I
Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as
though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded
the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other
indomitable huntresses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four
winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local distinction that
the entertainment of distinguished strangers became one of its accepted
functions; in recognition of which it duly extended to the celebrated
“Osric Dane,” on the day of her arrival in Hillbridge, an invitation to
be present at the next meeting.
The club was to meet at Mrs. Bellinger’s. The other members, behind
her back, were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede
her rights in favor of Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive
setting for the entertainment of celebrities; while, as Mrs. Leveret
observed, there was always the picture-gallery to fall back on.
Mrs. Plinth made no secret of sharing this view. She had always regarded
it as one of her obligations to entertain the Lunch Club’s distinguished
guests. Mrs. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was
of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one
possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth
could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set
herself. An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends,
was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly
stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep a
footman clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized staff of
responsibilities. It was the more to be regretted that Mrs. Ballinger,
whose obligations to society were bounded by the narrow scope of two
parlour-maids, should have been so tenacious of the right to entertain
Osric Dane.
The question of that lady’s reception had for a month past profoundly
moved the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that they felt
themselves unequal to the task, but that their sense of the opportunity
plunged them into the agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the
alternatives of a well-stocked wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as
Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the thought of exchanging ideas with the
author of “The Wings of Death,” no forebodings disturbed the conscious
adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs. Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck. “The Wings
of Death” had, in fact, at Miss Van Vluyck’s suggestion, been chosen as
the subject of discussion at the last club meeting, and each member had
thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to appropriate whatever
sounded well in the comments of the others.
Mrs. Roby alone had abstained from profiting by the opportunity; but it
was now openly recognised that, as a member of the Lunch Club, Mrs. Roby
was a failure. “It all comes,” as Miss Van Vluyck put it, “of accepting
a woman on a man’s estimation.” Mrs. Roby, returning to Hillbridge from
a prolonged sojourn in exotic lands--the other ladies no longer took
the trouble to remember where--had been heralded by the distinguished
biologist, Professor Foreland, as the most agreeable woman he had ever
met; and the members of the Lunch Club, impressed by an encomium
that carried the weight of a diploma, and rashly assuming that the
Professor’s social sympathies would follow the line of his professional
bent, had seized the chance of annexing a biological member. Their
disillusionment was complete. At Miss Van Vluyck’s first off-hand
mention of the pterodactyl Mrs. Roby had confusedly murmured: “I know so
little about metres--” and after that painful betrayal of incompetence
she had prudently withdrawn from farther participation in the mental
gymnastics of the club.
“I suppose she flattered him,” Miss Van Vluyck summed up--“or else it’s
the way she does her hair.”
The dimensions of Miss Van Vluyck’s dining-room having restricted the
membership of the club to six, the nonconductiveness of one member was
a serious obstacle to the exchange of ideas, and some wonder had already
been expressed that Mrs. Roby should care to live, as it were, on the
intellectual bounty of the others. This feeling was increased by the
discovery that she had not yet read “The Wings of Death.” She owned
to having heard the name of Osric Dane; but that--incredible as it
appeared--was the extent of her acquaintance with the celebrated
novelist. The ladies could not conceal their surprise; but Mrs.
Ballinger, whose pride in the club made her wish to put even Mrs. Roby
in the best possible light, gently insinuated that, though she had not
had time to acquaint herself with “The Wings of Death,” she must at
least be familiar with its equally remarkable predecessor, “The Supreme
Instant.”
Mrs. Roby wrinkled her sunny brows in a conscientious effort of memory,
as a result of which she recalled that, oh, yes, she _had_ seen the book
at her brother’s, when she was staying with him in Brazil, and had even
carried it off to read one day on a boating party; but they had all
got to shying things at each other in the boat, and the book had gone
overboard, so she had never had the chance--
The picture evoked by this anecdote did not increase Mrs. Roby’s credit
with the club, and there was a painful pause, which was broken by Mrs.
Plinth’s remarking:
“I can understand that, with all your other pursuits, you should not
find much time for reading; but I should have thought you might at least
have _got up_ ‘The Wings of Death’ before Osric Dane’s arrival.”
Mrs. Roby took this rebuke good-humouredly. She had meant, she owned,
to glance through the book; but she had been so absorbed in a novel of
Trollope’s that--
“No one reads Trollope now,” Mrs. Ballinger interrupted.
Mrs. Roby looked pained. “I’m only just beginning,” she confessed.
“And does he interest you?” Mrs. Plinth enquired.
“He amuses me.”
“Amusement,” said Mrs. Plinth, “is hardly what I look for in my choice
of books.”
“Oh, certainly, ‘The Wings of Death’ is not amusing,” ventured Mrs.
Leveret, whose manner of putting forth an opinion was like that of an
obliging salesman with a variety of other styles to submit if his first
selection does not suit.
“Was it _meant_ to be?” enquired Mrs. Plinth, who was fond of asking
questions that she permitted no one but herself to answer. “Assuredly
not.”
“Assuredly not--that is what I was going to say,” assented Mrs. Leveret,
hastily rolling up her opinion and reaching for another. “It was meant
to--to elevate.”
Miss Van Vluyck adjusted her spectacles as though they were the black
cap of condemnation. “I hardly see,” she interposed, “how a book steeped
in the bitterest pessimism can be said to elevate however much it may
instruct.”
“I meant, of course, to instruct,” said Mrs. Leveret, flurried by the
unexpected distinction between two terms which she had supposed to be
synonymous. Mrs. Leveret’s enjoyment of the Lunch Club was frequently
marred by such surprises; and not knowing her own value to the other
ladies as a mirror for their mental complacency she was sometimes
troubled by a doubt of her worthiness to join in their debates. It was
only the fact of having a dull sister who thought her clever that saved
her, from a sense of hopeless inferiority.
“Do they get married in the end?” Mrs. Roby interposed.
“They--who?” the Lunch Club collectively exclaimed.
“Why, the girl and man. It’s a novel, isn’t it? I always think that’s
the one thing that matters. If they’re parted it spoils my dinner.”
Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Ballinger exchanged scandalised glances, and the
latter said: “I should hardly advise you to read ‘The Wings of Death’
in that spirit. For my part, when there are so many books one _has_
to read; I wonder how any one can find time for those that are merely
amusing.”
“The beautiful part of it,” Laura Glyde murmured, “is surely just
this--that no one can tell how ‘The Wings of Death’ ends. Osric Dane,
overcome by the awful significance of her own meaning, has mercifully
veiled it--perhaps even from herself--as Apelles, in representing the
sacrifice of Iphigenia, veiled the face of Agamemnon.”
“What’s that? Is it poetry?” whispered Mrs. Leveret to Mrs. Plinth,
who, disdaining a definite reply, said coldly: “You should look it up.
I always make it a point to look things up.” Her tone added--“though I
might easily have it done for me by the footman.”
“I was about to say,” Miss Van Vluyck resumed, “that it must always be a
question whether a book _can_ instruct unless it elevates.”
“Oh--” murmured Mrs. Leveret, now feeling herself hopelessly astray.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Ballinger, scenting in Miss Van Vluyck’s tone
a tendency to depreciate the coveted distinction of entertaining Osric
Dane; “I don’t know that such a question can seriously be raised as to a
book which has attracted more attention among thoughtful people than any
novel since ‘Robert Elsmere.’”
“Oh, but don’t you see,” exclaimed Laura Glyde, “that it’s just the
dark hopelessness of it all--the wonderful tone-scheme of black on
black--that makes it such an artistic achievement? It reminded me when
I read it of Prince Rupert’s _manière noire_...the book is etched, not
painted, yet one feels the colour-values so intensely....”
“Who is he?” Mrs. Leveret whispered to her neighbour. “Some one she’s
met abroad?”
“The wonderful part of the book,” Mrs. Bellinger conceded, “is that it
may be looked at from so many points of view. I hear that as a study of
determinism Professor Lupton ranks it with ‘The Data of Ethics.’”
“I’m told that Osric Dane spent ten years in preparatory studies
before beginning to write it,” said Mrs. Plinth. “She looks up
everything--verifies everything. It has always been my principle, as
you know. Nothing would induce me, now, to put aside a book before I’d
finished it, just because I can buy as many more as I want.”
“And what do _you_ think of ‘The Wings of Death’?” Mrs. Roby abruptly
asked her.
It was the kind of question that might be termed out of order, and the
ladies glanced at each other as though disclaiming any share in such
a breach of discipline. They all knew there was nothing Mrs. Plinth so
much disliked as being asked her opinion of a book. Books were written
to read; if one read them what more could be expected? To be questioned
in detail regarding the contents of a volume seemed to her as great an
outrage as being searched for smuggled laces at the Custom House. The
club had always respected this idiosyncrasy of Mrs. Plinth’s. Such
opinions as she had were imposing and substantial: her mind, like her
house, was furnished with monumental “pieces” that were not meant to
be disarranged; and it was one of the unwritten rules of the Lunch Club
that, within her own province, each member’s habits of thought should be
respected. The meeting therefore closed with an increased sense, on the
part of the other ladies, of Mrs. Roby’s hopeless unfitness to be one of
them.