The garden front of Grote faced southeast, and thus, though all day the
broad paved walk in front of it had been grilled by the burning of the
August sun, the shadow of the house itself had spread over it like an
incoming tide of dark clear water before tea time, and at this moment
three footmen were engaged in laying the table for that meal, while the
fourth, as a matter of fact, was talking to the stillroom maid under
pretence of “seeing to” the urn. They were all in the famous Osborne
livery, which was rather gorgeous and of the waspish scheme of colour.
There were, it may be remarked, only four of them, because Mr. Osborne
was still in London, roughing it, so his wife was afraid, with a
kitchen-maid for cook, and only two footmen besides his own man, for
Parliamentary business had kept him there for a few days after Mrs.
Osborne had left to get things in order at Grote. But he was expected
down this afternoon for a couple of nights before he went North, and the
six footmen would shine together like evening stars. “Company” also,
though not in large numbers, were also arriving that evening, among whom
were Lady Austell, her son, and Dora. The latter was now formally and
publicly engaged to Claude.
The house was three-storied, built in the Jacobean style of brick and
stone with small-paned windows, and the brick had mellowed to that
russet red which is as indescribable as it is inimitable. A door opened
from the long gallery inside, which was panelled and hung with
portraits--inalienable, luckily, or Austell would have got rid of them
long ago--onto this broad-paved walk that ran from end to end of the
house. On the other side of it was the famous yew hedge with square
doors cut in it, through which were seen glimpses of the flower garden
and long riband bed below, and the top of this hedge grew the grotesque
shapes of birds. A flight of stone steps led down into the formal flower
garden below, which was bordered on the far side by the long riband bed.
Below that again two big herbaceous borders stretched away toward the
lake, on the far side of which there rose from the edge of the water the
great rhododendron thickets. To right and left lay the park, full of
noble timber, which climbed up to the top of the hill opposite. Across
this ran the road from the station, which skirted the lake on its
eastern side, and passing by the flower garden came up to what Mrs.
Osborne called “the carriage sweep” on the other side of the house, from
which two wings projected, so that the carriage sweep was really the
interior of a three-sided quadrangle.
The warning hoot of an approaching motor caused one of the footmen to
disappear into the house with some alacrity, and a few minutes afterward
Mr. Osborne emerged from the door into the gallery. He still wore London
clothes, dark gray trousers and a black frock coat and waistcoat, for he
had driven straight from the House of Commons to Victoria, but he had
picked up a Panama hat in the hall, and had substituted it for his silk
hat.
“And tell your missus I’ve come,” he observed to one of the wasps.
He sat down in a creaking basket-chair for a few moments, “to rest and
cool,” as he expressed it to himself, and looked about him with extreme
satisfaction. His big high-coloured face was capable of expressing an
immense amount of contentment, and though from time to time he carried a
large coloured handkerchief to his face, and mopped his streaming
forehead with a whistled “Whew!” at the heat, so superficial a cause of
discomfort could not disturb his intense satisfaction with life. Things
had prospered amazingly with him and his: he was thoroughly contented
with the doings of destiny.
He was still “resting and cooling” when Mrs. Osborne came bustling out
of the house, also very hot, and kissed her husband loudly first on one
cheek and then on the other.
“Well, and that’s right, my dear,” she said, “and it’s good to see you.
But you are hot, Eddie, and is it wise for you to sit out o’ doors in
the shadow without a wrap? You were always prone to take a chill.”
“I should be prone to take an apoplexy if I put anything else on, Mrs.
O.,” remarked he. “But my! it’s a relief to get down into the country
again. Not but what things haven’t gone very well this last week for me
in the House. Commission on Housing of Employees! I had a good bit to
tell them about that, and I warrant you they listened. Lor’, my dear,
they like a plain man as’ll talk common sense to them, and tell ’em what
he’s seen and what he knows, instead of argufying about procedure. I
knew my figures, my dear, and my cubic feet per room, and my statistics
about the health of my workmen and their death-rate. I’ve been a common
man, myself, my dear, and I told them so, and told them what things was
when I was a lad.”
Mrs. Osborne was slightly aghast.
“Oh! Eddie, I doubt that’ll tell against you,” she said.
“Not a bit of it, old lady. Everyone knew it to begin with, else I don’t
say I should have told them. And equally they know that they come and
dance at No. 92 when Mrs. O. invites them. Glad they are to come, too,
and my dinner table is good enough for anybody to put his legs under.
But all that’s over for the present, and I didn’t come away for my
holiday, which I’ve deserved, to talk more politics; I came away to
enjoy myself, and have a breath of country air. Eh! it’s a pretty little
box this. I wish I could have bought it. I should have liked to leave a
country seat for Per and Mrs. after you and me was dead and buried.”
This turn in the conversation was not quite to Mrs. Osborne’s taste.
“Don’t talk so light about dying, Mr. Osborne,” she said, “because you
give me the creeps and the shivers for all it’s so hot. There’s a host
of things too I want to talk to you about before the company comes,
without thinking of buryings. There’s the two pictures of you and me
arrived, and it would be a good thing if you’d cast your eye over the
walls, and see where you’d like them hung, and we’d get them up at once.
They’re a fine pair, they are, and the frames too, remarkably handsome.”
“Well, you want a handsome frame for a handsome bit of painting,” said
her husband, “and finer works I’ve seldom seen. They was cheap at the
price. Give me a cup of tea, Mrs. O., and we’ll go and have a squint at
’em. What else, my dear?”
Mrs. Osborne poured him out a cup of tea as she knew he liked it,
extremely strong. She put in the cream first and stirred it up before
handing to him.
“Your brother Alfred came yesterday,” she said, “and you must be careful
how you behave to him Eddie. He’s got a touch of the lumbago, and it
makes him worried.”
“Poor old Alf--cross as two sticks, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Mr.
Osborne, sipping his tea loudly. “Never mind, there’s Claude to look
after him, and Claude manages him as never was. He’s wrapped up in that
lad, Maria, my dear, and I’m sure I don’t wonder. Where is the boy? And
my lady Dora will be here this evening. Lord, Mrs. O., my tongue can’t
say ‘Dora’ yet: it keeps saying ‘my lady.’ I seem as if I can’t get used
to it. And what other of the lords and ladies have you got coming?”
“Well, there’s Lady Austell and the Earl, and there’s Lady Thurs--Lady
May Thurston and Mr. Franklin, to whom she’s engaged----”
“Why, we’re a houseful of lovers,” said Mr. Osborne, beaming
delightedly.
“That we are. Then there’s Alderman Price and lady, just run down from
Sheffield, and Sir Thomas Ewart and lady----”
“Remind me to get out the ’40 port,” said Mr. Osborne. “Sir Thomas likes
a glass of that.”
“He likes a dozen glasses of that,” remarked Mrs. Osborne, “but
pray-a-don’t sit for ever over your wine at table, Mr. O., for there’s
the--the--I never can remember the name of that quartette, but they’re
going to give us a bit of music after----”
“Lashing out, lashing out,” said her husband, “you’ll make a pauper of
me yet, Mrs. O.”
“Never you fear, but Dora loves music, and nothing would content Claude
but that I must get the quartette down; and don’t you look at the bill,
Mr. O., because it’s a scandal to pay that for a bit of music. And then
there’s Percy and Catherine, and your brother.”
“Just a family party,” said Osborne, “that’s what I like. Family party
and an old friend or two like Sir Thomas and lady. Times change, don’t
they, Mrs. O.? There was a time when you and me felt so flustered at
being bid to dinner with Sir T. that we were all of a tremble. Not much
trembling now, eh? Ah, Maria, for what we have received the Lord make us
truly thankful!”
Mrs. Osborne did not at once follow this.
“And since when have you said your grace after your tea, Eddie?” she
asked.
“Oh, it wasn’t for my tea,” said he, “I was just thinking of everything,
teas and breakfasts and luncheons and dinners and work and play and
enjoyment alike. I’m thankful, I am thankful for it all.”
Then Mrs. Osborne understood and held out her plump hand with its large
knuckles and immense jewelled rings to her husband.
“Eddie, my love,” she said, “and Lor’, here comes Alfred. Don’t go
kissing my hand before him. He’d think it so silly.”
“Silly or not, Mrs. O., here goes,” said her husband, and imprinted a
resounding caress on it.
Round the corner of the house had come a queer wizened little figure.
Alfred, for all the heat of the day, was dressed in black broadcloth,
wore a species of buckled goloshes over his shoes and had a plaid rug
over his shoulders. From above the garish colours of this rose a very
small head, which would have been seen to be bald had not its owner worn
over it a cap of Harris tweed, the peak of which almost came over his
eye. Below that appeared a thin little aquiline nose, a mouth so tight
and thin-lipped that it looked as if it was not meant to open, and
cheeks so hollow that they looked as if they were being sucked in by
voluntary contraction. His walk was peculiar as his dress: he moved one
foot a little forward and then put the other level with it. The same
process repeated led to an extraordinarily deliberate progression.
Alfred was Mr. Osborne’s elder brother, older than him by some ten
years. He had entered a broker’s office as clerk at the age of fifteen,
and in the intervening years had, by means of careful and studied
speculation, amassed a fortune, that had made Mr. Osborne on a former
occasion remark that Claude would be a richer man than his father
without ever having done a stroke of work for it. For Alfred (unmarried
as yet) had made Claude his heir, a benefaction in return for which he
“took it out” of Claude’s father and mother. By one of those strange
fantasies of Nature which must supply her with so great a fund of
amusement, he united to an unrivalled habit of being right with regard
to the future movements of the stock market, an equally unrivalled eye
for the merits of pictures, and had for years bought very cheaply such
works as dealers and connoisseurs would run up and wrangle for at
Christie’s a few years later. Here the inimitable humour of the
construction of his nature came in, for well as he loved a picture, he
loved a financial transaction a little more dearly, and sometimes he had
collected works of an artist of no particular merit, in the
consciousness that when dealers knew that he was buying them, they would
begin to put the price up. Then he would gently unload, and leave them
with unmarketable wares on their hands. He delighted in dealers, because
they ministered to his recondite sense of fun; they did not delight in
him, because they never knew whether he was collecting because he saw
merit in an artist, or because his design was to make them think that
such merit existed. One or two had tried to make friends with him, and
asked him to dinner. He ate their dinners with a great appreciation, and
scored off them worst of all. By some further strange freak of fancy,
Nature had made it easy for him to acquire all that which his brother
and sister-in-law could not acquire at all, for brother Alfred, in spite
of his ridiculous clothes had the manner, the voice, and the ways of an
eccentric and high-lineaged duke, cynical if you will, and of amazing
ill-temper, a fancy which Mrs. Osborne delicately alluded to as being
worried. He also gave the impression of infernal wickedness, a quality
which he was quite lacking in, except as regards his ill-tempers. It was
an undoubted fact that he invariably got the better of other competitors
in speculating and picture dealing and such perfectly legitimate
pursuits, which they might be inclined to attribute to diabolical
alliances.
He crept toward the tea table, looked at his brother’s hand, which was
held out in salutation, as if it was an insect, rejected it, and sat
down pulling his shawl more closely about his shoulders.
“Fresh from your triumphs in the House, my dear Edward!” he said. “You
positively reek of prosperity. You seem to be hot.”
“Well, I’m what I seem then,” said Mr. Osborne with great good nature.
He could not possibly be other than polite to brother Alfred, who was to
make Claude his heir, even if he had been tempted to do so. As a matter
of fact, he was not so tempted. “Rum old Alf” was his only comment on
his brother, when he had been more than usually annoying.
“I gather that the aristocracy assembles before dinner,” went on Alfred.
“Maria, my dear, after giving me tea for forty years at frequent
intervals, it is strange that you do not remember that I take milk and
not cream. Another cup, please.”
“Well, and how’s the lumbago, Alf?” asked his brother. “Plumbago I call
it: weighs as heavy as lead round the loins. Not but what I’ve only once
had a touch of it myself.”
“Very humorous indeed,” said Alfred. There was certainly no doubt that
brother Alfred was a good deal worried, and Mr. Osborne made the mental
note that his lumbago must be very bad indeed to make him like this.
Acid he always was, but not always vitriolic. But luckily both Mr.
Osborne and his wife were proof against either acid or vitriol. They
only felt sorry that brother Alf was so worried.
“Well, well, take your mind off it, Alf,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of
fair dames coming down to cheer you up. Lord, Maria, what a rip brother
Alf was when he was a young one. Opera every night and bouquets to the
ladies on the stage----”
“Libel,” remarked Alfred.
Libel it was, but Mr. Osborne had intended it for a pleasant sort of
libel. As the libel and not the pleasantness struck Alfred, he abandoned
the topic.
“Bought any pictures lately, Alf?” he said.
“No, but there are two I should like to have sold. You and Maria; never
saw such daubs. What did you pay for them? Twenty-five pounds apiece?”
Mrs. Osborne laughed, quite good humouredly.
“Why, if he’s not trying to buy them cheap off us,” she said, “and sell
them expensive. Twenty-five pounds apiece! as if you didn’t know that
the frames came to more. You and your joking, Alfred! Take a cucumber
sandwich, which I know you like, though how you digest such cold
vegetables at tea passes me. Why, I am reminded of a cucumber sandwich
for hours after.”
“Where are you going to hang them?” asked brother Alfred.
“And if we weren’t just going indoors when we’ve finished our tea to
look!” said Mrs. Osborne cordially. “Do come with us, Alfred, and give
your advice.”
“I should recommend the coal cellar,” said Alfred. “They want toning.”
“Why, and he’s at his joke again!” said Mrs. Osborne, with placid
admiration.
There is probably nothing more aggravating to a man in a thoroughly bad
temper than to fail in communicating one single atom of it to others,
but to have your most galling attacks received with perfect good humour.
Such was the case with poor Alfred now; he could no more expunge the
satisfaction from Eddie’s streaming countenance, or strike the smile
from his sister-in-law’s powdered face, than he could make a wax doll
cease smiling, except by smashing its features altogether. He tried a
few further shafts slightly more poisoned.
“It’s odd to me, Maria,” he said, “that you don’t see how Sabincourt, or
whatever the dauber’s name is----”
“Yes, Mr. Sabincourt, quite correct,” said Mrs. Osborne.
“How he has simply been making caricatures of you and my poor brother,
making you sit with your rings and bracelets and necklaces and tiaras,
just to show them off. And you, too, Edward, there you sit at your table
with a ledger and a cash box and a telephone, just for all the world as
if you were saying, ‘This is what honest hardware has done for me!’”
Mrs. Osborne was slightly nettled by this attack on her husband, but
still she did not show it.
“And I’m sure Mr. Sabincourt’s done the telephone beautiful,” she said.
“Why, when I stand and look at the picture, I declare I think I hear the
bell ringing. And as for my necklace and tiaras, Alf, my dear, why it
was Eddie who bade me put them on. No, we’ve got no quarrel with Mr.
Sabincourt, I do assure you.”
Alfred gave her one glance of concentrated malevolence, and gave it up.
Whether he would have tried it again after a short period for reflection
is uncertain, but at this moment Claude came out of the house. “Hullo,
father!” he said. “I thought I heard the motors. But I was changing.”
“Glad to see you, my boy. Been having a ride?”
“Yes, on the new mare Uncle Alf gave me. She’s a ripper, Uncle Alf. I’m
ever so much obliged to you. And how’s the lumbago?”
Alfred’s face had changed altogether when Claude appeared, and for the
look of peevish malignancy in his eyes there was substituted one of
almost eager affection. And certainly, as Mr. Osborne had said, there
was little wonder, for Claude’s appearance might have sweetened the most
misanthropic heart. He was dressed quite simply and suitably in white
flannels and white lawn tennis shoes, and the contrast between him and
his father in his thick, heavy London clothes was quite amazing. His
brown clean-shaven face was still a little flushed by his ride, and his
hair was even now just drying back into its crisp curls after his bath.
He did not bother his mother to pour him out tea, and instead made a
bowl of it for himself in an unused slop-basin, moving the tea things
with his long-fingered brown hands with a quick deftness that was
delightful to watch.
“Four lumps of sugar, Claude?” asked his father. “You’ll be getting
stout, my boy, and then what’ll your young lady say to you?”
Alfred turned a glance of renewed malignancy on to his brother as Claude
laughed.
“She’ll say I’m taking after my father,” he remarked.
Alfred gave a little thin squeak of amusement. He had entirely failed to
annoy his brother, but he hoped that Claude would have better luck. But
again he was doomed to disappointment; Mr. Osborne’s watch chain only
stirred and shook, as it did when he laughed internally.
Claude looked about for a teaspoon, took his mother’s, and stirring his
slop-basin of tea, which was half milk, had a long drink at it.
“Father, I thought I’d drive the Napier over to meet Lady Austell and
Dora,” he said, “if you don’t mind.”
“Why, there’s the two landaus going, and the brougham, and the bus for
the servants,” said Mrs. Osborne. “What for do you want the car?”
Claude flushed a little.
“Oh, I only thought I should like to drive it,” he said. “It’s a smart
turnout, too, and Dora likes motors.”
Mr. Osborne’s watch chain again responded to ventral agitations.
“Blest if he doesn’t want to give his girl a drive in his dad’s best
car, to show off the car and his driving,” he said with some jocosity,
which drew on him brother Alfred’s malignancy again.
“It’s a good thing you haven’t got to do the driving, Edward,” he
observed. “Why shouldn’t the boy have the car out? I’ll pay for the
petrol.”
The suggestion conveyed here was not quite a random libel. Alfred, with
his inconvenient habit of observation, had seen that the cost of petrol
was a thing that worried his brother and promised to be a pet economy,
like the habit of untying parcels to save string, or lighting as many
cigarettes as possible at the same match, or the tendency shown by Lady
Austell to traverse miles of dusty streets in order to leave a note
instead of posting it. And Mr. Osborne got up a little more hastily
than he would otherwise have done if this remark had not been made.
“Oh, take the car, take the car, Claude,” he said. “Very glad you
should, my boy. Now, Mrs. O., you and I will go in and see where we’ll
hang our likenesses.”
Mr. Alfred waited till they had gone, and then drew his plaid a little
closer round his shoulders with another squeak of laughter.
“I thought that would get the car for you, Claude,” he said; “that vexed
your father.”
Claude finished his tea.
“I know it did, Uncle Alfred,” he said. “Why did you say it?”
“Why, to get you the car. That’s what I’m here for, to learn what you
want and see you get it. There’s some use in me yet, my lad. Usually I
can’t make your father annoyed with me, but I touched him up that time.”
Claude could not help smiling at his uncle’s intense satisfaction, as he
sat there with shoulders hunched up, like a little malevolent ape, still
grinning over the touch-up he had so dexterously delivered. He himself
had got up after finishing his slop-basin of tea and was balanced on the
arm of his chair, one slim leg crossed over the other, and his hands
clasping his knees. His smile caused those great dark eyes nearly to
close with the soft wrinkling up of the flesh at their outer corners,
but closing them it opened his lips and showed the even white teeth
between them. Then, with that gesture which was frequent with him, he
tossed back his head and broke into a laugh.
“Well, it’s too bad of you,” he said, “but thanks for getting me the
car. It’s a handsome bit of work; they told me at Napier’s there wasn’t
such another on the road anywhere. And what if I do want to run Dora up
in style? It’s natural, isn’t it?”
Somehow when Claude was with his father and mother he appeared to be a
perfectly well-bred boy. But in spite of his extraordinary good looks
and the perfect ease of his manner, the moment they had gone, and there
was no standard of that kind to judge him by, he seemed different.
“It’ll be a pleasant change for her finding the house comfortable,” he
went on, “with servants to answer the bells, and half a dozen bathrooms
where there wasn’t one before, and no holes in the carpets to trip
yourself over. The place was like an old dust heap when the lease was
signed three weeks ago. But you may bet I made the furnishers and
decorators put their best feet foremost, and I must say they’ve done it
all in the best style. It’s a nice comfortable English house, that is
what it is. Mother wanted to have no end of gilding and kickshaws. I put
my foot on that and Per backed me up.”
Alfred shuffled to the house after Claude had gone, and made his way to
the dining room, where he expected to find the portraits of his brother
and sister-in-law in process of being placed. The gallery through which
he had first to pass had been left more or less in the state the
Osbornes had found it in, though it was with difficulty that Mrs.
Osborne had been persuaded not to put down a carpet on the polished oak
boards. But she had had her way with regard to a few Persian rugs which
had been there, and which she pronounced not fit to be seen, and had got
some nice thick pieces of the best Kidderminster instead. Otherwise the
Jacobean oak of its chairs, tables and book-cases had been allowed to
abide, nor had she interfered with the portraits of Wests that hung on
its oak-panelled walls. But with the hall it was different; and she had
made several striking changes here. There had not even been a hatrack in
it, which did not matter much before, since the Wests had not
entertained there for years, and you could put your hat down on one of
the low oak chests. But Mrs. Osborne intended to entertain a great deal,
and the first thing she did was to order two large mahogany hatstands
with a sort of dock for umbrellas beneath, which she had placed one on
each side of the door. On the white plaster walls between the oak
pillars that ran up to the roof she had put up a couple of dozen stags’
heads (ordered from Roland Ward) and half a dozen foxes’ masks, which
gave the place a baronial and sporting air. The light from the two old
bronze lamps similarly was quite insufficient, and she had put up four
very solid yet elegant (such was their official description) electric
standards, one in each corner of the hall, while over the central table
she suspended another from the rafters above, slightly ecclesiastic in
design, though indeed it might suggest an earthly coronet of
overwhelming proportions as much as a heavenly crown. A few stuffed
tarpons, killed by Per in Florida, carried on the sporting note, which
was further borne out by a trophy of spears and battle axes and bead
aprons which he had brought with him from the same tour. Finally, she
had introduced an enormous early Victorian mahogany sideboard for laying
a cloak or a coat on, and on this also stood a stuffed crocodile-lizard
sitting up on its hind-legs, and carrying in its fore paws a tray for
cards. This had been a birthday present to her from Mrs. Alderman Price,
who was expected that evening, and even Percy, who had such taste, had
said it was very quaint. So there it stood in the middle of the mahogany
sideboard, carrying in its tray only the card of the clergyman of the
parish. But Mrs. Osborne had no fear about callers; she was long past
all that, and surveying the hall only this morning she had said to
herself with great satisfaction, “I declare I shouldn’t have known it,
when I think what it was when I first see it.”
Alfred stood and looked about him for a moment or two when he came into
this very suitably furnished hall, and observed with some silent
amusement that Roland Ward’s label was still attached to one of the
stag’s heads. This he did not remove; indeed, with the end of his stick
he poked it into a rather more prominent position. Then he passed on
into the dining room.
The two portraits were already hung, for Mr. Osborne had seen at once
where they should go, above the new mahogany sideboard which was like
that in the hall, and was, in fact, as Mrs. Osborne said, “its fellow.”
The windows took up the long side opposite to them, and on the other two
were some half dozen portraits, which Alfred had in vain tried to buy
before now, but had found to his chagrin that they were inalienable.
There was a Reynolds there, a Gainsborough, a couple of Romneys, and all
had about them that indefinable air of race and breeding which the old
English masters, lucky perhaps in their sitters, or at any rate in their
own quality of vision, render so superbly. Till this evening the third
wall had been empty; now Mr. and Mrs. Osborne, she in all her jewels,
he with the telephone and ledger, shone there.
Alfred glanced round the room, but his eye came back to these two
portraits. Sabincourt, that superb modern artist, had done the sitters
justice, justice so rough that it might be taken for revenge. Mrs.
Osborne sat full face, her white hair gathered beneath the all-round
tiara of diamonds that she felt to be so heavy. Close round her neck was
the Land’s End necklace, but a rope of pearls reached to her waist and
was fastened there by an immense ruby. Her large pillowy arms were bare
to the shoulder; in one hand she held the Perigaud fan, but it was so
grasped that the rings on the hand that held it as well as the bracelets
were in evidence. The other lay negligently, knuckles upwards, on the
carved arms of her chair. Her face wore an expression of fatuous
content, and it was extremely like her, cruelly like her. And Edward had
fared as well (or as badly) at the eminent hands of the artist. A vulgar
kindly face peered into his ledger, and as his wife said, you could
almost hear the telephone bell ring.
Alfred seemed fascinated by the sight of the portraits, or rather by the
sight of them in contrast with the others. He turned on the electric
light which was attached to their frames, and drawing a chair from a
table, sat down to observe them. Then he suddenly broke into a spasm of
noiseless laughter, and slapped his thin thigh with his withered little
hand.
After a while he rose.
“But I’ll get Sabincourt to paint one of Claude,” he said to himself,
“and then ask any of these dealer-fools if it’s a West or an Osborne,
bless his handsome face.”
* * * * *
Dinner that night was an extremely lengthy affair, but “informal-like,
quite a family party,” as Mrs. Osborne explained to several of her
guests, as she informed them whom they were to take in or be taken in
by. May Thurston was furnished with the most complete explanation.
“I thought we’d all be comfortable and not stuck up, Lady Th---- Lady
May, now that we’ve left London behind us,” she said, “and though I’m
well aware, my dear, that Sir Thomas ought to take you in, by reason of
your rank, since Mr. O. takes in Lady Austell, and the Earl me, I
thought you’d not be ill-pleased if I passed you off with your young
man, same as I’ve treated Lady Dora in sending her in with Claude. And
so all you young people will be together, and a merry time you’ll have,
I’ll be bound. Ah, there is Sir Thomas; I must explain to him.”
Sir Thomas cared little for precedence, but much for his dinner and more
for his wine. He was considered quite a courtier in manner at Sheffield,
and bowed to Mrs. Osborne on the conclusion of her explanation.
“When Mr. Osborne has the ordering of the wines, and Mrs. Osborne the
commanding of the victuals,” he said handsomely, “he would be a man
what’s hard to please if he wasn’t very well content. And to take in
Mrs. Percy is an opportunity, I may say, of studying refinement and
culture that doesn’t often----” Here Mrs. Percy herself entered the
room, close to where they were standing, and he broke off, conscious of
some slight relief, for he was one of those people who can very easily
get into a long sentence, but find it hard to rescue themselves from
being strangled by it when once there. “But speak of an angel,” he
added, “and there comes a fluttering of wings.”
Thereafter the “gathering of the clans,” as Mr. Osborne usually
expressed the assembly of guests for dinner, came thick, but before they
were gathered a deafening gong announced that dinner was gathered too.
Austell, with his weak pale face, came last but one, and finally his
mother made her slow and impressive entry. She looked like an elderly
dethroned princess, come back after exile to the native country where
she no longer ruled, and stretched out both hands to Mrs. Osborne, whom
she had not seen since her arrival.
“Dear Mrs. Osborne,” she said. “How glad I am! Quite charming. A family
party!”
“Clans all gathered now, Mrs. O.,” said her husband. “Let’s have a bit
of dinner.”
The dinner was served throughout on silver; a grove of wine glasses
stood at the right hand of each guest. In deference to Alfred’s lumbago
all windows were closed, and the atmosphere soon became very warm and
comfortable indeed. An immense glass chandelier hanging above the table,
and studded with electric lights, was the chief author of illumination,
but clumps of other lights were on the walls, and each picture had its
separate lamp. Sir Thomas’s courtier-like speeches soon ceased, and he
was content to eat and listen to the cultured conversation that flowed
from Mrs. Per’s lips, while his face gradually deepened in colour to a
healthy crimson and his capacity for bowing must certainly have ceased
also. He asked the butler, whom he called “waiter,” which was the year
of each particular vintage that was so lavishly pressed upon him, and
occasionally, after sipping it, interrupted the welling of the cool
springs of culture to look codfish-like up the table toward Mr. Osborne,
and say, “Capital ninety-two, this.” And then Mrs. Per would begin
again. Her talk was like the flowing of a syphon; it stopped so long
only as you put your finger on the end of it, but the finger removed, it
continued, uninterrupted, pellucid, without haste or pause. She was the
daughter of a most respectable solicitor in Sheffield, whose father and
grandfather had been equally highly thought of, and Per openly
acknowledged that some of the most chaste designs in the famous
ornamental tinware were the fruits of her pencil. But with the modesty
of true genius she seldom spoke of drawing, though she was so much
wrapped up in art, but discussed its kindred manifestations, and in
particular the drama.
She gave a sweet little laugh.
“Oh, Sir Thomas, you flatter me,” she said in response to some gross and
preposterous compliment about her age, while he was waiting for a second
helping of broiled ham, to which Mrs. Osborne had successfully tempted
him. “Indeed, you flatter me. I am quite old enough to remember Irving’s
‘Hamlet.’ What an inspired performance! It made me quite ill, from
nervous exhaustion, for a week. I had a silly little schoolgirl ‘Hamlet’
of my own--yes, I will allow I was at school, though nearly on the
point of leaving, and I assure you Irving’s ‘Hamlet’ killed it,
annihilated it, made it--is it naughty of me?--made it stillborn. It was
as if it had never lived. How noble looking he was!”
Sir Thomas raised his eyes towards Mrs. Osborne. “Best peach-fed ham I
ever came across,” he said. “Wonderful man, wasn’t he, Mrs. Percy? Great
artist, eh?”
Dora from opposite had heard the end of this.
“Claude, dear,” she said, “who is that nice fat man? I never saw anybody
like his dinner so much. What an angel! It is funny to me, you know,
coming back here and finding you of all people in that heavenly car,
ready to drive me up from the station. We didn’t go quite the shortest
way, did we? Last time I was here there was only our old pony-trap to
take me and my luggage, so I had to walk. And do you know, Mrs. Osborne
has put me in my own room.”
Claude turned towards her. In spite of the awful heat caused by the shut
windows and the rich exhalation of roast meats, he was still perfectly
cool.
“I did that pretty well then?” he said. “Do you remember my asking you
about the house, and where your room was, and all that? So you never
guessed why I asked? It was just that you might have your old room
again. Such a business as there was with the mater. She said you ought
to be on the first landing, where those big handsome rooms are. But I
said ‘No.’ Give Dora the room on the second floor beyond the old school
room, and you won’t hear any complaints.”
“Ah, that makes it even nicer to know that you did it,” said she.
The conversation round the table for the moment had risen to a roar.
Mrs. Osborne was tempting Alderman Price to the sorbet he had refused;
Mrs. Per had got on to “The Bells,” which she allowed (incorrectly) that
she had not seen; Mr. Osborne was shouting the year of the liqueur
brandy which went with the ice to Sir Thomas; and May and Mr. Franklin
were wrangling at the tops of their voices over some question of whether
a certain dance had been on Tuesday or Wednesday. Lady Austell only
looked slightly aloof, and followed the direction of her son’s eyes
which were fixed, as by enchantment, on the picture of his hostess. And
the crowd and the noise seemed to make a silence and isolation for the
two lovers.
“But it was a business getting my way,” he said. “I never should have
but that I was always the mater’s favourite.”
Dora heard the words and something suddenly jarred. Somehow he should
not have put it like that; he thought of himself, he took credit---- And
then before this rather disconcerting little moment succeeded in
disturbing her, she looked at him again. There was the cool strong face,
the smouldering eyes, that upward tilt of the chin, each inimitable,
each Claude and no other.
“Favourite?” she said. “Do you expect me to be surprised?”
Quails, out of season, but probably delicious, had come and gone, and
with the iced fruit salad that followed port was handed round. And with
that first glass of port Mr. Osborne rose to his feet.
“Now it’s the first glass of good old port from Oporto, Sir Thomas,” he
said, “and I ask the company to drink a health, not of this happy couple
nor of that, as we well might do, God bless you my dears, but to someone
else. Toasts I know are in general given after the dinner is over, and I
hope Mrs. O. has got a savoury for you yet, and a peach or two. But it’s
been my custom to propose a health with the first glass of port, such as
I see now in my hand.”
Sir Thomas gave a choked laugh.
“Wish all toasts were drunk in such a glass of port, Osborne,” he said.
“Very kind, I’m sure, but silence for the chair, Sir Thomas. This is the
first little dinner as we’ve had here, and may there be many to follow
it, with all present as I see now. Ladies and gentlemen, who has had the
privilege of entertaining you? Why Mrs. Osborne! Maria, my dear, your
health and happiness, and no speech required. God bless you, Mrs. O.”
It was a complete surprise to Mrs. Osborne, and for one moment she felt
so shy and confused she hardly knew which way to look. Then she knew,
and with her kind blue eyes brimming she smiled at her husband. Everyone
drank something, Sir Thomas his complete glass with a hoarse murmur of
“no heel-taps”; Mrs. Per a little sip of water (being a teetotaller)
with her little finger in exclusive elevation; Lady Austell something at
random out of the seven glasses at her right hand, which had all been
filled at different periods of dinner without her observing. And Dora,
radiant, turned to Claude.
“Old darlings,” she said enthusiastically, and resumed her conversation
with Mr. Franklin on her right.
But Claude was not quite pleased with this heartfelt interjection. It
was affectionate, loving even, but something more was due to the son of
the house. The interjection ought to have been a little more formal and
appreciative. It should have saluted the importance and opulence of his
parents as well as their kindliness. After all, who had done the house
up, and made it habitable?
And then instantaneously this criticism expunged itself from his mind.
Dora always said the thing that was uppermost in her mind and “old
darlings” was a very good thing to be uppermost.
Harry Franklin and Claude found themselves side by side when, not so
very long afterward, the ladies left the room, and Mr. Osborne, glass in
hand, went round the table and sat between Austell and Sir Thomas. The
others, with the exception of Alfred, who did not stir, but continued
sitting where he was at the end of the room far away from door and
window, closed up also, and another decanter of the ’40 port was
brought.
“And when you’ve given me news of that, Lord Austell and Sir Thomas,”
said Mr. Osborne genially, “I warrant there’ll be another to come up
from my cellar without leaving it empty neither.”
The prospect seemed to invigorate Sir Thomas, and he emptied and filled
his glass. Austell meantime was taken to task by his host for not doing
the same, but was courteously firm in his refusal, in spite of Mr.
Osborne’s assurance that you could bring up a child on this port without
its knowing the meaning of a headache. Harry Franklin and Claude also
were not doing their duty, so Mr. Osborne reminded them, but the rest
were sufficiently stalwart to satisfy him.
“And the Navron quartette are playing afterward, are they not?” asked
Harry. “May told me so.”
Claude frowned slightly.
“Yes, but when they’ll be able to begin, I don’t know,” he said. “When
the pater gets somebody to appreciate his port you can’t tell when
anything else will begin except another bottle. What I want is a
cigarette, and a talk to Dora.”
“I’ve got some,” said Harry innocently, producing his case, and taking
one himself. He lit it.
“I say, you’d better wait,” Claude began, when the hoarse voice of Sir
Thomas interrupted him. “It’s dishonour to the wine,” he said. “Mr.
Osborne, sir, your wine is being dishonoured by that young gentleman
opposite.”
Harry did not catch the meaning of this at once, and was “put at his
ease again” by Mr. Osborne before he knew that he was not there already.
“You’re all right, Mr. Franklin,” said his host, “though in general we
don’t smoke till the wine has finished going round. But if my guests
mayn’t do what they like in my house, I’d sooner not have my friends
round my table at all Drink your wine, Sir Thomas, and let those smoke
who choose.”
The second bottle, which was not to leave Mr. Osborne’s cellar denuded,
had appeared before this, and the indignant drinker cooled down over it.
A faint little squeak of laughter was heard from Alfred, who had sent
for his plaid again, and till now had sat perfectly silent, emptying and
filling his glass as many times as possible. At this point he produced a
large cigar and lit it himself.
“I disagree with Sir Thomas,” he said. “Good tobacco and good wine go
very well together, very well indeed,” and he embarked on the nauseating
combination. It was now half-past ten, and a message came in from the
drawing-room as to whether the gentlemen would take their coffee in the
dining room or have it with the music. This caused a break-up, the three
young men, Austell, Claude, and Franklin going out, leaving the rest at
the table.
“Those young fellows will please the ladies more than we old fogies
would, hey, Sir Thomas?” said Mr. Osborne. “We’ll follow them by-and-by.
It’s not every day that one meets one’s old friends, and has a glass of
good wine together. Per, my boy, I hope you’re taking care of yourself.”
Per was doing this very adequately. He was a fat, white young man of
nearly thirty, with an immensely high forehead from which the tide of
hair had already receded far. He wore pince-nez and a large diamond
ring, and looked rather older than he was and considerably stouter than
he should have been. “Thank you, yes, dad,” he said. “I’m going strong.”
This furnished Sir Thomas, whose indignation over the cigarette had not
quite yet subsided, with a text.
“Yes, my boy,” he said, “and long will you, when you’re not afraid of
your dinner and your glass of wine. Half the young fellows I see now
drink barley water to their dinner, and some of them don’t eat hardly no
meat, and that’s why we’re losing the trade of the world as well as all
the boat races and what not. In my day we ate our beef and drank our
wine, and so did our fathers before us, and I never heard that we lost
many boat races then.”
Sir Thomas did not say whether he personally had ever won any, nor did
Percy give testimony to the value of generous diet by the enumeration of
any athletic feats of his own. A little shrill laugh again came from the
other end of the table, but Sir Thomas did not hear it.
“Look at those three young fellows who went out--no offence to you, Mr.
Osborne,” he continued. “Why, there wasn’t a spare ounce of flesh on any
of their bones, and that means no stamina. They’d shut up like a
pocket-knife if it came to a tussle, and I doubt if their bones are much
more than grizzle with the messes they eat, and that not enough of them.
No, give me a lad who eats his steak and drinks his bottle of wine, and
I’ll tell you whom to back in business or across country.”
“Well, there’s sense in a steak to my thinking,” said Mr. Osborne, “and
to be sure our fathers ate their beef and drank their beer or their port
more free than the young fellows do now. But I’d be sorry to put my
money against Claude if it came to a run or a cricket match. He’s a wiry
young fellow, though he’s not such a hand at his dinner as is Percy.”
The cackle from the end of the table grew louder, but no voice followed.
Alfred was one of those to whom his own sense of humour is sufficient in
itself. Without a word he got up and shuffled, still wearing his
overshoes, out of the door.
* * * * *
The quartette played in the long gallery and Claude, knowing that music
to his family meant nothing except a tune which, as Mrs. Osborne said,
you carry away with you, had steered a very happy course, in the
selection of it, so as to satisfy the impulses of filial piety and yet
give pleasure to those who like Dora, and, it may be added, himself, did
not want so much to carry tunes away, but to listen to music. Thus a
selection from the “Mikado,” admirably boiled down for strings, put
everybody in a good humour, and Sir Thomas to sleep. Later on a similar
selection from “Patience” made Mrs. Osborne again beat time with her fan
without disturbing Sir Thomas, and for the rest the exquisite inevitable
melodies of Bach and Scarlotti filled an hour’s programme. And when it
was over Claude turned to Dora, with whom he was sitting in a window
seat, and his eyes glowed like hot coals.
“Let’s come out,” he said, “and stroll down to the lake. We can’t stop
indoors after that. Bach should always be played out of doors.”
That was finely and justly felt; the next moment came a jar.
“They charged the mater a hundred and fifty guineas for coming down,” he
said, “but it’s cheap, I shall tell her, for real good music. There’s no
price you can put upon a thing like that.”
Again with Dora the check, the jar, lasted but an infinitesimal time, as
she turned aside to pick up her fan which had dropped, and as she met
his eye again she felt that divine discontent which so vastly
transcended in her opinion all other happiness. And it appeared that he,
too, was in tune with that.
“Come out, my darling,” he said. “Let’s get away from these people just
for a bit, a five minutes. I don’t want any more music, even though it
was more Bach. And I don’t want any supper, do you? They’re going to
have supper now.”
Up went his head, with that little unconscious toss of the chin, and
Dora half laughed to hear how at this moment he seemed to put Bach and
supper on quite the same level, when there was the prospect of strolling
with her outside. There was intense sweetness to her in that, and there
was mastery also, which she loved. She felt that even if she had not
cared for him, and even if she was particularly hungry, she would have
to go with him. But as she rose she could not help commenting on this,
wanting, woman-like, to hear the reply that her heart had already
shouted to her.
“You speak as if Bach and supper were equally unimportant,” she said.
“Of course. There’s not a pin to choose between them, if you’ll just
come out with me.”
“And if I won’t?”
“But you will,” he said.
“Not even, ‘please’?”
He shook his head.
“Anything sooner than ‘please,’” he said. “Come or not just as you
like.”
To Dora this was tremendously attractive: the absolute refusal to ask
anything of her as a favour, even when he so intensely wanted it, was a
revelation of the eternal masculine not opposed to but in accord with
the eternal feminine. Nothing seemed to her more fantastic and sickly
than the sort of devotion that begged for a flower, and sighed and pined
under a woman’s unkindness or caprice. “Here is my heart,” he had in
effect said to her, “take it or leave it, but if you take it give me
yours.” Man gave, and was not woman to give too, in her own kind? She,
too, longed to come out into the warm half-darkness of the stars with
him, and why, in common fairness, should he be supposed to sue for a
favour that which she longed to grant?
So out they went on to the dim-paved terrace walk. Above the sky was
clear and the star-dust strewn thick over the floor of the heaven, and
the fantastic shape of the birds on the yew hedge stood clear out
against the luminous and velvet blue. A little draught of flower-scented
air stole up through the square doorways in the hedge from the drowsy
beds, that but dreamed of their daylight fragrance, and somewhere not
far away in the park a night jar throbbed its bourdon note, making
vibration rather than sound. Dora put her hand through his arm and
laughed.
“I laugh for pure happiness,” she said, “and--and oh, Claude, it’s the
real me who is with you now. Do you understand? I expect not, so I will
explain. There are several me’s; you rather liked No. 1, which was the
chattering and extremely amusing me; that was the one you saw first, and
you did like her. Then--oh, well, the other me’s are all varieties of
that, and right below them all is the real me. It doesn’t know sometimes
whether it wants to laugh or cry or to talk or be silent; it only
wants---- Oh, it’s like you with Bach and supper about equal. Laughing
and crying don’t particularly matter if there is you, just as to you
Bach and supper didn’t matter if there was me. And there is. It’s me,
as the children say. And you and I make us. It comes in the grammars. I
only wanted to tell you that. And now we’ll instantly talk about
something else.”
Claude stopped, and against the faint luminance of the sky she saw his
chin protrude itself.
“I don’t see any reason for doing that,” he said. “It’s much the most
interesting thing----”
“I know.”
He drew her toward him.
“Well, you might give a fellow a kiss,” he said.