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THE OSBORNES
BY
E. F. BENSON
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1910, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1910
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
THE OSBORNES
CHAPTER I
For the last five hours all the windows along the front of the newest
and whitest and most pretentious and preposterous house in Park Lane had
been blazing with lights, which were kindled while the last flames of
the long July day had scarcely died down into the ash-coloured night,
and were still shining when morning began to tinge the velvet gray of
the sky with colour and extinguish the stars. The lights, however, in
No. 92 seemed to be of more durable quality than the heavenly
constellations and long after morning had come and the early traffic
begun to boom on the roadway, they still burned with undiminished
splendour. It was literally true, also, that all the windows in the long
Gothic facade which seemed to have strayed from Nuremberg into the West
End of London, had been ablaze; not only was the ground floor lit, and
the first floor, where was the ballroom, out of which, all night, had
floated endless webs of perpetual melody, but the bedrooms above, though
sleep then would have been impossible, and, as a matter of fact, they
were yet untenanted, had been equally luminous, while from behind the
flamboyant balustrade the top of the house, smaller windows, which
might be conjectured to belong to servants’ rooms, had joined in the
general illumination. This was strictly in accordance with Mrs.
Osborne’s orders, as given to that staid and remarkable person called by
her (when she forgot) Willum and (when she remembered) Thoresby, and
(also when she remembered) alluded to as “my major domo.” “Willum” he
had been in earlier and far less happy years, first as boot boy, then
when the family blossomed into footmen, as third, second, and finally
first of his order. Afterward came things more glorious yet and Thoresby
was major domo. At the present time Mrs. Osborne had probably forgotten
that there existed such officers as boot boys, and Willum probably had
forgotten too. The rise of the family had been remarkably rapid, but he
had kept pace with it, and to-night he felt, as did Mrs. Osborne, that
the eminence attained by them all was of a very exalted order.
Mrs. Osborne had ordered that every window in the front of the house was
to be lit, and this sumptuous edict not without purpose. She said it
looked more joyful and what was a little electric light, and as the
evening had been devoted to joy, it was right that the house should
reflect this quality. For herself, she felt very joyful indeed; the last
month or two had, it is true, been arduous, and in all London it is
probable that there had been nobody, man or woman, more incessantly
occupied. But had there been an eight hours bill introduced and passed,
which should limit the hours of energy for hostesses, she would have
scorned to take advantage of so pusillanimous a measure. Besides, the
nature of her work necessitated continuous effort, for her work was to
effect the siege and secure the capitulation of London. That, with her
great natural shrewdness, she realized had to be done quickly, or it
would never be done at all. London had, not to be starved, but to be
stuffed into surrender. She had to feed it and dance it and ply it with
concerts and plays and entertainments till its power of resistance was
sapped. Long quiet sieges, conducted with regularity, however untiring,
were, she knew well, perfectly incapable of accomplishing its fall. The
enemy--at times, though she loved it so well, she almost considered
London to be her enemy--must be given no quarter and no time to consider
its plans. The assault had to be violent as well as untiring; the dear
foe must be battered into submission. To “arrive” at all, you had to
gallop. And she had galloped, with such success that on this night in
July, or rather on this cool dewy morning in July, she felt that the
capitulation was signed and handed her. But she felt no chill of
reaction, as is so often the case even in the very moment of victory,
when energies not only can be relaxed, but must be relaxed since there
is nothing for them to brace themselves over any more. Her victory was
of different sort: she knew quite well that she would have to go on
being extremely energetic, else the capitulated garrison would by
degrees rally again. But since the exercise of these energies was
delightful to her, she was merely charmed that there would be a
continual call for them.
There was no “casement jessamine” on the house, which could “stir to
the dancers dancing in tune” but on the walls of the lowest story,
growing apparently from large earthenware pots filled with mould, were
enormous plants of tin ivy which swarmed up the walls of the house. But
it was too strongly and solidly made to stir even to the vibration
produced by the earthquaking motor-buses which bounced down Park Lane,
and thus the dancers dancing in tune had no effect whatever on it. This
stalwart ivy was indeed a sort of symbol of the solidity of the fortunes
of the house, for it was made at the manufactories from which her
husband derived his really American wealth. They covered acres of ground
at Sheffield, and from their doors vomited forth all sorts of metallic
hardware of the most reliable quality. The imitation ivy, of course, was
but a froth, a chance flotsam on the stream of hardware, and was due to
the inventive genius of Mrs. Osborne’s eldest son Percy, who had a great
deal of taste. His was no abstruse taste, like an appreciation of
caviare or Strauss, that required an educated--or, as others might
say--a vitiated palate or a jaded ear, but it appealed strongly and
almost overwhelmingly, to judge by the order book of the Art Department,
to the eye of that general public which goes in for forms of decoration
which are known as both chaste and “handsome,” and are catholic enough
to include mirrors framed in plush on which are painted bunches of
flowers and bead curtains that hang over doors. With shrewd commercial
instinct Percy never attempted to educate the taste of his customers
into what they ought to want, but gave them in “handsome” catalogues
lists of the things they did want, and of a quality that they would be
sure to find satisfactory. Though this ivy, for instance, was from the
excellence of its workmanship and the elaborate nature of its colouring
rather expensive, it was practically indestructible till the melting
point of the best tin was reached, and it resembled ivy so closely that
you might perfectly well prick your fingers on it before you found out
the art that so closely imitated nature. Indeed, before now some very
pretty jesting had taken place in the windows of the house with regard
to it, when Percy, who liked his joke (amid the scarcely suppressed
merriment of the family), asked a stranger to pick a leaf of it and
examine the beauties of nature as illustrated in the manner in which the
stalk of the leaf was joined to the parent stem. Also it had no
inconvenient habits of growing over places on which you did not wish it
to trespass (if you wanted more, you ordered more), it harboured neither
slugs nor any abominable insects and afforded no resting-place for
birds, while it could be washed free from London dust by the simple
application of the hand-syringe.
The ivy has been insisted on at some little length because it was
typical of the fortunes and family of its inventor. It was solid,
indestructible and new, and in just the same way the Osbornes were very
strong and well, held large quantities of gilt-edged stock, and had no
family history whatever. In one point only were they unlike the ivy that
clung to the limestone wall of the house in Park Lane, but that was an
important one. The point of the ivy was to deceive--it was often
successful in so doing--while the Osbornes never intended to deceive
anybody. There was, with regard at any rate to Mrs. Osborne, her
husband, and Percy, no possibility of being taken in. You could see at
once what they were like; a glance would save you any subsequent
disappointment or surprises. And no one, it may be added at once, ever
pricked his fingers over them. They were as kind as they were new. But
since many strains of blood have gone to the making of each member of
the human race, one strain prospering and predominating in this specimen
while in another, though of the same blood, it scarcely shows a trace of
existence, the divergence of type even in one generation is often very
marked indeed. Thus, though Mr. Osborne felt that he both understood and
admired his eldest son, his admiration for the younger was agreeably
tempered with mystification. “Old Claude’s a rum fellow,” he often said,
and Mrs. Osborne agreed with him. But, as will be seen, there was still
much in common between Claude and them.
The house, like the ivy, was also new and solid and in point of fact
none of its inhabitants, again with the curious exception of Claude,
were quite used to it yet. This they concealed as far as they were able,
but the concealment really went little further than the fact that they
did not openly allude to it. They all agreed that the house was very
handsome, and Mr. Osborne had a secret gratification not unmingled with
occasional thrills of misgiving as to whether he had wasted his money in
the knowledge of the frightful costliness of it. Outside, as has been
said, it was of Gothic design; but if a guest thought that he was to
pass his evening or listen to music in a Gothic interior, he would have
been rudely undeceived. It had been unkindly said that you went through
a Gothic door to find Vandals within, and if Vandalism includes the
appropriation of beautiful things, the Vandalism exhibited here was very
complete. But the destructive side of Vandalism had no counterpart; Mr.
Osborne was very careful of his beautiful things and very proud of them.
He admired them in proportion to their expensiveness, and having an
excellent head for figures could remember how much all the more
important pictures, articles of furniture, and tapestries had “stood him
in.” And he ran no risk of forgetting these items, for he kept them
green in his memory by often speaking of them to his guests.
“Yes,” he would say, “there’s three thousand pounds worth of seating
accommodation in this very drawing-room, and they tell me ’twas lucky to
have got the suite at that figure. All Louis--Louis--Per, my boy, did
they tell us it was Louis XV. or XVI.? Sixteenth, yes, Louis XVI. Divide
it up and you’ll find that it averages two hundred pounds a chair. Seems
funny to sit on two hundred pounds, hey? Mrs. Osborne, she said a bright
thing about that. ‘Sit firm then,’ she said and you’ll keep it safe.’”
The furnishing and appointments of the house had in fact been entrusted
to a notable firm, which though it had certainly charged Mr. Osborne a
great deal of money for what it supplied, had given him very good for
his cheque, and both he and his wife, after they had got over the
unusual feeling of sitting on two hundred pounds, and if you chose
putting your feet up on another two hundred, were quite content that
both the furniture of this Louis XVI. room for instance and the cheque
for it, should be what they called a “little stiff.” It was the same in
the Italian room that opened out of it, and matters were no better in
the dining room, which was furnished with Chippendale. Here indeed a
very dreadful accident had happened on the first evening that they had
got into the house, now two months ago, for Mr. Osborne, alone with
Percy his wife for that night, had drawn his chair up to the fire--the
night being chilly--to drink his second and third glasses of port and
had rested his feet on the pierced steel fender that guarded the hearth.
This led to his tilting his Chippendale chair back on to its hind legs,
which, designed to bear only half the weight of its occupant, had
crashed into splinters and deposited Mr. Osborne on the floor and his
second glass of port on his shirt front. But he had taken the incident
with great good-humour.
“Live and learn,” he had said, “live and learn. Got to sit up and behave
now, Maria. Per, my boy, don’t you finish all the port while your dad
changes his shirt. Drink fair, for fair play’s a jewel, and fill your
mother’s glass.”
Mr. Osborne would never have attained to the eminence he occupied as a
manufacturer of hardware, had he not been a man of intelligence, and
instead of upbraiding the furnishing firm for charging so high a price
for a “four legs of carved dry rot” which a momentary irritation
carefully kept to himself might have led him to do, drew the lesson that
it was unwise to tilt chairs unless they were clearly tiltable. But this
accident had caused him to insist on his own room, which he called his
snuggery, being furnished as he chose and not as anybody else chose, and
here he rejoiced in chairs of the pattern known as Chesterfield, a solid
mahogany table, on which stood a telephone, and a broad firm
mantel-shelf where he could put a box of cigars without fear of its
overbalancing. On this point also, his wife had adopted a similar
attitude and her own sitting room opening out of the white-furnished
bedroom where she was afraid to touch anything for fear of “soiling” it,
was thoroughly to her taste. As in her husband’s snuggery she had
matters arranged for her own comfort and not for other people’s
admiration. Percy had “done” the room for her, and sometimes when she
came up here to look at her letters before going to bed, and drink the
glass of hot water which was so excellent a digestive after the dinner
that was still a little curious to her, she wondered whether Percy did
not understand house furnishing better than the great French firm, the
name of which she was always rather shy of pronouncing. She had asked
him to choose all the furniture himself, remarking only that she was a
little rheumatic, and found it difficult to get out of very low chairs.
And he had succeeded to admiration, not only had he consulted her
comfort, but he had divined and satisfied her taste. The paper of the
walls was a pattern of ferns with iridescent lilies of the valley neatly
disposed among them, so that it was almost a shame to hang pictures
thereon; indeed it would have been quite a shame had not those pictures
been so well selected. For Mrs. Osborne cared far more about the subject
of a picture than the manner in which it was presented, and all the
subjects were admirably chosen. There was a beautiful “view” of the
church that Edward had built at Sheffield, a print of the Duke of
Wellington in a garter and of Queen Victoria in a bonnet and a couple of
large oil-paintings, one of the Land’s End and the other of Koynance
Cove, both of which were intimately associated in her affectionate heart
with her honeymoon. Edward and she had spent a month in Cornwall,
staying at little inns and walking as much as possible to save expense,
and though all that was thirty years ago, she never entered this room
now without remembering how they had sat just on that very bluff above
the emerald sea, and read the “Idylls of the King” together, and he had
promised her, when they were rich enough, to give her an emerald
necklace to remind her of the colour of the sea. It is true that those
emeralds (which were remarkably fine) were not exactly of the tint that
either nature had given to the sea, or the very vivid artist had
reproduced in the painting that hung on the walls, but they still
reminded both her and Edward of those enchanted weeks in Cornwall, and
it was but seldom, when she wore her emeralds, that he did not say “Mrs.
O. has got the Land’s End emeralds on to-night.”
Then, more often than not would follow the explanation of this cryptic
remark, and the whispered information of how much the emeralds had
cost. Mrs. Osborne, as a matter of fact, had overheard, again and again,
what the figure was, but she was still officially ignorant of it, and
generally closed the subject by saying, “Mr. Osborne won’t never tell me
what he paid for them. I believe he got them cheap, and that’s why.”
But she secretly rejoiced to know that this was not the reason. The
reason was just the opposite; they had been so enormously expensive.
That expense would not be unreasonable now, but at the time, for she had
worn the Land’s End necklace for twenty years, it had been preposterous.
They had had no holiday one year in consequence, but had grilled in
Sheffield throughout August and September. But during those months she
had worn the emeralds every evening, and it had been a sort of renewal
of the honeymoon. Though they had not been able to go away themselves,
they had managed to send Percy and Claude to the seaside, and the two
months in Sheffield, when every night she wore the emeralds which had
been the cause of their remaining there, was still one of Mrs. Osborne’s
most delightful memories, as a sort of renewed honeymoon. Since then
times had considerably changed, and though to many the change from
simplicity of life and not uncomfortable narrowness of means to the
wider horizons which the rapid accumulation of an enormous fortune
brings within the view, implies a loss of happiness rather than an
extension of it, neither Edward nor she were of that Arcadian build.
They both immensely enjoyed the wider horizon; the humble establishment
with parlour maids had been all very well, but how much more enjoyable
was the brownstone house on the outskirts of Sheffield with footmen and
a carriage. For Mrs. Osborne did not find it in the least interfered
with her happiness to have men to manage or “richer” things to eat. As a
matter of fact she liked managing, and rejoiced in the building of a new
wing to the brown stone house, in the acquisition of motor cars and in
the drain on their time and resources by Edward being made Mayor of
Sheffield. Neither of them ever thought that they had been happier when
their means were more straitened and their establishment humbler. Both
of them, in spite of an essential and innate simplicity of nature
rejoiced in these establishments, and were always ready to enlarge and
embellish and rejoice. They had always made the most of their current
resources--though in a merely financial sense they had always saved--and
it was as great a pleasure to Mrs. Osborne to see her table plentifully
loaded with the most expensive food that money could provide, and press
second helpings on her guests, as it had been to have a solid four
courses at midday dinner on Sunday in Sheffield and tell her friends
that Mr. Osborne liked nothing better than to have a good dinner on
Sunday, and see a pleasant party to share it with him. She still
inquired if she might not “tempt” her neighbours at table to have
another quail, just as she had tried to persuade them to have a second
cut of roast lamb, when in season, while from the other end of the table
she would hear as a hospitable echo her husband’s voice recommending
Veuve Clicquot of 1884, just as in the old days he had recommended the
sound whiskey which would hurt nobody, not if you drank it all
afternoon.
The year of the mayoralty of Sheffield had been succeeded by seven years
fatter than even Joseph had dreamed of. Edward was as sound in his
business as he was in the whiskey he so hospitably pressed on his
guests, and by dint of always supplying goods of the best possible
workmanship and material at prices that gave him no more than a
respectable profit, the profits had annually increased till in the
opinion of those who did not adopt so unspeculative a quality of goods,
they had almost ceased to be respectable, and became colossal instead.
Then, at the end of seven fat years, Edward had realized that he was
sixty, though he neither looked nor felt more than an adolescent fifty,
had turned the hardware business into a company, and as vendor had
received ordinary shares to an extent that would insure him an income no
less than that of the fat years. He had already put by a capital that
produced some ten thousand pounds a year, and he was thus not
disadvantageously situated. Percy, however, still held the Art
Department in his own hands. The plant and profits of that had not been
offered to the public, but had been presented to Percy by his father on
the occasion of his marriage, an event now six years old. For the whole
idea of ornamental tin ivy and the host of collateral ideas that
emanated therefrom had been Percy’s and it was now a joke between his
father and him that Mrs. P. would soon have an emerald necklace that
would take the shine out of the Land’s End. “Land’s End will be Mrs.
P.’s beginning,” said his father. “And the Sea is Britannia’s realm,”
he added by a happy afterthought. “I’ll call her Mrs. C. instead of Mrs.
P. Hey, Per?”
Badinage had ensued. She was called Mrs. C. instantly and there were
numerous conjectures as to who C. was. Mr. Osborne said that it was
curious that C. was the first letter of Co-respondent; but that joke,
though Edward was usually very successful in such facetiæ, was not very
well received. The momentary Mrs. C. ate her grapes with a studied air,
and Mrs. Osborne from the other end of the table--this was still in
Sheffield--said, “You don’t think, Eddie; you let your tongue run away
with you.”
On reflection Eddie agreed with her, and there was no more heard about
Mrs. C. But he always thought that his badinage had been taken a little
too seriously. “A joke’s a joke,” he said to himself as he shaved his
chin next morning, leaving side-whiskers. “But if they don’t like one
joke, we’ll try another. Lots of jokes still left.”
So without sense of injury or of being misunderstood he tried plenty of
others, which were as successful as humour should have any expectation
of being. Humour comes from a well that is rarely found, but when found
proves always to be inexhaustible. The numerical value, therefore, of
Edward’s jokes had not been diminished and Percy inherited his father’s
sense of fun.
Still in Sheffield, Mr. Osborne had, after the formation of the company,
seen an extraordinary increase in business, with the result that his
income, already scarcely respectable, mounted and mounted. Years ago he
had built a chapel of corrugated iron outside and pitch-pine inside in
the middle of that district of the town which had become his and was
enstreeted with the houses of his workmen, and now he turned the
corrugated building into a reading room, as soon as ever the tall Gothic
church with which he had superseded it was ready for use. A princess had
come to the opening of it, and had declared the discarded church to be a
reading room, and there was really nothing more to do in Sheffield,
except to say that he did not wish to become a knight. Mr. Osborne had
no opinion of knights: knighthood in his mind was the bottom shelf of a
structure, where, if he took a place, it might easily become a permanent
one. But he had no idea of accepting a bottom place on the shelves. With
his natural shrewdness he said that he had done nothing to deserve it.
But he winked in a manner that anticipated familiarity toward shelves
that were higher. He had not done with the question of shelves yet,
though he had nothing to say to the lowest one.
It must not be supposed that because he had retired from active
connection with the hardware business, his mind slackened. The exact
contrary was the case. There was no longer any need for him to exercise
that shrewd member on hardware, and it only followed that the thought he
had previously given to hardware was directed into other channels. He
thought things over very carefully as was his habit, before taking any
step, summed up his work in Sheffield, settled that a knighthood was
not adequate to reward him for what he had already done, but concluded
that he had nothing more to do in Sheffield, just for the moment. And
having come to that conclusion he had a long talk with Mrs. O. in her
boudoir, where she always went after breakfast to see cook and write her
letters. But that morning cook waited downstairs in her clean apron long
after Mrs. Osborne had gone to her boudoir, expecting every moment to
hear her bell, and no bell sounded. For more weighty matters were being
debated than the question of dinner, and at first when Mr. Osborne
broached the subject his wife felt struck of a heap.
“Well, Mrs. O., it’s for you to settle,” he said, “and if you’re
satisfied to remain in Sheffield, why in Sheffield we remain, old lady,
and that’s the last word you shall hear from me on the subject. But
there’s a deal to be considered and I’ll just put the points before you
again. There’s yourself to lead off with. You like seeing your friends
at dinner and giving them of the best and so do I. Well, for all I can
learn there’s a deal more of that going on in London where you can have
your twenty people to dinner every night if you have a mind, and a
hundred to dance to your fiddles afterward. And I’m much mistaken,
should we agree to leave Sheffield and set up in town, if Mrs. O.’s
parties don’t make some handsome paragraphs in the _Morning Post_ before
long.”
“Lor’, to think of that,” said Mrs. Osborne reflectively. She did not
generally employ that interjection, which she thought rather common, and
even now, though she was so absorbed, she corrected herself and said
“There, to think of that.”
“But mind you, my dear,” continued Mr. Osborne, “if we go to town, and
have a big house in the country, as per the scheme I’ve been putting
before you, we don’t do it to take our ease, and just sit in a barouche
and drive round the Park to fill up the time to luncheon. I shall have
my work to do, and it’s you who must be helping me to get on, as you’ve
always done, God bless you Maria, and fine and busy it will make you.
There’s a county council in London as well as in Sheffield, and there’s
a House of Parliament in London which there isn’t here. No, my dear, if
we go to London it won’t be for a life of ease, for I expect work suits
us both better, and there’s plenty of work left in us both yet. Give us
ten years more work, and then if you like we’ll get into our Bath
chairs, and comb out the fleece of the poodle, and think what a busy
couple we are.”
Mr. Osborne got up and shuffled to the window in his carpet slippers.
They had been worked and presented to him by his wife on his last
birthday and this had been a great surprise, as she had told him
throughout that they were destined for Percy. At this moment they
suggested something to him.
“Look at me already, my dear!” he said. “What should I have thought ten
years ago if I had seen myself here in your boudoir at eleven of the
morning in carpet slippers instead of being at work in my shirt sleeves
this last three hours. ‘Eddie,’ I should have said to myself, ‘you’re
getting a fat, lazy old man with years of work in you yet.’ And, by
Gad, Mrs. O., I should have been right. Give me a good dinner, but let
me get an appetite for it, though, thank God, my appetite’s good enough
yet.’ But let me feel I earn it.”
Mrs. Osborne got up from her davenport and came and stood by her husband
in the window. In front of her stretched the broad immaculate gravel
walk bordered by a long riband bed of lobelias, calceolarias and
geraniums. Beyond that was the weedless tennis lawn, with its brand new
net, where one of the very numerous gardeners was even now marking out
the court with the machine that Mr. Osborne had invented and patented
the year before he retired from entire control of his business, and
which sold in ever increasing quantities. Below, the ground fell rapidly
away and not half a mile off the long straggling rows of workmen’s
houses between which ran cobbled roads and frequent electric trams,
stretched unbroken into the town. Of late years it had grown very
rapidly in the direction of this brown stone house, and with its growth
the fogs and smoky vapours had increased so that it was seldom, as on
this morning, that they could see from the windows the tall and very
solid tower of the Gothic church that had supplanted the one of
corrugated iron. He looked out over this with his wife’s hand in his for
a moment in silence.
“I don’t know how it is with you, my dear,” he said, “but every now and
then a feeling comes over me which I can’t account for or resist. And
the feeling that’s been coming over me this last month agone, is that
me and Sheffield’s done all the work we’re going to do together. But
there are plenty of days of work for us both yet, but not together. Look
at that there quarter, my dear, right from where the New Lane houses
begin to where’s the big chimney of the works behind the church. I made
that, as well you know, and it’s paid me well to do it, and it’s paid
Sheffield to have me to do it. Not an ounce of bad material, to my
knowledge, has gone into the factory gates, and not an ounce of bad
workmanship has come out of them. I’ve paid high for first-class
materials, and I seen that I got them. I’ve turned out none but honest
goods what’ll do the work I guarantee them for, and last you ten times
as long as inferior stuff, as you and cook know, since there’s not a pot
or a pan in your kitchen, my dear, but what came from the shops. And
I’ve made my fortune over it, and that’s over, so I take it, and what’s
the sense of my sitting on top of a hill, just to look at my
calceolarias and get an appetite for dinner by running about that court
there? But if you’ve got a fancy for staying in Sheffield, as I say,
this is the last word I speak on the subject.”
Mrs. Osborne nodded at him and pressed his arm, as he poured out these
gratifying recollections in his rather hoarse voice.
“There’s more on your mind yet, Eddie, my dear,” she said. “Do you think
I’ve lived with you these years and seen you off your victuals by day
and heard you tossing and turning in your bed at night without getting
to know when you’ve told me all, or when you’ve got something further
unbeknown to me yet? It’s not me only you’re thinking of.”
Mr. Osborne beamed on his wife.
“Well, if you aren’t right every time,” he said. “You’ve guessed it all
I reckon. Yes, it’s Claude. I doubt whether I didn’t make a mistake
about Claude at the beginning, and whether we shouldn’t have done better
to put him into the business like Percy, and let Alfred leave him his
money or not just as he liked. But there, if we made a mistake, it’s our
business to make the best we can of it now. But whenever I see the boy I
think we did the right thing by him, and we’ve got to go on doing the
right thing. And if a young fellow has been to Eton and Cambridge, and
is going to be as rich a man and richer nor his father was, without
having to do a stroke of work for it, I ask you, Mrs. O., what’s he to
do with himself in Sheffield? Of course, he could go to London and work
at the law or go into the Army or adopt any other of the ways of wasting
time and doing nothing, without having it cast up at you, but think of
the chance he gets, if you and I settle in London and have a country
house as well, so that he can ask his friends down for a bit of shooting
or whatever’s on, and bring them home to dine, and stop for his mother’s
dance or concert, or whatever you have named for such a day.”
He paused a moment.
“He’ll be home for good now in a month’s time, and I should like to be
able to say to him, ‘Claude, my boy, there’s no need for you to think
how you’ll occupy yourself in Sheffield for your vacation, for we’ll
soon be moving on. Mother and I’--that’s what I shall say--you
understand--‘have come to an agreement, and there’ll be a house for you
in Grosvenor Square, perhaps, or in Park Lane to bring your friends to,
and a shooting box somewhere else, so that whether it’s Lord This or the
Honourable That, you can bring them down and find a welcome, and a bird
or two to shoot at, and the pick of the London girls for you to dance
with.’”
“Eh, Edward, you talk as if the thing was done,” said his wife.
“Well, so it is, if you and I make up our minds to it. And you guessed
right; it’s a particular feeling I’ve always had about Claude. Eton and
Cambridge may have made a change in him, or it may be that he was
something different all along. But to see him come into a room, into
that smoking room for instance at the Club. Why, it’s as if the whole
place belonged to him, it is, if only he cared to claim it. And the very
waiters know the difference: and I warrant you there’s always an evening
paper ready for him, whoever has to go without. But in London he’ll find
friends, yes, and a girl to marry him, I wager you, whose folk came over
with the Conqueror. Maria, I should like to speak of my son-in-law the
Earl, or the Countess my boy’s mother-in-law. There’s a deal in a name
if you can get hold of the right one.”
Mrs. Osborne gave a great sigh, and looked at her rings, and as she
sighed the row of pearls that hung over her ample bosom rose and fell.
There was a great deal in what Edward had said, and that which concerned
Claude appealed to her most. She had felt it all again and again, and
again and again she had wished, content though she was with the very
comfortable circumstances of her life, that they had some other house in
which to welcome him home for his vacation. She felt he was her own son
at heart, but his manners were such! It was Claude all over to behave as
if the whole room belonged to him, should he choose to claim it. She was
devoted to Percy, but Percy, she well knew, felt as she did when he was
going out to dinner, and thought about what he should say, and looked to
see if his hair was tidy, and hoped he hadn’t left his handkerchief
behind. But Claude seemed to know that everything was all right, with
him, or if it wasn’t he didn’t care. Once on a solemn occasion, when a
Royal visitor was in Sheffield, the whole family had been bidden to
lunch with the mayor, and Claude had discovered in the middle of lunch
that he hadn’t got a pocket-handkerchief, and the day was enough to make
anybody persp----. And then in thought Mrs. Osborne checked again, and
said to herself “action of the skin.” But Claude, though hot, had been
as cool as a cucumber. He just stopped a waiter who was going by and
said, “Please send out to the nearest shop and get me a handkerchief.”
Mrs. Osborne would never have dared to do that, and if she had, she felt
that the handkerchief wouldn’t have come. But in five minutes Claude had
his, “and never paid for it neither,” thought Mr. Osborne to himself in
a mixed outburst of pride and misgiving. Claude wanted a handkerchief
and it came. He didn’t bother about it.
But the whole suggestion of giving up Sheffield where she was so
friendly and pleasant with so many local magnates and their wives, and
launching into the dim unplumbed sea of London was bewildering though
exciting. She had no doubts about Edward; wherever Edward was he would
do his part; she was only doubtful about her own. And these doubts were
not of durable quality, while the reflections about Claude were durable
in texture. Once a friend of Claude’s at Cambridge had come to stay at
the brown stone house, and it had all been very awkward. He was an
honourable, too, and his father was a lord, and though he was very quiet
and polite, Mrs. Osborne had seen that something was wrong from the
first. The most carefully planned dinners had been offered him, and
Edward had brought out the Chateau Yquem, which was rarely touched, and
this young man had eaten and drunk as if “it was nothing particular.”
Mrs. Osborne had tried to console herself with the thought that he
didn’t think much of his victuals, whatever they were, but it was not
that he refused dishes. He just ate them all, and said no more about it.
And he had been regaled with two dinner parties during the three days he
was with them, to which all sorts of Aldermen and their wives and
daughters had been bidden. She had not forgotten his rank either, for
though there were two knights and their wives present at one of these
dinners, and at the other two knights and a baronet, he had taken her in
on both occasions. Nor was their conversation wholly satisfactory, for
though Mrs. Osborne had the _Morning Post_ brought up to her room with
her early tea, while the young man was there, in order that she might be
up to date with the movements and doings of the nobility, she had
extraordinarily bad luck, since the bankruptcy case that was going on
was concerned with the affairs of his sister and her husband, and the
memorial service at St. James’s proved to be coincident with the
obsequies of his great-uncle. Mrs. Osborne felt that these things would
not happen when they were in the midst of everything in town.
So the momentous decision had been made and two strenuous years had
followed, during which time Mr. Osborne had settled to adopt (as became
a man of property in these Socialistic days) the Conservative cause in
politics, and after one defeat to get himself returned for one of the
divisions of Surrey. During that time, too, No. 92 Park Lane had been
pulled down and by amalgamation with No. 93, been built up again in a
style that enabled Mrs. O. to have her friends to dine, with a bit of a
dance afterward or Caruso to sing, without it being necessary for late
comers to huddle together on the stairs where they could not hear a
note, or stand in the doorway of the ballroom without being able to get
in, or to dance if they did. And though, as has been stated, the years
had been strenuous and the struggle continuous, neither Mrs. Osborne nor
her husband ever felt that it was a losing game that they were playing.
Apart from this one defeat in the Conservative interest, and one dismal
attempt at a dance in the house that they had taken before No. 92 was
ready, to which eight men came (all told and counting Percy) they had
swiftly and steadily mounted. For true to the principles on which her
husband had amassed so large a fortune, all that Mrs. Osborne offered
was of the very best, or at any rate of the sort which momentarily most
attracted. The singer who was most in vogue sang at her concerts, or the
heels that were most admired danced there, and beyond doubt the extreme
pleasure that the excellent woman took in her own hospitality
contributed largely to its success. She was no careworn anxious-eyed
hostess, but bubbled with good-humour, was genuinely glad to see the
world fill her rooms, and always welcomed the suggestion that any guest
should bring a friend, whose name was instantly entered by her admirable
secretary on her visiting list.
And thus she rose and prospered, till on the date at which this story
opens, she had crowned the work of her season by giving this immense
fancy-dress ball, which, to give it its due, had whipped up again to
full activity the rather moribund energies of the season. Somehow the
idea had taken on at once; there had been no fancy-dress function of any
importance that season, and by one of those whims that govern the flow
and ebb of the social world, London had thrown itself with avidity into
the notion. It was soon clear that everyone would be there, and everyone
was, and at last in her own house Mrs. Osborne heard the strains of the
National Anthem.
It had been of no particular period; the point was not to have a strict
and classical function but any amount of jewels and fine dresses, and
Queens of Sheba, Cleopatras and Marie Antoinettes joined hands in the
quadrille with Napoleon, Piers Gaveston and Henry VIII. She herself had
been an admirable Mistress Page, her husband a veritable merry knight.
But of all the brilliant figures in that motley crowd there was none
perhaps more admired than the slim dark Piers Gaveston. And that was
Claude.