern India.
At last she read the short article, and was about to give a sigh of
relief when her eyes travelled to a diminutive list of names appended.
“What!” she exclaimed. “What! Jem! Oh, Tom, dear, this can't be true!”
“I have no reason,” answered the Rector grimly, “to suppose that it is
untrue.”
Mrs. Glynde was one of those unfortunate persons who seem only to have
the power of aggravating at a crisis. In their way they are useful as
serving to divert the mind; but they usually come in for more than their
need of abuse.
The poor little woman laid the newspaper gently down by her husband's
elbow, and looked at him with a certain air of grandeur and strength. The
instinct that arouses the mother wren to peck at the schoolboy's hand at
her nest was strong in this subdued little old lady.
“Something,” she said, “must be done. How are we going to tell Dora?”
The Rector was a man who never went straight at the fence, before him. He
invariably pulled up and rode alongside the obstacle before leaping, and
when going for it he braced himself mentally with the reflection that he
was an English gentleman, and as such had obligations. But these
obligations, like those of many English gentlemen, ceased at his own
fireside. He, like many of us, was apt to forget that wife, sister, and
daughter are nevertheless ladies to whom deference is due.
“Oh--Dora,” he answered; “she will have to bear it like the rest of us.
But here am I with fresh legal complications laid upon me. I foresee
endless trouble with the lawyers and that woman. Why the Squire made me
his executor I can't tell. Parsons know nothing of these matters.”
With a patient sigh Mrs. Glynde turned away and went to the window, where
she stood with her back to him. Even to the duller masculine mind the
wonder sometimes presents itself that our women-folk take us so patiently
as we are. If Mrs. Glynde had turned upon her husband (who was not so
selfish as he would appear), presenting him forthwith in the plainest
language at her command with a piece of her mind, the treatment would
have been surprising at first, and infinitely beneficial afterwards.
The Reverend Thomas sat staring into the fire--a luxury which he allowed
himself all through the year--with troubled eyes. There was a fence in
front of him, but he could not bring himself up to it. In his mistaken
contempt for women he had never taken his wife fully into his confidence
in those things--great or small, according to the capacity of the
producing machine--which are essentially a personal property--namely his
thoughts.
All else he told her openly and at once, as behoved an English gentleman.
Should he tell all that he had hoped and thought and rethought respecting
Jem Agar and Dora? Should he; should he not? And the loving little woman
stood there almost daring to break the great silence herself; but not
quite. Strong as was her mother's heart, the habit of submission was
stronger. She longed, she yearned to hear the deeper, graver tone of
voice which had been used once or twice towards her--once or twice in
moments of unusual confidence. The Reverend Thomas Glynde was silent, and
the voice that they both heard was Dora's, singing as she came downstairs
towards them. It was only a matter of moments, and when we have no more
than that wherein to act we usually take the wrong turning.
Mrs. Glynde turned and gave one imploring look towards her husband.
At the same instant the door opened and Dora entered, singing as she
came.
“What is the matter?” she exclaimed. “You both look depressed. Stocks
down, or something else has gone up? I know! Papa has been made a
bishop!”
With a cheery laugh she went to the table and took up the newspaper.