WHEN William came in to dinner there was music to face. But
as there was no sure ground at the moment for real battle, the music
opened _pianissimo_. It began with a few rather pointed enquiries.
“Had a rather busy morning, haven’t you?”
“I don’t think it has been anything out of the way,” was the
non-committal answer.
“Done any business?” The question was casual, but June fixed him with
her eye.
“Oh, yes!” So light and airy was the tone that business might have
mattered nothing. “I’ve sold the Lowestoft bowl.”
“Uncle Si’ll be pleased, I expect.” She found it terribly difficult to
keep a sneer out of her voice, but you never know what you can do till
you try. “Fetch much?”
She knew perfectly well, of course, the price it had fetched.
“Six guineas!”
“Isn’t that a pretty good profit on what you paid for it at
Saxmundham?” said June, with the precision of the born head for affairs.
“I got it for thirty shillings at Saxmundham, but of course that was at
a sale.”
“Seems a fair profit, anyway.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Will you get any?”
“Oh no!” said William, trying to spear a pickled walnut in a glass jar.
“Then I think it’s an infamous shame that the whole of that six guineas
should go into the pocket of Uncle Si.”
With a polite shake of the head, William dissented. “But don’t you see,
I couldn’t have bought it unless the master had given me the money, and
also marked the catalogue.”
“It was your brains that bought it. And your brains sold it, too. I
think you ought to see that Uncle Si is simply living upon them.”
“No, no, Miss June,” said William staunchly. “Please don’t forget that
it is the master who taught me everything.”
June declined to argue the point. She knew it was no use. For the
hundredth time she was up against his fixed idea. Besides, there was
something else to talk about.
“To whom did you sell that beautiful bowl?” Her voice was that of the
dove.
“I sold it to a Miss Babraham,” said the Sawney in a voice of perfectly
stupendous impersonality.
“To a Miss Who?”
She had caught the name quite clearly, and not for the first time
that day, but there was a kind of morbid fascination in toying with a
subject which was really without significance, and could lead nowhere.
All the same she pined for an insight into the workings of the mind
of this strange young man who was such a baffling mixture of the
over-simple and the highly gifted.
“Her name is Miss Babraham.”
“Who is she when she is at home?”
She tried hard to imitate a detachment which was a little uncanny, yet
knowing all the time that she was making a sad hash of the performance.
The trick seldom comes easy to the daughters of Eve.
“Who did you say she was?”
“Her father is Sir Arthur Babraham.” The impersonality of William made
her writhe.
“Oho!” said June, still trying her best to rise to William’s level, and
fully conscious that she was failing miserably. “One of the big bugs,
eh?”
It was vulgar, she knew, to speak in that way. Among the things she had
learned at the Blackhampton High School was a due and proper regard
for baronets. Miss Preece, its august headmistress, would have been
shocked, not merely by her tone, but also by her choice of words. But
High School or no High School, the intrusion of Sir Arthur Babraham
suddenly made her see red. She must be vulgar--or burst!
“What you’d call one of the smart set, I suppose?” said June abruptly
breaking a long and rather trying pause. “Well, I don’t think much of
her stick-eyeglass, anyway.”
Terrific disparagement of Miss Babraham, her works and her belongings
was intended, yet to the queer creature seated opposite who by now
was almost ready for the tapioca pudding, which had been so carefully
prepared for him, it did not seem to imply anything at all.
“You take no stock of smart sets, I dare say,” said June, with growing
truculence. “You’ve never heard of them, have you? China tea sets are
more in your line, aren’t they?”
That was real wit, and people far less clever than this Sawney--a
contradiction in terms and yet the only word which seemed to describe
him after all!--must have seen the force of it. But not he! He solemnly
rose and collected the plates, and then fetched in the tapioca pudding
for all the world as if there was absolutely no point in the remark.
“Who did you say that tall girl was?” said June, returning mothlike to
the flame, as she helped the Sawney very substantially to his favourite
dish.
“Miss Babraham!”
“And who did you say her father was?”
“Sir Arthur Babraham!”
“And what might _he_ do for a living?”
This was not ignorance. It was mere facetiousness. She knew quite well
that no Sir Arthur Babraham since first invented by that ridiculous
monarch, King James, had ever done anything for a living. But it was
good to feel how such a “break” would have hurt Miss Preece.
“He’s one of the richest men in England,” said William, dipping his
spoon into his tapioca with an impersonality which approached the
sublime.
June knew that. There was the daughter of Sir Arthur Babraham to prove
it.
“One of Uncle Si’s best customers, I suppose?”
“Doesn’t often come here. But he has wonderful taste.”
“In daughters?” said June sardonically.
“In everything. Only last night I read in the paper that there isn’t a
better judge of pictures living.”
June merely said “Oh!”
“He’s one of the trustees of the National Gallery, you know.”
“Oh!” said June.
“And owns a very fine private collection of the Dutch School.”
“Does he?” It was June’s turn now to be impersonal; in fact, it was up
to her to let him see that it would take more than Sir Arthur Babraham
and a private collection of the Dutch School to impress her.
“I suppose his daughter is what you’d call rather _fetching_?”
She had once heard the word on the lips of the admired Miss Banks at a
charity bazaar.
But in William’s opinion it was not adequate to the occasion.
“To my mind,” he said, and his voice fell, “she’s a non-such.”
June stepped midway in the act of bestowing upon him a second helping
of tapioca.
“She’s a what?” she demanded fiercely.
“A museum piece, Miss June.” His enthusiasm was restrained but none the
less absurd. “She’s hallmarked. She walks in beauty.” A blush, faint
yet becoming, slowly overspread William’s delicately tinted complexion.
June snorted. Had it been within the province of eyes to slay, this
Gaby would have had no use for a second helping of tapioca.
“Glad to know that!” said June, homicidally. “As you are so set on
beauty, you must have had an interesting morning.”
A disgracefully impersonal silence was William’s only answer. The
deadliness of the observation seemed completely lost upon him. But was
it?--that was the question for gods and Woman. Such a silence might
mean anything.
“I suppose you’d say she had wonderful taste?”
“Miss Babraham?”
“No, Joan of Arc,” said Woman, venomously.
“Her taste is very good indeed--that is, in some things.”
“In hats, I suppose.”
“I meant in old china,” said the impersonal one. “I’ve never known her
to make a mistake in old china.”
“That’s interesting.” It was a weak remark, but June had seldom felt
less conversationally brilliant.
Silence again. A third helping of tapioca was politely declined. June
then pushed across the cheese. William removed its cover, and disclosed
an extremely meagre piece of Leicestershire.
“Please may I give you a little?” he asked, with his inimitable air.
“There’ll be none for yourself if you do. Besides, I don’t want any. No
thank you.” She remembered her manners, although that was not easy just
now. “I’ll go out presently and buy some more. I’d quite forgotten the
cheese.”
“Please--please take this tiny piece.”
“When I say no, I don’t mean yes,” said June, tempering strength of
character with calm politeness. “I can’t imagine Miss Babraham eating a
piece of Leicestershire cheese in a dirty overall--can you?”
The remark was so irrelevant that it verged upon the grotesque. Heaven
knows from what malign impulse it sprang. No girl in her senses would
ever have made it. Giant Despair and the Hag Desperation must have been
its sponsors.
It was quite open to William to follow the line of least resistance
and ignore the question. A William less true-blue, a William less a
gentleman right through to the core might without dishonour have done
so. But this was a William of a nobler clay.
“Miss June, your overall isn’t dirty.”
The rich sincerity of these six and a half little words seemed gravely
to imperil the whole sublime edifice of his impersonality.
He was contradicted flatly for his pains; yet she knew in her heart
that whether the overall was dirty or whether it was clean, the
renegade was already half forgiven.
“What did you think of her dress?” This new on-rush of irrelevance was
despicable, but she seemed quite to have lost control of herself.
“It was perfect. To my mind, nothing is more becoming to a tall lady
than a dress of soft dark blue silk.”
Dyed-in-the-wool idiot! As though it was not his clear and obvious duty
never even to have noticed whether Miss Babraham wore a dress of soft
blue silk or a muslin with spots or a grey alpaca, or just a plain
serge coat and skirt. Times there are when the stupidity of the human
male has really no limit.
“Must have cost a pretty penny,” said June acidly.
William shook his head, and boldly affirmed that it couldn’t be bought
for money.
“That’s just nonsense,” said June tartly. “There isn’t a dress in the
world that couldn’t be bought for money.”
“What I really mean is, to have a dress which looked like that, you
would also have to buy the wearer,” said William the amazing.
June expressed a ripe scorn by vehemently beginning to clear the
table. High time, certainly. They had been discussing cold mutton and
pickled walnuts and tapioca pudding and Leicestershire cheese and
things and women for one solid hour by the Queen Anne clock, a real
antique, in the middle of the chimneypiece, for which S. Gedge had
lately refused the sum of forty guineas.