BREAKFAST IN GROSVENOR SQUARE. STRAINED RELATIONS OF TWO SISTERS. A
BATTLE INTERRUPTED. SAMARIA A GOOD-NATURED PLACE. WHO WAS TO PAY?
In a town-house of the Arkroyd order, a certain dramatic interest
attaches to the morning meal that is not shared by any later one.
Nobody knows who will come down to breakfast, except perhaps some
confidential lady's-maid; and _she_ won't tell, as often as not. So
that the knights-harbingers of fresh toast and tea and coffee can
always enjoy a little sport in the way of wagers as to who will take
which, and which of the young ladies will be up--or down, which is the
same thing--before ten. The pleasurable excitement which those who play
cards feel, before they pick their packs up and know the worst, is akin
to theirs, only less. Because the cards may be snapped up the moment
it isn't a misdeal; while the tension is prolonged for the watcher who
speculates beside a well-laid table as to whether the methylated will
last out under the urn till one of the ladies appears to make tea, or
will sputter and fizz and have to be taken out and refilled, and very
likely the wick too short all the time!
Lunch is different. People make a point of lunch, or else declare off,
and don't come home at all. Those who do not comply with this rule are
Foolish Virgins--and serve them right! Our own experience, an extended
one, points to the impossibility of being too late for breakfast. There
may be a case--but!...
Anyhow, the same human interest does not attach to the question of who
is, or isn't, coming to lunch. And as for tea, nobody cares a brass
farthing; because you can get tea somewhere else. On the other hand,
dinner is a serious matter, and you must make your mind up; and either
come, or not.
This tedious excursion into the ethics of Breakfast is all owing to
everybody coming down so late at 101, Grosvenor Square, on the morning
after the last chapter. The story is, as it were, kept waiting, and may
as well indulge in a few reflections. Samuel, the young man who brought
the chessboard at Royd, had to wait, and seemed able to do so without
change of countenance. He very likely reflected, for all that.
It may have struck Samuel, when Miss Arkroyd made her appearance first
of those expected by him, that when this young lady said, "Oh, nobody!"
on entering, she did not seem sorry, and picked up her share of the
morning's post from her plate to read nearer the fire quite resignedly.
It was getting colder again, and folk were pledging themselves not to
wonder if the wind were to go round to the north.
Judith looked at the outside of her mother's and sister's letters.
Sibyl's interested her most; and she looked them all through carefully,
numerous though they were. Why does one look at the directions on other
people's letters? So Judith thought to herself, as she got disgusted
with the monotony of the text on Sibyl's, and her inability to suggest
any emendations. She was very honourable, for she read nothing but a
signature or two on the numerous postcards. She was, in fact, only
acting under the impulse which prompts the least inquisitive of us all,
when we have undertaken to post a letter for a friend, to read the
address upon it carefully before we insert it into the inexorable box,
and feel inside to see that it hasn't stuck. Judith did not answer the
question she asked herself; yet her reading of the same address again
and again called more for explanation than that of the letter-poster;
for the latter may be put on his oath in the end, if a letter fails to
reach.
There were so many to "Miss Sybil Arkroyd" that she had become confused
over the spelling of the name by the time its owner's footstep was
heard on the stairs. However, she wasn't going to pretend she hadn't
been reading them. "There's one for you from Betty Inglis," she
said incidentally; and picking up her own letters from the table,
took them with her to read by the fire. It was a morning to make
the hardiest give in to the temptation of a hundred-weight of best
Wallsend, blazing. Judith enjoyed it; so much so that a sense of a
russet Liberty serge, baking, crept into the atmosphere as she sought
in vain for an inlet into an envelope cruelly gummed to its uttermost
corner. When will envelope-makers have compassion for their customers'
correspondents?
"You're scorching, Ju. Or you will be directly." So spoke Sibyl,
reading a letter attentively, and speaking through her absorption as
to a world without. "Who was that?... No--don't make the tea yet,
Elphinstone. Coffee for me. You're coffee, I suppose, Ju?..."
"Yes, coffee. Who was what?"
"Who was that in your cab last night?... Well, you made noise enough!
Of course I could hear! I'm not deaf." The letter is read by now, being
short, and Sibyl has come out into the world to hear the answer to her
question.
But Judith is deep in half-a-quire of illegibility, after an episode of
a fork-point, and some impatience. "It's an old dress," she says, and
then ignores Sibyl altogether for a term, in favour of the letter. Her
eyebrows had moved in connection with the cab-inquiry, up to the point
of detection by a sharp younger sister. "I had no cab, dear," she says
at last. "I came in Mr. Challis's cab." This is quite a long time after.
"Has Mr. Challis a cab?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean, Sib."
Sibyl knows, but has become absorbed in a second letter. So she leaves
her tongue, as her representative, to say fragmentarily, "Hansom-cab
off the rank," and then retires altogether into the letter for a
moment. However, she comes out presently to say, "The question is, was
it Mr. Challis? I suppose it was, though, or it couldn't have been Mr.
Challis's cab ... oh no!--I'm not finding fault. It's all perfectly
right as far as I'm concerned."
The respectable domestics have been in momentary abeyance, and the
conversation has been more suggestive than it would have been in their
presence. The reappearance of Mr. Elphinstone, with the gist of two
breakfasts, causes an automatic adjournment of the subject. The day's
appointments make up the talk, during his presence.
But so late was the quorum of the total breakfast--in fact, it was
doubtful whether two of the constituent cujusses would appear at
all--that Sibyl got ample opportunity for resuming the conversation
exactly where it left off, at least a quarter-of-an-hour having elapsed.
"It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned," she repeated. "As
long as Marianne doesn't mind!" The Christian name may have been an
intentional impertinence.
"There is nothing for Marianne to mind, Sibyl."
Sibyl changes her ground unscrupulously. "It doesn't matter to me as
long as _I'm_ not his wife. But a hansom-cab is a hansom-cab, and you
know it as well as I do."
"I know it, dear." Judith speaks serenely. The attack is too puerile to
call for resentment. "They try one's nerves and destroy one's skirts,
getting in and out."
Sibyl's style has not been worthy of her Square, or Mr. Elphinstone.
There was too much of the lowlier air of Seven Dials in the suggestion
that a hansom-cab would promote an irregular flirtation to do more
than provoke a smile. Charlotte Eldridge, even, would have condemned it
as the bald scoff of inexperience.
But there was more maturity and force in Sibyl's next speech. "I want
to know, are you going to tell the _madre_ about it or not?" Judith
flushed angrily as she answered her with: "I have told you, Sibyl, that
as soon as there is something to tell, I will tell it at once to anyone
it concerns. Mamma certainly!"
"How far has it gone?--that's what I want to find out."
"How far has what gone?"
"You needn't look so furious, Ju. Do let's talk quietly. You know
perfectly well what I mean. This talk about a trial-performance." The
imputation that Judith looked furious was a sporting venture. No doubt
she felt furious, thought Sibyl; and how was she to know she didn't
show it?
"I told you days ago there was no talk of a trial-performance."
Sibyl restrained herself visibly--too visibly for the prospects of
peace. After some thirty seconds of self-command, she reworded her
question mechanically. "The talk about something that was not to be
a trial-performance." The forms of the court were complied with,
without admission of previous lack of clearness. This was shown in a
_parti pris_ of facial immobility. A licked lip, a scratched nose, an
eye-blink, would have marred its dramatic force.
"You needn't look so stony over it, Sib. There's no mystery of any
sort, and I can tell you about it in three words. Alfred Challis is
anxious ... what?"
"Nothing--go on!"
"Mr. Challis is anxious that I should get up enough of Aminta
Torrington's part to give Mr. Magnus an idea.... No!--Sibyl. Mr. Magnus
is _not_ vulgar, and _I_ think him picturesque. He smokes too many very
large cigars perhaps, and they don't improve his complexion. But what
objection there can possibly be to diamond shirt-studs...."
Sibyl interrupted. "You may just as well tell it all out, Ju. What do
you mean by 'enough'?"
"What do I mean by enough? Do be intelligible, Dandelion dear!" Judith
is patronizing.
"I wish you wouldn't call me by that hatefully foolish name. Yes--what
do you mean by 'enough'? Does it mean that what Mr. Magnus has heard
of what you can do _isn't_ enough? That doesn't mean that he's heard
nothing. And you know he hasn't."
Sibyl is really no match for her sister in the long run, and perhaps
this is a sample of it--of a run long enough for her to get ruffled in.
Judith's forbearance becomes exemplary. "Listen while tell I you," she
says, imputing impatience, "what Mr. Magnus _has_ heard; and then you
can talk about it."
"Very well, go on!" snappishly.
"The suggestion came from Mr. Magnus. Alfred Challis ...
certainly!--it's his name. Don't be absurd.... Alfred Challis may have
talked to him--no doubt has--of my fitness for the part. And yesterday
between the acts he asked us into his room, and made us read one of the
scenes. Of course I was Aminta, and Alfred Challis was Moorsom. It was
where they meet for the first time at the oculist's at Vienna, in the
waiting-room...."
"Is that the kissing scene?"
"The kissing scene! Sibyl!--I'm sorry you read that manuscript...."
"You shouldn't have left it lying about."
"It was in my bedroom, child.... Well!--it certainly wasn't what you
choose to call the kissing scene ... but it doesn't matter. I don't
believe I should ever be able to make you understand how purely
_professional_ it all was. Mr. Magnus sat on the arm of a chair
smoking, with his thumbs in his waistcoat, and said that sort of
thing wouldn't go down with the public." Judith omitted Mr. Magnus's
reason, which was that it wasn't half "schick" enough, thick enough;
for it wasn't clear which he said, as his tongue interfered with his
articulation.
Sibyl listened, chafing. When no more seemed to be coming, she elected
to treat the communication as a confession forced from reluctant lips.
"You see I was right, after all," she said. "And it _was_ Mr. Challis
in the cab." The discontinuity of semi-accusation was bewildering,
and refutation hung fire for a moment. She ran on, giving her sister
no chance. "I really must say, Judith, that I do not understand
you at all. But you must go your own way. Do you suppose--can you
suppose--that _any_ member of your family would approve of what is
going on, if they knew it?"
At this point the fact that Judith is really much the cooler of the two
tells. "I don't know whom you mean, Sib," she says temperately, "by
_they_. No member of my family is plural, that I know of ... well!--it
isn't grammar, according to me. However, if you mean the _madre_, we
shall very soon see; that is, if the thing doesn't turn out a flash in
the pan. I shall tell her all about it at the proper time...."
"Meanwhile, hold my tongue, you mean? I'm not at all sure, Judith, that
any other sister in my place wouldn't at once tell her mother all she
knew about such goings on...."
"What are the goings on? I know of no goings on."
"I do. This visit to the back slums of a theatre, alone; I mean
unaccompanied by any other lady. The impropriety--yes! impropriety--of
the whole thing...."
"Please don't make a scene, with Elphinstone every half-minute, and
mamma just coming down. I never said we were alone. If you had asked
me, I should have told you that Mrs. Eldridge was with us."
"Who's Mrs. Eldridge?"
"A very nice person, a friend of Marianne Challis. Her husband's in the
Post Office. Madame Louise could dress her to look almost pretty, if
her complexion were better. And _propriety_--oh dear!--the very pink!
She rather bored me, in fact, because she wouldn't let it alone."
"And was this Mrs. Ostrich--or whatever her name is--satisfied?"
"Perfectly. She has known Alfred Challis since before his first wife
died, and has the most absolute confidence in him."
"I don't fancy your Mrs. Ostrich. Where was Mr. Challis's wife all this
time?... well!--this deceased wife's sister, anyhow."
"Sibyl! I won't talk to you. Marianne Challis was where we left her, in
the stage-box. I don't suppose she left it, but I didn't ask her."
"And then did she and Mrs. Ostrich go home separately?"
"Eldridge. Marianne Challis and she went away together. They were not
going home; Wimbledon's too far, where they are. I really don't know
where they are staying."
"I'm not curious. But you and Mr. Challis drove home lovingly in a
hansom, after acting lovers in a play! There!--you needn't fly out...."
Was it any wonder that Judith then lost her temper? For she had not
flown out. The insinuation that she would do so was based on Sibyl's
knowledge that she would have been perfectly justified in doing so. But
now, she did lose her temper, subject to that disguise of self-command
which tells for more than any outburst.
"You are taking too much on yourself, Sibyl. Mamma knows. At least,
she knows Alfred Challis and his wife. They have dined here, and we
agreed--mamma and I--to know nothing about the deceased wife's sister
business. It may even be false from beginning to end.... _Ask_ her, did
you say? I should never dream of doing so.... And as for your other
disgraceful--yes! disgraceful--speech just now...."
"Well--it's true! You _had_ been, and you know you had."
"Had been what?"
"Acting Moorhouse and Aminta Dorrington."
"That's not the way you put it. But I don't care about that. It's only
your silliness and inexperience makes you say these things...."
"What is it you do care about, then?"
"I won't submit to be catechized, Sibyl. But I'll tell you. I do care
about what the _madre_ thinks--and papa. And I shall tell _her_.... I
wonder who that can be?"
The "that" in question was a knock at the front door, one that
expressed confidence that it was at the right house, and even that it
would find someone at home--well-founded confidence in both cases.
For the Miss Arkroyds, listening for the identity of the abnormal
visitor--at ten o'clock in the morning!--only wait for a barely
perceptible instalment of voice and footstep to exclaim jointly: "The
Rector ... just fancy--what can he want?... In here, Elphinstone!" And
it may be neither is sorry for the interruption. How very frequently
a visitor is the resolution of a family discord! Judith, pale with
suppressed anger, recovers her colour. Sibyl's flush of excitement dies.
It is the Rector of Royd, no doubt of that! And something equivalent to
a breeze of fresh air, or the tide in an estuary, or the new crackle
of a clean pine-wood fire--but not exactly any one of the three--comes
into the room with him and his laugh. He has an effect that is
usual with him. The under-housemaid, who has passed him on to Mr.
Elphinstone, hopes she won't have done dusting when he comes out. Mr.
Elphinstone is seriously hurt at his having breakfasted three hours ago
and now refusing food, which would have promoted their intercourse; and
the young ladies are not sorry, on inquiry, to hear that her ladyship
is not coming down, but will have her breakfast upstairs, because
thereby they will have the Rev. Athelstan all to themselves longer.
However, they chorus sorrow which they don't feel about their mother;
and affect an equally hypocritical satisfaction at a probable
appearance of their father, which they don't believe in.
"You'll see papa will come in presently and say he never heard the
bell." Thus Judith, who shows her pack by adding: "Now do let's talk
and be comfortable till he comes." All right--_nem. con.!_
"I think you the most profligate and dissipated family in London and
Westminster.... Come nearer the fire? Not if I know it. Both you girls
are scorching.... Well now! What was it last night?"
"They went to 'Ibsen.'" Judith summarizes, abruptly. Sibyl says: "And
you went to the Megatherium," rather as a counter-accusation than a
contribution of fact. The visitor looks quickly from the one to the
other. Whatever he notes, he passes it by.
"I've been to 'Ibsen,'" he says, "and know all about it. The people
commit suicide. What was the other play?"
"A stupid thing. I really hardly made out what it was about. But the
author's a friend of the people I went with. You remember Mr. Challis,
Mr. Taylor? I brought him to tea at the Rectory."
"Of course. I thought him such a shy customer. But I met him after
that. We had quite a chat."
"Oh yes--I remember he talked about it to me. I'm afraid you found him
a great heathen."
"Absolutely." Mr. Taylor laughs cheerfully over Alfred Challis's
heathenism. "But a very good Christian for all that. I shouldn't say so
to the Bishop, though. He never came to church, and I wasn't sorry...."
"Do take care, Mr. Taylor. We shall tell the Bishop."
"... Not on his account, you know--on my own. He would have convicted
me of plagiarism. I took all his ideas for my sermon."
This was incidental chat, leading to nothing. Then followed inquiry,
overdue, about the Rector's establishment, especially his _locum
tenens_ at Royd, the reporting of whom brought disquiet to his face.
His hearers knew he was making the best of it; he was not a good
actor. This led naturally to conversation about his own temporary
_locus tenendus_ in his friend's behalf, and so to the miserable
tragedy of the drunkard's death in the canal-lock. Now it was well
over four months since either young lady had done any slumming in
the Tallack Street quarter: indeed, their visits there soon lost the
charm of novelty, so neither recollected its inhabitants off-hand.
The description failed to identify, until Mr. Taylor mentioned the
unhappy Uncle Bob by name, first heard by him at the inquest. Then a
recollection struck Judith.
"That must have been the man that said he was 'mine truly, Robert
Steptoe,'" said she. "How very shocking!" The horror of the story
of course increased tenfold the moment a _nexus_ was established.
Reminiscence, at work in Sibyl's mind, caused her to strike in upon Mr.
Taylor's continuation of his narrative; on which he arrested it to hear
what she was going to say. She said: "Never mind, go on!" till pressed
to take her turn first; then said: "Wasn't that the blind beggar and
the little girl--the same family, I mean?"
"Exactly. I was just coming to them." And then the Rev. Athelstan
proceeded with a full account of poor Jim's sad plight in the Hospital,
and of how the little girl had been a great source of anxiety to
Addie Fossett. He contrived to assign the whole of the activities on
Lizarann's behalf to that lady; having, indeed, a most happy impersonal
faculty of narration, which detailed the facts without his own
connection with them.
"They are really the reason of my coming here this morning," said he in
conclusion. "I dare say you have both been wondering what it was all
about. However, it's that. This poor fellow, Jim Coupland, oughtn't to
be allowed to sell matches in the streets. And although he makes a good
deal by what is really begging in disguise...."
"He makes three times what he would at any trade." Sibyl speaks
positively; she always knows things.
"But he's putting it all by for the child." The clergyman justifies
Jim, promptly.
"Please go on with what you were saying, Mr. Taylor!" Judith speaks.
"'Although he makes a good deal by what is really begging in
disguise'...."
"He might be dissuaded from it even if the loss of his foot--poor
fellow!--should make it more lucrative."
"I don't see how." This is Sibyl, naturally. The Rector makes a mental
note that she is always in opposition. Her sister says nothing, and he
resumes:
"You remember the story of the _asker_?" Sibyl remembers it with
a snap, and "Of course!--go on!" Judith, more slowly, thinks she
remembers, and then--oh yes!--she remembers now. The speaker continues:
"You know the child isn't seven, and doesn't the least realize about
her father. She has been indoctrinated from babyhood with a false
idea of some employment he has; he's as professional to her as the
turncock or lamplighter. But he--poor chap!--is most anxious she
should never know the truth. Yesterday he consented to not seeing the
child for another six weeks--although he's longing for her, day and
night--because he wants to spare her the knowledge of his stump. He's
convinced that a wooden leg will be a great joke between them, and is
devising shifts by which it may be concealed from his 'little lass,' as
he calls her, that it is ever taken off. And yesterday, after swearing
me, as it were, into the conspiracy for the child's deception, he
ended up with an earnest request that I would never 'let on' about his
being a 'cadging varmint.' I pointed out to him the utter uselessness
of the attempt, and that it must fail in the end, and that the longer
the knowledge is put off, the more painful it will be when it comes.
I suspect he would give it up, to spare her. But he would have to be
provided for, somehow."
"Have to be!" Sibyl's tone suggests impatient protest against Jim's
case being made a claim on Society. The whole duty of a Christian
includes a liberal amount of slumming; but it must be distinctly
understood to be Christianity, not bald equity. Athelstan Taylor didn't
feel analytical on the subject. He knew he would have "had to" cross
the road between Jerusalem and Jericho if he had happened to come up
before the Samaritan, or else that he would have been miserable all
night about the man that had fallen among thieves and come to grief. He
was like that at school, you see. Such an awfully good-natured chap!
Probably Samaria was an awfully good-natured place. Anyhow, he didn't
see his way to discussing the point this morning. He made a concession:
"Well--suppose we say it would be a pleasure to do it! You would feel
it so if you knew the child. Really that infant's pluck when that poor
madman was flourishing that horrible knife about...."
"But you didn't tell us about that." Both ladies speak. Indeed, Mr.
Taylor had slurred over a great deal of his adventure, merely saying he
was passing the house and had given what assistance he could, with very
little detail till he got to Uncle Bob's escape.
"I never saw such a courageous child in my life. Addie Fossett's
got her at the Schoolhouse now. She got a bad chill that night, and
we've been very uneasy about her. Perhaps we are both of us given to
fidgeting about coughs and temperatures and things. However!" This
isolated word expresses, as briefly as possible, dismissal of the
subject as material for depression, with retention of it as stimulus to
action.
Judith is only languidly interested. "What do you think of doing, Mr.
Taylor?" she says absently. Her mind is on the playhouse, yesterday.
"I'm not very clear about details, but if Jim will be tractable, and do
as he's told, there ought to be some arrangement possible. He admits
that he has some money in the savings-bank, and the Carriers' Co. that
ran over him ... yes!--I've seen the manager ... are inclined to be
liberal in the matter of compensation; and then there's...." Here a
hesitation comes in.
"There's papa, of course." Both ladies agree about their parent, as a
sort of _fons et origo nummorum_. Mr. Taylor had better talk to him
about it. Mr. Elphinstone, after thirty-five years in the family,
has no scruple about showing that he overhears conversation, and
subinforms Miss Arkroyd that Sir Murgatroyd is imminent. Pending
the baronet, the conversation is general, then drifts towards the
Great Idea. Sibyl becomes gracious--points with pride to a mountain
of letters on the subject that she will have to answer before she
goes out. Mr. Elphinstone has restricted them to a clear spot on the
breakfast-table, without presuming to fold or envelope. Miss Arkroyd
detracts from their glory. Most of them are from artists who want
to make designs for the cripples to execute, or from cripples who
can do nothing at present, but would take three-and-sixpence a week
during apprenticeship. Sibyl is indignant. The letters are the _exact
contrary_ of what Judith alleges. It is easy to sneer, but read what
Mr. Brewdover says. There's his letter! But Judith says she isn't
prepared to take up her parable on the subject--doesn't know enough
about the matter. No doubt it's all right! She withdraws an incipient
yawn, and Sibyl says something _sotto voce_, possibly that Judith might
just as well have held her tongue.
Athelstan Taylor, writing of this interview to his friend Gus later,
said: "I was glad at this point that the Bart. came in, apologetic--as
I didn't fancy having to make peace between those two girls. Why need
well-brought-up young women to be so quarrelsome--without the excuse
of Alcoholism? They are rather a disappointment--those two--they used
to be so nice as kids. I must say the old boy is my favourite of the
family still--he was quite exemplary about this poor sailor chap--said,
if _I_ was convinced, that was enough for him, and I had only to say
how much would be wanted. Her ladyship was very good too--do her
justice!--promised to come and see poor Jim at the Hospital; and I
think will keep her promise." He added a postscript next day: "Lady
Arkroyd's visit came off this morning, and passed off without ructions.
I was rather nervous, because her ladyship thinks it her duty to get up
a sort of theologico-ethico-moral-goody steam _because I'm there_--and
poor Jim is such a terrible and appalling example of theoretical
irreligion that I was on tenterhooks."