VERY ODIOUS
I
We found the house-party at tea in the hall of The Towers. The
Mainwaring parents proved to be a little old gentleman, with grey
side-whiskers and a subdued manner, and an imposing matron of fifty, who
deliberately filled the teapot to the brim with lukewarm water upon our
approach and then gave me two fingers to shake. To Miss Damer was
accorded a "Constance--dear child!" and a cold peck upon the right
cheek.
After that I was introduced to Dicky's sister Sylvia--a tall and
picturesque young woman, dressed in black velvet with a lace collar.
She wore the air of a tragedy queen--not, it struck me, because she felt
like a tragedy queen, but because she considered that the pose suited
her.
The party was completed by a subaltern named Crick--a jovial youth with
a _penchant_ for comic songs, obviously attached to the person of Miss
Sylvia Mainwaring--and of course, The Freak's lady-love, Miss Hilda
Beverley, to whom I was shortly presented.
I am afraid our conversation was not a conspicuous success. Miss
Beverley was tall, handsome, patrician, and cultivated, obviously
well-off and an admirable talker. Still, it takes two to make a
dialogue, and when one's own contributions to the same, however
unprovocative, are taken up _seriatim_, analysed, turned inside out, and
set aside with an amused smile by a lady who evidently regards a
conversation with one of her _fiance's_ former associates as a
chastening but beneficial form of intellectual discipline, a man may be
excused for not sparkling.
Half an hour later, perspiring gently, I was rescued by The Freak and
conducted to the smoking-room.
"You never told me you were engaged, old man," I said, as we settled
down to a little much-needed refreshment.
"It's a fact, though," replied The Freak proudly. "_A marriage has been
arranged_--and all that. Say when."
"_And will shortly take place_, I suppose?"
"No immediate hurry," said The Freak easily. "There are one or two
things that Hilda wants to cure me of before we face the starter. This,
for instance." He held up an extremely dilute whiskey-and-soda.
"Between meals, that is. Likewise my--er--casual outlook on life in
general."
"Miss Beverley will have her hands full," I observed.
"Think so? She will do it, though," replied my renegade friend
confidently. "She is a very capable girl. Regards me as her mission in
life. I feel jolly proud about it, I can tell you--like one of those
reformed drunkards they stand up on the platform to tell people what a
Nut he used to be in the old days, and look at him now! By the way, I
promised Hilda I would n't use the word 'Nut' any more. Check me if I
become too colloquial, old son. Hilda is rather down on what she calls
my 'inability to express myself in rational English.'"
"Colloquialism was not formerly a failing of yours, Freak," I said. "As
a small boy you were rather inclined the other way."
"As a small boy, yes," agreed The Freak. "But it is not easy to maintain
the pedantic habit at a public school," he added feelingly.
"Do you remember once," I continued, "telling old Hanbury, when he
dropped upon you for giggling in form, that your 'risible faculties had
been unduly excited by the bovine immobility of Bailey minor'?"
"Yes, I remember. Hilda would have been proud of me that day," replied
The Freak, sighing over his lost talent. "Now she thinks me too
flippant and easy-going. Lacking in dignity, and so forth. But if you
watch me carefully during your stay here you will find that I have very
largely regained my old form. I am getting frightfully intellectual.
You ought to see us reading Browning together before breakfast. It is a
sublime spectacle. Talking of sublime spectacles, we are all going to
Laxley Races on Tuesday, and I can give you an absolutely dead snip for
the Cup."
The next ten minutes were devoted to a conversation which, from the
point of view both of subject-matter and expression, must have undone
the regenerative work of several weeks. Fortunately Miss Beverley was
adorning herself for dinner at the time--the most austere feminine
intellect goes into _mufti_, so to speak, between the hours of seven and
eight P.M.--and we made our provisional selections for Tuesday's
programme undisturbed.
The student of Browning finished scribbling down the names of horses on
the back of an envelope.
"That is all right," he said. "Plumstone for the Shotley Stakes, Little
Emily for the Maiden Plate, and Gigadibs or Jedfoot for the big race.
The others can keep. Shall we go up and dress for dinner?"
I agreed, and we knocked out our pipes.
"What do you think, by the way," enquired The Freak casually, "of little
Connie Damer?"
I told him.
We were late for dinner.
II
A shy but observant male, set down in an English country-house, soon
realises, especially when he has been compelled for a period of years to
rely for amusement almost entirely upon his own society, the truth of
the saying that the proper study of mankind is Man--with which is
incorporated Woman.
At The Towers I became an interested and uneasy spectator of the
continued reformation of my friend Dicky Mainwaring. During the same
period I had constant opportunities of comparing the characters and
dispositions of his first and (presumably) second choices, Mesdames
Beverley and Damer, and in a lesser degree of his sister Sylvia.
Further acquaintance with Miss Beverley confirmed my first impression of
her. She struck me more and more as exactly the kind of girl whom a
careful mother would select as a helpmeet for a somewhat erratic son.
She was cool, aloof, capable, and decided, with very distinct ideas upon
the subject of personal dignity and good form. She had already cured
her fiance of many regrettable habits. Dicky, I found, no longer
greeted under-housemaids upon the stairs with "Hallo, Annie! How is
your bad knee getting on?" Instead, he hurried past the expectant
damsel with averted eyes. He no longer slipped warm shillings into the
hands of beggar-women who assailed him with impossible tales of woe in
the back drive: instead, he apologetically handed them tickets of
introduction to the Charity Organisation Society, with a packet of which
Miss Beverley had relentlessly provided him. He kept accounts. He
answered letters by return of post. He perused closely printed volumes,
and became enrolled in intellectual societies with mysterious aims and
titles difficult to remember.
"Tiny, my bonny boy," he enquired of me one morning after breakfast, "do
you happen to have any sort of notion what Eugenics is--or are?"
"I believe," I replied hazily, "that it is some sort of scheme for
improving the physique of the race."
Dicky nodded appreciatively.
"I see," he said. "One of old Sandow's schemes. His name is Eugen.
That is better than I thought. I was afraid it was going to be another
kind of political economy. Hilda wants me to become a local
vice-president of the Eugenic Society; and as it seems to be a less
pois--complicated business than most of her enterprises, I think I will
plank down five bob and win a good mark."
And off he went, money in hand, to gain an indulgent smile from his
Minerva.
Of Sylvia Mainwaring I need only say at present that she was a pale
shade of Miss Beverley.
Miss Constance Damer was the exact opposite of Miss Beverley,
physically, mentally, and spiritually. Miss Beverley was tall, dark,
and stately; Miss Damer small, fair, and vivacious. Miss Beverley was
patronising and gracious in her manner; Miss Damer's prevailing note was
unaffected bonhomie. But where Miss Beverley slew her thousands, Miss
Damer slew her tens of thousands; for she possessed what the other did
not, that supreme gift of the
gods--charm--magnetism--personality--whatever you like to call it. In
all my life I have never known a human being who attracted her
fellow-creatures with so little effort and so little intention, and who
inspired love and affection so readily and lastingly, as Constance
Damer. She never angled for admiration; she bestowed no favours; she
responded to no advances; but she drew all the world after her like
Orpheus with his lute.
That is all I need say about Miss Damer. This narrative concerns itself
with the career of my good friend The Freak, Dicky Mainwaring; and the
persevering reader will ultimately discover (if he has not already
guessed) that Fate had arranged The Freak's future on a basis which did
not include the lady whom I have just described.
With masculine admiration Miss Damer did not concern herself overmuch.
We all think lightly of what can be had in abundance. Not that she did
not take a most healthy interest in noting what mankind thought of her;
but her interest would undoubtedly have been heightened if she could
have felt less certain what the verdict was going to be. I honestly
believe she would have been thrilled and gratified if some one had
passed an unfavourable opinion upon her. But no one ever did.
She had no sisters of her own, so large families of girls were an
abiding joy to her. These received her with rapture--especially the shy
and gawky members thereof--and made much of her, sunning themselves in
the unaffected kindliness of her nature and gloating over her clothes
for as long as they could keep her. She was greatly in request, too,
among small boys, for purposes of football and the like; but her chief
passion in life, as I discovered one afternoon when Dicky and I
surprised her at tea with the coachman's family, was a fat,
good-tempered, accommodating, responsive baby.
As for her character in general, I think its outstanding feature was a
sort of fearless friendliness. (Miss Beverley may have been fearless,
but she certainly was not friendly.) Constance Damer's was the absolute
fearlessness of a child who has never yet encountered anything to be
afraid of. It is given to few of us to walk through life without coming
face to face at times with some of its ugliness. Apparently this had
never happened to Miss Damer. I say "apparently," but such a wise and
discerning young person as I ultimately found her to be could never
really have been blind or indifferent to the sadder facts of this world
of ours. Consequently I often found myself enquiring why her attitude
towards her fellow-creatures as a whole was so entirely fearless and
trustful, when she must have known that so many of them were to be
feared and so few to be trusted. I fancy the reason must have been that
she possessed the power of compelling every one--man, woman, child,
horse, and dog--to turn only their best side towards her. Rough folk
answered her gently, silent folk became chatty, surly folk smiled,
fretful folk cheered up, awkward folk felt at home in her presence;
children summed up the general attitude by clinging to her skirts and
begging her to play with them. It was impossible to imagine any one
being rude to her, and certainly I never knew any one who was--not even
Miss Beverley.
But she never abused her power. She never domineered, never put on
airs, never ordered us about, never revealed her consciousness that we
were all her servants. That is true greatness.
----
As you very properly observe, this is a book about Dicky Mainwaring.
_Revenons a nos moutons_!