THE WORD "SWANK"
"That's how it goes, 'Melia," panted Tilly, whirling her partner into an
armchair. "It's quite easy, really; Dicky taught me in the
billiard-room on Saturday night in ten minutes. Hallo, hallo, hallo!
Here I am, everybody! Hallo, Mother darling!"
Mrs. Welwyn gently parried the approaching embrace.
"Here's your father, dear," she remarked, with the least tinge of
reproof in her voice.
"Hallo, Dad! I did n't see you," exclaimed Tilly, kissing her male
parent excitedly.
"Welcome home, my daughter!" said Mr. Welwyn. "Now kiss your mother."
Tilly had already begun to do so, and an eager conversation followed.
"Of course, we've heard a bit from Perce," began Mrs. Welwyn at once,
drawing the pins out of her daughter's hat, "and my word! you seem to
have got into the very thick of it this time, and no mistake!"
"I should just think so," gabbled Tilly. "Such a place, Mother!
Billiard-rooms, and garages, and butlers, and a fire in your bedroom and
a hot bottle in your bed, and a maid to put you into your clothes, and I
don't know what all! And I was introduced to a lot of future relations.
There was Lady Adela. She tried to patronise me, but was n't much good.
Then Sylvia, the daughter. I hate her--she is a cat. And Connie
Carmyle. She is no relation, but I love her. And Father Mainwaring, he
is a dear. He says he was at Cambridge with you, Dad."
Mr. Welwyn put down the newspaper.
"What is that?" he enquired in a sharp voice. "Cambridge?"
"Yes. He does n't remember you at all distinctly," said Tilly, "but
says he has an impression that you were the most brilliant man of your
year."
"If that," remarked Mr. Welwyn, in a distinctly relieved tone, "is all
that he recollects about me, I shall be pleased to meet him again."
"How is Dicky, Tilly?" enquired Amelia.
Tilly's merry face softened.
"Dicky," she said, half to herself, "is just Dicky. He brought me as
far as the door, but I would n't let him come in."
"And are they all coming to tea?" enquired Mrs. Welwyn anxiously.
"Yes--the whole boiling of them, at five this afternoon--a state call!"
replied Tilly. "By the way, Mother, that was a bloomer we made about
the invitation. I knew at the time we talked about it that you ought to
have written a note and chanced the spelling. Her ladyship made that
_quite_ plain to me."
"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Welwyn in distress. "What did she say?"
"She did n't say anything in particular," admitted Tilly, crinkling her
brow. "Nothing one could take hold of, you know. Just--just--"
"Sort of snacks," suggested her mother sympathetically.
Tilly nodded her head.
"That's it," she said. "Anyhow, she has sent you a written reply. Here
it is."
Mrs. Welwyn and Amelia breathed hard and respectfully at the sight of
the large thin grey envelope, addressed by Lady Adela's own compelling
hand.
"You read it, dearie," said Mrs. Welwyn.
"No; I'll tell you what," exclaimed Tilly. "We'll let little 'Melia read
it. She does n't get much fun."
"Oh, Tilly!" cried Amelia gratefully.
She took the letter, opened it with an air, and began:--
"_My deah Mrs. Welwyn--haw!_"
There was great merriment at this, for in her own family circle Miss
Amelia enjoyed a great reputation as a wit and mimic. The fact that
neither she nor any of her audience, save Tilly, had ever beheld Lady
Adela in the flesh detracted not a whit from their enjoyment of her
performance.
"_It is really too good of you,_" continued Amelia, in the high-pitched
and even tones of a lady of exceptional breeding, "_to invite us
all--such a crowd of us--to come to tea on Monday. As it happens, we
shall be in town that day, so Mr. Mainwaring and I propose to take you
at your word, and shall be charmed to come with our son and daughter at
five o'clock._"
"That'll be four cups," murmured Mrs. Welwyn abstractedly. "We can get
Mehta Ram's. Go on, Ducky."
"_After our recent experience of your daughter's society--_"
Here Amelia broke off, to observe that in her opinion the last phrase
sounded tabbyish.
"Never mind! Go on!" urged Mrs. Welwyn.
"_--Daughter's society, we are naturally anxious to make the
acquaintance of her forbears._"
"Her four what?" asked Mrs. Welwyn in a dazed voice.
Amelia carefully examined the passage, and repeated:--
"It says 'four bears'--written as one word. Does that mean you and Dad
and me and Perce?"
"If her ladyship," began Mrs. Welwyn warmly, "is going to start naming
names from the Zoo--"
Tilly laid a quick hand upon her mother's arm and turned in the
direction of the fireplace.
"Dad," she enquired, "what does 'forbears' mean?"
A chuckling voice from behind "The Daily Mail" enlightened her.
"The laugh is on your mother, children," said Mrs. Welwyn
good-temperedly. "Finish it, 'Melia."
Amelia did so. "_What weather! Sincerely yours, Adela Mainwaring_.
That's all."
"Quite enough, too!" commented Mrs. Welwyn, who still had her doubts
about the four bears.
"Any way," remarked Tilly energetically, "they are coming; and we have
till five o'clock to get ready for them. Hallo, Perce!"
To the company assembled entered Mr. Percy Welwyn, immaculate in frock
coat, brown boots, and a rakish bowler hat.
"What oh, Sis!" he exclaimed, kissing Tilly affectionately. "Back again
from the Moated Grange--eh? My dinner ready, Mother?"
"Wait a minute, Percy dear," said Tilly quickly. "I want to talk to
you--all of you. Sit down, everybody. Father!"
"My daughter?"
"Come and sit here, please!"
"A round-table conference?" enquired Mr. Welwyn amiably. "Capital!"
Tilly upon her own quarter-deck was a very different being from the
frightened little alien whom we saw at Shotley Beauchamp. In two
minutes the Welwyn family had meekly packed themselves round the
octagonal table. Tilly took the chair.
"Now, then, all of you," she began, with a suspicion of a high-strung
quaver in her voice--"Father, Mother, Percy, and little 'Melia--listen
to me! You know, no one better, that when I went down to Shotley
Beauchamp on Saturday I meant to act perfectly square to Dicky's
people--tell them who I was and what I was, and that I worked for my
living and so on; and generally make sure that they did n't take me in
on false pretences. Is that correct?"
"Yes--quite correct," chorused the family.
"Well," continued Tilly defiantly--"I have n't done it! I have n't said
a word! There! I _couldn't_! I have seen Dicky's people, and their
house, and their prosperity, and the way they look at things. They're a
pretty tough proposition, the Mainwarings. They are no better born than
we are; but they are rich, and stupid, and conceited, and purse-proud--"
"Tilly! Tilly!" said Mrs. Welwyn, scandalised to hear the gentry so
miscalled.
"Yes, they _are_, Mother!" cried the girl passionately. "You don't know
what I have had to put up with this week-end, when Dicky was n't by.
Why--"
"Dicky," observed Mr. Welwyn dryly, "is also a Mainwaring, Tilly."
"Dicky," replied Tilly, with feminine contempt for the laws of heredity
and environment, "may be a Mainwaring, but he does n't take after the
rest of the family. But never mind Dicky for a moment. What I want to
say is this. In dealing with people of this kind--people who regard
those who have no money as so much dirt beneath their feet--there is
only one thing that pays; and that thing," she concluded with intense
conviction, "is--swank, swank, swank!"
"Good old Tilly!" shouted Percy enthusiastically; and the rest of the
Welwyns, quite carried away by their small despot's earnestness, beat
upon the table with their fists.
"The Mainwarings swanked for my benefit, I can tell you," continued
Tilly, with cheeks glowing hotly. "They laid off to me about their town
house and their country house and their shooting and their hunting and
their grand relations; and they did their best--especially the
daughter--to make me feel like a little dressmaker who has come in for
the day."
"I bet you stood up to them, Sis," said the admiring Percy.
Tilly smiled in a dreamy, reminiscent fashion.
"I did," she said. "I matched them, brag for brag. They asked who you
were, Mother. I said you were a Banks--one of _the_ Bankses--of
Bedfordshire!"
Unseemly but sympathetic laughter greeted this announcement, and Mrs.
Welwyn was made the recipient of several congratulatory thumps from her
son and younger daughter.
"I wasn't quite sure whether it was Bedfordshire or Cambridgeshire,"
continued Tilly. "Where is Hitchin, anyway?"
"Hertfordshire," replied Amelia, and every one laughed again. They had
all things in common, the Welwyns, especially their jokes.
"Then," Tilly proceeded, "I told them a lovely fairy-tale about our old
town house. Been in the family for generations, and so on."
"So it has," said Mr. Welwyn.
"And I also told them," continued the unfilial Tilly, "that Dad was a
bit of an antique himself, and could n't bear to move. Has his roots in
the cellar, so to speak. You don't mind, do you, dear?" she enquired
eagerly.
"My child," replied Mr. Welwyn, "I feel proud to have figured as one of
your assets."
"And finally," concluded Tilly, "as I began to warm up to my work a bit,
I added a few things, looking as sweet as anything all the time--like
this!" (Here she treated her enraptured audience to a very creditable
reproduction of Sylvia Mainwaring's languid and superior smile.) "I
chatted about our billiard-room, and our old family butler, and our
motor, and so on. I am afraid I lost my head a bit. I have a notion
that I gave them to understand that we went yachting in the summer!"
There was more laughter, but Mrs. Welwyn added anxiously:--
"You did n't mention anything about Southend, did you, dearie?"
"Not me!" said Tilly; "though I was feeling utterly reckless by that
time. For two pins I would have told them that I had been presented at
Court!"
She rose to her feet.
"That is all I have to say," she announced. "I just mention these little
facts to you so that when the Mainwarings come to tea this afternoon you
may know what to talk about. See?"
The other members of the conference, avoiding the eager eye of the
chairwoman, began to regard one another uneasily. Then Percy said:--
"Tilly, old girl, you've landed us with a bit of a shipping order, ain't
you?"
Tilly nodded. "You are right," she said. "But it will only be for an
afternoon. We need not invite them again."
But Percy, who was an honest youth, although he wore a dickey,
hesitated.
"How about the gallant Ricardo?" he enquired. "What's his position in
this glee-party? Is he with us or them?"
"Oh--Dicky?" said Tilly, with less confidence. "I have been quite square
with him. I have told him everything."
"Everything?" enquired several people at once.
"A good deal, anyhow," maintained Tilly. "I have warned him that I
shan't have a penny to my name; and that I have had very few of the
advantages that the ordinary girl gets; and that he must take me and my
people as he finds us. And he says he prefers me that way. In
fact"--Tilly's thoughts flew back to Sunday's idyll in the pine
wood--"he has said a good deal more than that. And if I want him and he
wants me," she added eagerly, like one anxious to struggle on to less
debatable ground, "what does it matter what we say or do to his silly
old mother and sister? I want my Dicky!" Her eyes shone. "He loves me
and I love him, and that is all there is to be said about it. Father,
Mother, Percy, 'Melia"--Tilly's hands went forth appealingly--"promise
that you will stand by me and see me through!"
Eight impulsive Welwyn hands closed upon Tilly's two.
"We'll see you through, Sis," said Percy reassuringly. His eye swept
round the board in presidential fashion. "Those in favour?"
Four hands flew up.
"Carried unanimously!" announced Percy; while Tilly, reassured, ran
round the table showering promiscuous embraces upon her relatives.
"There's the front-door bell, 'Melia," said Mrs. Welwyn, whose provident
instinct never deserted her in her most exalted moments. "It may be a
new lodger. Run down and see."
Amelia obeyed, and the rest of the House of Welwyn went into Committee.
"I say," remarked the far-seeing Percy; "may I enquire who is going to
open the front door to our guests this afternoon?"
The Committee surveyed one another in consternation.
"None of us can't do it, that's quite plain," said Mrs. Welwyn. "They
would think we had n't got a servant."
"They would be right, first time," confirmed Percy.
"The old family butler must do it," said Mr. Welwyn with a dry chuckle.
"You certainly overreached yourself in the matter of the butler, Sis,"
observed Percy.
"We could get the charwoman, or borrow the girl from the Rosenbaums,"
suggested Mrs. Welwyn.
"But I said a _butler_, Mumsie," objected Tilly dismally.
"Oh, dear, so you did," sighed Mrs. Welwyn.
Tilly pondered.
"I know what we can do," she said. "Percy must meet them, quite
casually, outside in the Square, on his way home from the City--"
"And let them in with my latch-key--eh?" cried Percy. "That's the
ticket!"
Mrs. Welwyn, greatly relieved, smiled upon her fertile offspring. Mr.
Welwyn coughed gently.
"The word 'swank,'" he observed, "is unfamiliar to me; but as we have
decided to incorporate it in our plan of campaign, may I suggest, Percy,
that you allow your guests to ring the front-door bell before overtaking
them?"
"Righto, Dad," said Percy. "But why?"
"Well," continued Mr. Welwyn diffidently, "it has occurred to me that
when you have ushered the party into the hall, you might call down the
staircase into the basement, distinctly but not ostentatiously, to some
one--James, or Thomas--you can address him by any name you please--that
there is no need to come up. You see the idea?"
"Dad," declared Percy, shaking his parent affectionately by the hand,
"you are a marvel! Why, 'Melia, what's the trouble?"
Amelia, wide-eyed and frightened, was standing in the doorway.