SOUP AND DESSERT I.
WHEN Mrs. Comber asked Vincent Perrin to her dinner-party he was
delighted, although he assumed as great an indifference as possible.
This was at the end of the first week of term, and he had not spoken to
Miss Desart—he had merely bowed to her across the grass and gone indoors
to teach the Lower Third algebra with a beating heart.
He was also fortunately prevented from seeing that Mrs. Comber was
giving the dinner for Traill. If he had seen that, things might have
been very different; as it was, he thought that that kind, good-natured
woman (he did not always like her) had noticed his attachment—as he
thought most carefully concealed—to Miss Desart and wanted to help him.
He himself had not noticed the attachment until the holidays. She had
stayed at Moffatt's during part of the summer term, and he had played
tennis with her and talked to her and even walked with her. But it
was not until he had returned to the seclusion of his aged mother and
Buckinghamshire that he realized that for the first time for twenty
years he was in love.
The discovery affected him in many ways. In the first place it swept
away in the most curious manner all the years that had intervened since
the last affair. He was suddenly young again. He began to regret the
way that he had spent his days. He played tennis (badly but with
enthusiasm). He talked to the men of his Club about “the absurdity of
considering forty-five any age,” and quoted juvenile athletes of eighty.
He gave his mustache a terrible time, wearing things to hold it straight
at night, looking at it often in the glass.
He told his aged mother (a very old lady with a brown, shriveled face, a
white lace cap, and mittens) vaguely but magnificently about there being
somebody. He hinted that she cared for him and was eager to marry him
as soon as he felt ready to ask her. He talked about “getting a house,”
even about wallpapers and stair-carpets and a nice sunny room for the
old lady.
She was delighted at first, and then agitated. Who might this new young
person be? Perhaps she would not like her—in any case, it meant taking a
second place. But she idolized and worshiped her son: she knew sides of
him that no one else knew—she saw him as a little, thin, serious hoy in
knickerbockers.
But this new spirit revived things in Vincent Perrin that he had long
thought dead. He knew, he savagely knew, in his heart of hearts, that he
was a failure; he was determined that the world should never know it; he
covered his knowledge with a multitude of disguises; but now perhaps, if
she cared for him, there might yet be a chance.
But most of all he was afraid of something—he could never give it a
name—that always crept slowly, increasingly over him as term advanced.
He could not give it a name: that thing made up of a myriad details, of
a myriad vexations; that evil spirit that they all, the masters and the
rest, seemed to feel as the weeks gathered in numbers—the end-of-termy
feelings: strained nerves, irritated tempers, almost, the last week or
two when examinations came, seeing red.
No—this term it shall be all right. He felt, as he said good-by to his
mother and kissed her, almost an eagerness to get back and prove that
it was all right. After all, Searle had left, and there was Miss Desart.
Supposing she cared for him? He twisted his thin fingers together. Oh!
what things he could do!
And so he was glad of Mrs. Comber's dinner-party. II.
Giving a dinner-party was no light, easy thing for Mrs. Comber. So
many wide issues were involved. Not very many dinner-parties were
given during the term, and Mrs. Comber was perfectly aware of all the
conversation that it would give rise to, of all the people that would in
all probability be angry with all the other people because they had
been asked or because they had not. There was, generally, a reason for
a dinner. Some important person had to be asked, some unimportant people
had to be worked off, someone was conscious that there had not been a
dinner-party for a very long time. But on this occasion there was no
reason except that Mrs. Comber had liked the look of young Traill, had
at once thought of Isabel, and had conceived a plan.
Then, of course, it followed that other people must be asked: Vincent
Perrin, because she didn't like him, but felt that she ought to; the
Dormers, because it was time they were asked; and the elder Miss Madder,
because she was the nicest of the matrons and wouldn't talk quite so
much and quite so spitefully as the others would.
All this involved danger and destruction as far as the people invited
were concerned. One chance word at dinner—some errant, tiny omission or
commission—and anything might happen: the time might be made miserable
for everybody.
But there was more immediate peril in it than that. There was in the
first place “ways and means.” How this harassed poor Mrs. Comber no
words can say. She was forced to drive her frail cockle-shell of a
boat between the Scylla of increased bills and the Charybdis of
not-being-smart-enough.
Were things not right—if there were no meringues, no mushroom savories
(there were rules and regulations about these things), no kummel—well,
the party had better not be given at all. And then, on the other hand,
there was the end of the month, nothing in hand to pay, and Freddie
scowling over his Greek Athletes to such an extent that it wouldn't do
to speak to him. All this was dreadfully difficult, but it revolved
in reality almost entirely around Freddie's stout figure. Every
dinner-party, every party of any kind, was an attempt to win Freddie
back.
Mrs. Comber never confessed this even to herself, and she was, poor
woman, only too completely aware that its usual result was to drive
Freddie only more completely “in.” Something was sure to happen,
before the evening was over, to annoy him—she would have “such a time
afterwards.” But it always, of course, might be the other way. He might
suddenly see, by some little word or act, how fond, how terribly fond,
she was of him. She had learnt Bridge to please him—he used to like a
game; but the result, although she would not admit it, had simply been
disastrous.
She was much too muddled a person to be good at cards—she was very, very
bad; she lost sixpences and shillings with the sinking feeling in her
heart that they ought to be going to pay for their boys' clothes. She
plunged desperately to win it all back again—she was known throughout
the neighborhood as the worst player in the world.
It was indeed this conclusion to the evening that she dreaded most of
all. There were eight of them, so, of course, they would have to play.
Her heart sank because of all the things that might happen.
But Isabel was, of course, the greatest use in the world. She saved all
kinds of needless extravagances; she always got things where they were
cheap and not bad, instead of getting them expensive and rotten. She
thought of a thousand little things, and she managed the servants—only
two of them, and both ill-tempered.
Mrs. Comber said nothing to Isabel about young Traill—she did not even
think that she had as yet noticed him. They neither of them said a word
about Mr. Perrin. III.
Gathered all together in the drawing-room, it was everybody's chief
object to avoid knocking things over. This may be taken metaphorically
as well as literally, but in that ten minutes' prelude everyone had the
hard task of being socially agreeable to people whom they met, as they
met their tables and their chairs, their beds and their hair-brushes,
every day of their lives.
The curtains; had been closely drawn, but outside the winds were up and
were beating with wild fingers at the panes. They gathered in clusters
about the house, screamed in derision at the dinner-party, chattered
wildly round the buttresses and chimneys of the sedate and solemn
buildings, and then rushed furiously down the gravel paths and away to
the sea.
The tall lamp had been so placed that its light fell on the peacock-blue
screen and the ormolu clock; it also fell on the enormous shoulders, in
black silk, of Miss Madder, on the thin, bony neck of Mrs. Dormer, and
on the deep red of Mrs. Comber's dress (open at one place at the back,
where it should have been closed, and cut, Mrs. Dormer considered, a
great deal lower than it need have been).
They were all waiting for Mr. Comber, and Mrs. Comber was trying to
explain to Traill why Freddie was always late, why people at Moffatt's
always liked meringues, and why with a magnificent “heart” hand she had,
only two nights ago, gone hearts with most disastrous results. “They
like them best with jam in them—you shall see to-night if they aren't
good; and there was really no reason at all why they shouldn't have come
off, but we had such bad luck, and I oughtn't to have played my King
when I did; I'm always telling him that he ought to go and dress a
little earlier—but he stays working.”
Poor Mrs. Comber! She was talking with her eyes all about the room, with
a sickening consciousness that something was wrong with her dress at the
back, with a sure and a certain knowledge that it would be related in
the common room the next morning that dinner was kept half an hour
too long, with a keen misgiving that Mrs. Dormer and Miss Madder had
quarreled furiously only the day before and that she had known nothing
about it. Every now and again she glanced at Isabel to gather comfort
from her, and Isabel's eyes were always ready to give it her.
Isabel was standing in a dark corner by the window, talking to Vincent
Perrin. Her dress was of dark brown silk, very simply cut, and falling
in one straight piece, save for a golden girdle that bound her waist.
She was standing with that perfect repose that came to her so naturally;
when she moved it was as though that was the only movement possible—her
limbs did not seem to hesitate, as do the limbs of so many people,
before they could decide on the way that they were going to act. Her
brown eyes were smiling at Vincent Perrin in a very friendly way,
and his heart was beating a great deal faster than it had ever beaten
before.
He had taken very especial pains with his dressing that night. He found
that there were only three shirts in his drawer and that the cuffs of
two of them were badly frayed, and that the stud-hole in the third was
so broken that it would need a very large stud indeed to fill it. He
found a kind of soup-plate at last, but was painfully conscious of its
brazen size and of a little brown smudge on the front of the shirt
near the collar. His suit—it had done duty for a great many years—was
painfully shiny in the back: he had never noticed it before; and there
was a small tear in one sleeve that he knew everyone would see. His
hair, in spite of water, was lanky and uneven; his mustache was raggeder
than ever; his coat fell over his cuffs and shot them into obscurity in
the most distressing manner.
All these things were new discomforts and distresses—he had never cared
about them before. Then, when Isabel was so kind to him, he felt that
they did not matter; he began in another few minutes to believe that he
was rather well dressed after all; after ten minutes' conversation he
was proud of his appearance.
Then suddenly his eye fell on Traill, and that moment must be
recorded as the first moment of his dislike. Traill was absurd, quite
absurd—over-dressed in fact.
His hair was brushed and parted so that you could almost see your face
in brown glossiness. His coat fitted amazingly. There was a wonderful
white waistcoat with pearl buttons, there were wonderful silk socks with
pale blue clocks, there was a splendid even line of white cuff below the
sleeves.
But Perrin was forced to admit that this smartness was not common; it
was quite natural, as though Traill had always worn clothes like that.
Could it be that Perrin was shabby... not that Traill was smart?
Perrin dragged his cuffs from their dark hiding-places, then saw that
there was a new frayed piece that had escaped his scissors, and pushed
them back again.
They all went in to dinner. IV.
Traill took Isabel in. That was the first time that she had consciously
recognized him—even then it was fleeting and was confined in reality to
a vague approval... and she liked his voice.
He had never seen her before—that is, he had never detached her from the
vague background of people moving in the distance against the trees and
the buildings; but now at once he fell in love with her. He had been in
love before, and the strange suddenness of the ending of those fugitive
episodes—the way that it had been, in an instant, like a candle blown
out—had led him to fancy that love was always like that; he had
even begun to be a little cynical about it. But he was in no way a
complicated person. It didn't seem to him in the least strange that
yesterday he should have laughed at love and that now he should have
a sense of beauty and strange wonder—something that had suddenly, like
streaming silk or a sweeping, golden sunlight, flooded Mrs. Comber's
dining-room.
He thought her very grave; he noticed the white, crinkly sound of the
silk of her dress against the table, the broad bands of light in her
hair, and the way that her fingers, so slim and soft and yet so strong,
touched the white cloth; and when she asked him whether he had ever been
a schoolmaster before, the soup suddenly choked him and he could not
answer her, but blushed like a fool, waving a spoon.
“And you like it!”
“I love it.”
“So far. Well, you shall cherish your illusions.” She still looked at
him very gravely. “The boys like you so far.”
“Ah! they told you!” He was pleased at that.
“Oh! one soon knows—they are cruelly frank.”
Suddenly she caught her eyes away from him and looked down the table.
Mrs. Comber was in distress. Everyone had finished their soup a terribly
long time before, and there was no sign of the fish. One of those pauses
that are so cruelly eloquent fell about the table. Freddie Comber was
moodily staring at his plate and paying no attention at all to Dormer,
who was trying to be pleasant. Mrs. Dormer was sitting up stiffly in her
chair and gazing at Landseer's “Dignity and Imprudence” that hung on the
opposite wall as though she had never seen it before.
It was at moments like this that Mrs. Comber felt as though the room
got up and hit one in the face. She was always terribly conscious of her
dining-room. It was a room, she felt, “with nothing at all in it.” It
had a wallpaper that she hated; she had always intended to have a new
one, but there had never been quite enough money to spend on something
that was not, after all, a necessity. The Landseer picture offended her,
although she could give no reason—perhaps she did not care about dogs.
The sideboard was a dreadfully cheap one, with imitation brass knobs to
the doors of the cupboards, and there were three shelves of dusty and
tattered books that never got cleared away.
All these things seemed to rise and scream at her. She noticed, too,
with a little pang of dismay that one of the glass dessert dishes was
missing. The set had been one of their wedding-presents—the nicest
present that they had had. Oh! those servants!... She talked with a
brave smile to anybody and everybody, but she watched furtively her
husband's gloomy face.
But Isabel, having given her a smile, turned back and attacked Mr.
Perrin, feeling, as she always did about him, that she was sorry for
him, that she wanted to be kind to him, and that she would be so glad
when her duty would be over. She also noticed that she wanted to talk to
Traill again.
Perrin himself had been in a state of torture during dinner that was,
for him, an entirely; new experience. Traill had taken her in....
His thoughts hung about this fact as bees hang about a tree.
Traill—Traill... with his elegant waistcoat and his beautiful shirt. He
splashed his soup on to his plate. As through a mist people's words came
to him—Miss Madder's fat, cheerful voice: “Oh! I think we shall fill
the West Dormitory this term. There are five small Newsoms—all new boys,
poor dears.”... Comber himself, growling at the end of the table to
Dormer: “It's perfectly absurd. It means that Birk-land has one hour
less than the rest of us—that middle hour ten to eleven...”
The same old subjects, the same old dinners—but with her he was going to
escape from it all; with her by his side, his ambition would grow wings.
He saw himself at Eton or Harrow, or a school-inspectorship. Why not? He
was able enough. It only needed something to force him out of the rut.
But Traill had taken her in....
And then she turned and spoke to him, and at once he put up his hand as
though he would stroke his chin, but really it was to cover the stud—the
large soup-plate stud. He stroked his straggling mustache, and used his
official voice. He spoke as he always did when he wanted to create an
impression, as though in the cloistral courts of Cambridge.
Slow, deliberate, a little majestic... he shot his cuff back into his
sleeve. He spoke of ambition, of the things that a man could do if he
tried, of the things that he could do, if—
“If?” said Isabel.
“Oh! well, if... marriage, for instance, was such a help to a man...
one never knew—” He drank furiously and finished at a gulp a glass of
Freddie Comber's very bad claret.
Young Traill was having a very good time indeed with Miss Madder, and
Isabel turned round to hear what they were talking about. The meringues
had arrived—there was also fruit-salad, but everyone took meringues
although they would have liked, had they dared, to take both—and
conversation was quite lively.
“I do hope,” said Mrs. Dormer, “that there will be several extra halves
this term.”
And at once poor Mrs. Comber, who was eagerly congratulating herself on
the success with which, so far, she had escaped danger, burst in:
“Oh, so do I. You know, they always used to give the boys a half for
every new baby born on the establishment. Well, you and I have done our
duty nobly in that direction, haven't we, Mrs. Dormer?”
It is impossible that those who are not acquainted with both ladies
should have any conception of the disaster that this simple sentence
involved.
Mrs. Dormer had a glorious, pugnacious prudery in her stiff, angular
body that rejoiced in any opportunity for display. She hated Mrs.
Comber; she had now an excuse for being offended for weeks.
She could embroider and discuss to her heart's delight. She saw in the
amusement of Miss Madder, the discomfort of her husband, the dismay of
Miss Desart, the distaste of Mr. Perrin, the wrath of Mr. Comber, ample
confirmation of her exultant prophecies. It does not take much to make a
scandal at Moffatt's—and the propriety of the schoolmaster, the anxious,
eager propriety, exceeds the propriety of every other profession.
Mrs. Dormer had the game in her hands, and she played the first move by
sitting silently, whitely, protestingly in her chair.
“I do hope the football will be good this season,” she said at last,
quietly and patiently, to Mr. Comber.
Mrs. Comber realized at once that she was defeated. She did not know
why she had said a thing like that—she knew that Mrs. Dormer didn't like
such things to be talked about. She smiled and laughed and talked about
gardens and the school bell and Mrs. Moy-Thompson's hat. “It always
rings half a note flat, and it's no use speaking about it; and how she
can bear that colored green when it's the last color she ought to wear,
I can't think; if it weren't for these flies—what do you call them!—the
roses would have done quite well.” But her eyes stared desperately down
the table at Freddie, and she saw that he would not look at her, and she
knew that the dinner had been only one more nail in her coffin.
There was still, of course, Bridge. V.
Sitting at the little tables in the tiny drawing-room afterwards,
they were all tremendously—as of course you must be at such small
tables—conscious of each other.
They had drawn lots, and Mrs. Comber was playing with Dormer against her
husband and Miss Madder at one table, and Mr. Perrin was playing with
Mrs. Dormer against Isabel and young Traill at another.
It may seem a slight thing, but it was certainly a factor in the whole
situation that Perrin was forced to gaze—over a very small intervening
space—at Traill's immaculate clothes for the rest of the evening. He was
always a bad Bridge player—he thought that he disguised his bad play by
a haughty manner and a false assurance; to-night the confusion of his
thoughts, his incipient dislike for Traill, the bad claret that he had
drunk, the distracting way that Miss Desart held her cards, caused his
play to be something insane.
Mrs. Dormer disliked intensely losing money, and there seemed every
prospect, if Perrin continued to play like that, of her losing at least
five shillings before the end of the evening. She was convinced that
she had every reason for being angry, and when, at the end of the first
deal, her partner had thrown away a splendid heart hand by refusing to
follow any of her leads, she could not resist a stiff movement in her
chair and a sharp, “Well, Mr. Perrin, I think we ought to have done
better than that.”
For the first time in his experience his usual assured reply, containing
an implication that it was all his partner's fault, that he had been
at Cambridge for three years, and that he taught Algebra and Euclid six
days a week and therefore ought to know how to play Bridge if anyone
did, failed him. He stared at her miserably, gathered the cards
hurriedly together, and began to shuffle them in a dreadfully confused
way. He knew that Miss Desart must think him a fool, and he wanted her
so terribly badly to think him clever and even brilliant. He was sure
that Traill was laughing at him. He hated the assurance with which
he played. If only he, Perrin, had been playing with Miss Desart what
things he might have done.... His head ached, and his shirt creaked a
little every time he moved, and every time it creaked Mrs. Dormer made a
little stir of disapproval.
At the other table also things were not as they should be. The drawing
of lots had secured precisely the combination of players that Mrs.
Comber had most wished to avoid. Whatever she did, however she played,
she was lost. If she played badly, her husband, although playing against
her, was infuriated at her stupidity; if she won, he hated being beaten,
As it was, she was playing extremely badly, but was winning because of
the good cards that she held. His brow was growing blacker and blacker.
She held her cards so badly—she never could make them into a fan, and
every now and again one fell with a sharp rattle against the table.
Also she forgot sometimes that they were playing and broke into
sentences that had to be instantly checked—as, for instance: “Oh, I saw
Mrs.———— I'm so sorry, it 's my lead.”
“I believe this term.... Oh! I beg your pardon.... What are trumps?”
Every now and again she gazed at the peacock screen, and the clock, and
the dark corner of the room where there was a little water-color in a
gilt frame, and they gave her comfort.
The end of the rubber came, and Mrs. Dormer refused to play any more;
they had had magnificent cards, but she had lost three shillings. She
wouldn't look at Mr. Perrin. He stood nervously moving one foot against
the other, pulling his mustache.
“No, really I'm afraid we must go. You 've finished your rubber, Mrs.
Comber? Yes, we ought to have won.... No, I can't think how it was.”
“Considering the way my wife's been playing,” said Freddie Comber
brutally, “I think it is just as well to stop.”
Mrs. Comber chattered with amazing confusion as she helped Mrs. Dormer
to get her cloak. In her eyes something bright was shining, and every
now and again she put up her band to push back some of her black hair
(always on the edge of a perilous descent) with a little, desperate
action.
“Good night. I'm so glad you've enjoyed it. We meet to-morrow,
of course, although I can't think why they aren't going to play
golf—there's going to be such a storm in an hour or two, isn't
there?—probably because it's football to-morrow afternoon. Yes,
good-by.” Everyone departed. Mr. Perrin stood desperately with something
going up and down in his throat. He had a sentence in his head: “Please,
Miss Desart, do let me see you back to the lodge.” (Mrs. Comber had had
to plant her out there to sleep because there was no room in their own
tiny house.) He meant to say it, he wanted to say it. He clutched his
mortar-board frantically in his band. Then suddenly be beard Traill's
voice:
“Oh! please, Miss Desart—of course, I'll see you back. Good night, Mrs.
Comber. Thank you so much—I've loved it. Good night, Comber. Night,
Perrin. Look out, Miss Desart, it's dark.”
Perrin felt his band just touched by Miss Desart's, and her voice, “Good
night, Mr. Perrin.”
He was left alone on the step. VI.
I don't suppose that at this stage of things Isabel bad the very
slightest idea of all the emotions that had been in play that evening.
Her bead, as they walked away down the dark gravel path, was full of her
hostess.
“Poor Mrs. Comber,” she said, and then checked herself as though there
were some disloyalty in talking about her. “I hate Mrs. Dormer,” she
added quietly.
“I don't like her,” Traill said. “And Dormer's such a jolly little man.
I don't envy; him.”
“Oh! I don't suppose it's her fault any more than it's anyone's fault
here about anything they do. It's all a case of nerves.”
There was going to be a storm soon. Already that little preparatory
whisper of the wind, the ominous, frightened rustle of the leaves down
the path, was about them. It was all very dark, with a curious white
light on the horizon, and the dark buildings of the Lower School huddled
against it in sharp, black outline like the broad backs of giants
bending to the soil.
The scent of trees—vague and uncertain in the daytime, but now clear and
pungent—was borne through the air, and the voice of the sea, rolling in
long, mournful cadences far below the hills, came up to them. The wind's
whisper grew into a furious, strangled cry; little eddies of it swept
about their feet, and cascades of withered leaves fell wildly against
them and were blown, sweeping, streaming away.
They were silent. Traill was thinking of her voice. It was so grave and
assured and restful. He thought that he could trust her tremendously.
But there was reserve in it too, and he felt, a little hopelessly, that
he might never perhaps get to know her better.
When they got to the lodge gates, they stopped and stood for a moment
silently.
Then she said, looking very gravely in front of her at the dark bend of
the road, “There must be such a storm coming up. I feel it all through
me. It was depressing to-night, was n't it?”
“Just a little,” he said.
“Anyhow, I'm glad you like it—being here. Mind you always do. I don't
want to be pessimistic when you are just beginning; but—well, you don't
mean to stay here for ever, do you?”
“I should think not,” he answered eagerly. “Only a term or two at the
most, and then I hope to go back to Clifton, my old school.”
“That's right—because—really it isn't a very good place to be—this.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“It's difficult to explain without maligning people and making things
out worse than they really are.” She paused a moment, and then she went
on: “Do you know, at the bottom of the hill, just before you get into
the village, a melancholy orchard? One always passes it. You will see at
the right time of the year lots of green apples on the trees, but they
never seem to come to anything. And such blossoms in the spring! I 've
seen men working there sometimes. I don't know what it is, but nothing
's any good there. They call it in the village 'Green Apple Orchard.'...
Well, I've stayed here a great deal, and there's an obvious comparison.”
“That's cheerful,” he said, laughing. “It would, I suppose, be awful
if one had to stay here for ever like Perrin and Dormer and the rest of
them; but this time next year will see me somewhere better, I hope.”
“Mind you stick to that,” she said eagerly. “I have a horrible kind
of feeling that they all meant to go very soon; but here they are
still—soured, disappointed. Oh! it doesn't bear thinking of.”
“One must have ambition,” he answered her confidently.
She smiled at him, and took his hand, and said good night.
He went, smiling, to his room. As he climbed into bed, the storm broke
furiously.