It is perhaps hardly necessary to state that Mrs Keeling on the eve of
the ceremony for the opening of the Keeling wing had subscribed to a
press cutting agency which would furnish her with innumerable accounts
of all she knew so well. But print was an even more substantial joy than
memory, and there appeared in the local press the most gratifying
panegyrics on her husband. These were delightful enough, but most of all
she loved the account of herself at that monumental moment when she
presented the Princess with the bouquet of daffodils and gypsophila. She
was never tired of the perusal of this, nor of the snapshot which some
fortunate photographer had taken of her in the very middle of her royal
curtsey, as she was actually handing the bouquet. This was reproduced
several times: she framed one copy and kept all the rest, with the
exception of one with regard to which she screwed herself up to the
point of generosity that was necessary before she could prevail on
herself to send it to her mother.
Then, while still the industrious press-cutters had not yet come to the
end of those appetising morsels, the packets on her breakfast table
swelled in size again, and she was privileged to read over and over
again that the honour of a baronetcy had been conferred on her husband.
She did not mind how often she read this; all the London papers
reproduced the gratifying intelligence, and though the wording in most
of these was absolutely identical, repetition never caused the sweet
savour to cloy on her palate. She was like a girl revelling in
chocolate-drops; though they all tasted precisely alike, each tasted
delicious, and she felt she could go on eating them for ever. Even
better than those stately clippings from the great London luminaries
were the more detailed coruscations of the local press. They gave
biographies of her husband, magnanimously suppressing the fish-shop, and
dwelling only on the enterprise which had made and the success which had
crowned the Stores, and many (these were the sweetest of all) gave
details about herself and her parentage and the number of her children.
She was not habitually a great reader, only using books as a soporific
till they tumbled from her drowsy grasp, but now she became a wakeful
and enthusiastic student. The whole range of literature, since the days
of primeval epics, had never roused in her one tithe of the emotion that
those clippings afforded.
Keeling himself had no such craving to see in print all that he was
perfectly well aware of, and even looked undazzled at the cards which
his wife had ordered, on one set of which he appeared alone as ‘Sir
Thomas Keeling, Bart.,’ to differentiate him from mere knights, whilst
on the other the Bart. appeared in conjunction with her. But the events
themselves filled him with a good deal of solid satisfaction, due
largely to their bearing on the approaching election at the County Club.
Never from a business point of view had there been a more successful
‘timing’ of an enterprise: it was as if on the very day of his getting
out his summer fashions, summer had come, with floods of hot sunshine
that made irresistible to the ladies of Bracebridge the muslins and
organdies and foulards that floated diaphanously in the freshly dressed
windows. The summer of his munificence and his honours had just burst on
the town, and, in spite of Lord Inverbroom’s warning, he felt, as he
walked down to his office on the morning of the day on which the
election took place, that every member of the Club would be, so to
speak, a customer for his presence in future in those staid bow-windows.
During these months of his Mayoralty, he had come into contact with, and
had been at civic functions the host of a quantity of members of the
County Club whose suffrages he sought to-day, and there was none among
them who had not shown him courtesy and even deference. That no doubt
was largely due to his position as mayor, but this Thomas Keeling who
was a candidate for the Club was the mayor, he who had given the new
wing to the hospital, thereby averting a very unpleasant financial mess,
he, too, whom his King had delighted to honour. To the business mind
nothing could have happened more opportunely, and the business mind was
his mind. He could not see how he could fail, after this bouquet of
benefits and honours, to be ‘an attractive proposition’ to any club. As
he walked down to his office that morning he swept the cobweb of Lord
Inverbroom’s apprehensions away, and wondered at himself for having
allowed them to infect him with a moment’s uneasiness, or to make him
consider, even at the very back of his brain, what he should do if he
were not elected. This morning he did not consider that at all: he was
sure that the contingency for which he had provided would not arrive.
The provision was filed away, and with it, shut up in the dusty volume,
was the suggestion his agent had made that he might quite reasonably
raise the rent that the Club paid for the premises which were now his
property. That business was just concluded; he proposed to inform Lord
Inverbroom at once of the fact that he was now the landlord of the
County Club, and that the question of a rise in the rental might be
considered as shelved. Lord Inverbroom would be in Bracebridge this
morning, since he would be presiding at the election at the Club at
twelve o’clock, and had promised to communicate the result at once.
Very likely Keeling would drop in at the club to have a bit of lunch
there, and he could get a chat with Lord Inverbroom then.... But as he
slid upwards in the droning lift that took him to the floor where his
office was, the Club, the election, and all connected with it, vanished
from his brain like the dispersing mists on a summer morning, for a few
steps would take him along the corridor to the room where Norah was
opening his letters.
That moment of his entry had become to him a matter of daily excitement
and expectation. Sometimes the soft furrow would be ruled between her
eyebrows, and she would give him but the glance of a stranger and a
chilly ‘Good-morning,’ and instantly turn her attention to her work
again. Sometimes she would show such a face as she had shown him that
Sunday morning on the downs when they had listened to the skylark
together, a face of childhood and the possession of spring, sometimes
(and it was this that gave the grizzled elderly man the tremulous
excitement of a boy when his hand opened the door) she would give him
that look which had shot across the town-hall like the launching of a
silver spear and transfixed him. But if he did not get it then, sometime
during the morning, in some pause in the work, or perhaps even in the
middle of his dictation, he would receive it from her, just that one
look which made him know, so long as it lasted, that there was no bar
or impediment between himself and her. ‘There was neither speech nor
language,’ but her essential self spoke, revealing, affirming to him its
existence. Then without pause she would drop her eyes to her work again,
and her busy pencil scooped and dabbed over the paper, and he heard in
some secret place of his brain, while his lips pronounced sharp
business-like sentences, the words, ‘And thou beside me singing in the
wilderness.’... In the afternoon, when he came to read over her
typewritten transcription of the dictation, he always knew at what point
in some peremptory letter out of all the sheaf that moment of the clear
glance had come. He was always on the look-out for it, but he could
never induce it: she gave it him, so it had begun to seem, not in answer
to him, but just when she could withhold it no longer.
This morning the correspondence was both heavy and complicated. A whole
series of widely scattered dates had to be turned up, in order to trace
some question of the payment of carriage on a certain consignment. It
was a tiresome job, which Norah recommended him to leave for
verification to the clerk downstairs whose business it was, and probably
for that very reason Sir Thomas insisted on doing it himself. He was
fractious, he was obstinately determined to have the matter settled here
and now, and like a child, cross with hunger, he wanted the clear look
she had not yet given him. The furrow, that soft smudge, had long been
marked on Norah’s forehead, as she turned up letter after letter that
failed to deal with the point, and she spent what she considered a
wasted half hour over it. She was still rather irritated when she found
what she had been looking for, unclipped the communication from the
spring that fastened it into its place and passed it him.
‘I think that’s what you are wanting, Sir Thomas,’ she said.
He took it from her, and noticing the rather incisive politeness of her
tone, looked up at her. The furrow was still there, very impatiently
ruled, but the clear glance was there also: radiantly it shone on him,
quite undisturbed by the superficial agitation. It concerned not the
surface of her, but the depths.
He did not look at the paper she handed him, on which his unconscious
fingers had closed. He was not going to miss one infinitesimal fraction
of the moment that she had at last given him. She frowned still, but
that was the property of her tiresome search: it was neither his nor
hers, as he or she ‘mattered.’
‘You will find it on the third line from the end,’ she said. ‘Messrs
Hampden are perfectly right about it.’
And then the moment was over, except that in the secret place of his
brain the voice sang in the wilderness, and he looked at the letter she
had given him. The words danced and swam; presently they steadied
themselves.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well then, Miss Propert, you must cross out what I
have dictated to you about it. Please read the letter through.... Yes,
cross out from the sentence beginning, “Re the payment for carriage of
goods.” Dear me, it is nearly one: what a lot of time we have spent over
that. The booking-clerk would have done it much more quickly.’
The frown cleared, but the clear look did not return. It was over: it
seemed she had satisfied herself.
‘I think we should have saved time,’ she said.
‘Yes, you were quite right. You like being right, don’t you?’
He got a smile for that, the sort of smile that anybody might have had
from her.
‘I suppose I do,’ she said. ‘Certainly I hate being wrong.’
‘But I was wrong this time,’ he said. ‘I gave you a lot of trouble in
consequence.’
That again was no use: he but got another smile and a friendly look of
the sort he no longer wanted.
‘Is that all, then?’ he asked.
‘No, Sir Thomas, there are half a dozen more letters yet.’
He had just taken the next, when there came a tap at the door, and a boy
entered. He was not one of the messenger-boys of the Stores, with
peaked cap and brass buttons, but Keeling had an impression of having
seen him before. Then he recollected: he often lounged at the door of
the County Club.
‘A note from Lord Inverbroom, sir,’ he said. ‘His lordship told me to
give it you personally.’
‘Wait and see if there is an answer,’ said Keeling.
He tore open the envelope: it was already after one, and probably there
would be no answer, since he would see Lord Inverbroom at the Club,
where he proposed to have lunch. The note was quite short.
‘DEAR SIR THOMAS,--I promised to let you know the result of the
election. The meeting is just over, and I am sorry to say you have
not been elected. Please allow me to express my sincere regrets.
‘Yours truly,
‘INVERBROOM.’
Keeling had one moment of sheer surprise: he had been perfectly sure of
being elected. Then without any conscious feeling of rancour or
disappointment, his mind passed direct to what he had already determined
to do if this contingency, which since the opening of the hospital-wing
he had thought impossible, actually occurred.
‘Wait a moment,’ he said to the messenger. ‘There will be an answer for
you to take back to Lord Inverbroom.’
He turned to Norah.
‘Please take this down direct on your typewriter,’ he said, ‘with a
carbon copy to file.’
Norah put the two sheets on the roller, dated the paper, and waited.
Keeling thought for half a minute, drumming with his fingers on the
table.
‘Are you ready?’ he said, and dictated.
‘DEAR LORD INVERBROOM,--Yours to hand re the election at the County
Club to-day of which I note the contents.
‘I wish also to acquaint you as President with the fact that I have
lately bought the freehold of your premises. I see that there is a
break in your lease at Midsummer this year on both tenants’ and
landlord’s side, and therefore beg to give you this formal notice
that I do not intend to renew the lease hitherto held by your Club,
as I shall be using the premises for some other purpose.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘Read it over please Miss Propert,’ he said, ‘and I will sign it. File
this note of Lord Inverbroom’s with your carbon copy, and docket them.’
Norah brought him over the typed letter.
‘What docket shall I put on them?’ she asked.
‘Non-election to County Club. Notice of termination of Club’s lease.’
He signed the letter to Lord Inverbroom and sent the boy back with it.
‘Now we will go on with the rest of the shorthand,’ he said.
Norah came back to the table, took up her pencil and then laid it down
again. The frown was heavily creased in her forehead.
‘May I just say something to you before we begin?’ she said. ‘You may
think it a great impertinence, but it is not meant impertinently.’
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘I beg you to call the boy back, and not send that note,’ she said. ‘I
hate to think of your doing that. It isn’t the act of----’
She stopped suddenly. He easily supplied the rest of her sentence.
‘It isn’t the act of a gentleman,’ he said. ‘But they’ve just told me
that I’m not one, or they would have elected me. They will like to know
how right they are.’
He paused a moment.
‘I am sure you did not mean an impertinence, Miss Propert,’ he added,
‘but I think you have committed one.’
‘I am very sorry then,’ said she.
‘Yes. We will get on with the shorthand, please.’
Keeling seldom wasted thought or energy on irremediable mischances: if
a business proposition turned out badly he cut his loss on it, and
dismissed it from his mind. But it was equally characteristic of him to
strike, and strike hard, if opportunity offered at any firm which had
let him in for his loss, and, in this case, since the Club had hit at
him, he felt it was but fair that he should return the blow with precise
and instantaneous vigour. That was right and proper, and his rejoinder
to Norah that the Club who did not consider him sufficient of a
gentleman to enter their doors should have the pleasure of knowing how
right they were, had at least as much sober truth as irony about it. The
opportunity to hit back was ready to hand; it would have been singular
indeed, and in flat contradiction to his habits, if he had not taken it.
But when once he had done that, he was satisfied; they did not want him
as a member, and he did not want them as tenants, and there was the end
of it. Yet, like some fermenting focus in his brain, minute as yet, but
with the potentiality of leaven in it, was the fact that Norah had
implored him not to send his answer to Lord Inverbroom. He still
considered her interference an impertinence, but what stuck in his mind
and began faintly to suggest other trains of thought was the equally
undeniable fact that she had not meant it as an impertinence. In
intention it had been a friendly speech inspired by the good-will of a
friend. But he shrugged his shoulders at it: she did not understand
business, or, possibly, he did not understand clubs. So be it then: he
did not want to understand them.
It was with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance that he saw Lord
Inverbroom walking towards him along Alfred Road when he left the Stores
that afternoon. The curiosity was due to the desire to see how Lord
Inverbroom would behave, whether he would cross the street or cut him
dead; the annoyance arose from the fact that he could not determine how
to behave himself at this awkward encounter. But when he observed that
there was to be no cutting or crossing the street at all, but perfect
cordiality and an outstretched hand, it faintly and pleasantly occurred
to him that, owing to his letter, there might be forthcoming another
election at the Club, with a request that he would submit himself to a
further suffrage. That would certainly have pleased him, for he had
sufficient revengefulness in his character to decline such a proposition
with thanks.
No such proposition was submitted to him.
‘I was just going to leave this note at your office, Sir Thomas,’ said
Lord Inverbroom. ‘May I give it you instead and save myself a further
walk? It is just the acknowledgment of your letter about the termination
of our lease. Perhaps you will glance at it, to see that it is in
order.’
Keeling felt, in spite of his business-like habits, that this was
unnecessary. True, this was a matter of business, and he should have
verified the correctness of Lord Inverbroom’s information. But instead
he merely put it into his pocket.
‘That is all right,’ he said.
‘Are you going home?’ asked the other. ‘My wife, I know, is calling on
Lady Keeling, and she will pick me up there. If she has not been so
fortunate as to find Lady Keeling in, she will wait for me in the motor.
May we not walk down there together?’
‘I shall be delighted,’ said Keeling. He still did not know how to
behave, but was gradually becoming aware that no ‘behaviour’ was
necessary. ‘Behaviour’ as such, did not seem to exist for his companion,
and he could not help wondering what took its place.
‘My wife is furious with me,’ Lord Inverbroom went on. ‘I have succumbed
to the Leonardo book, instead of having the dining-room ceiling
whitewashed. She has a materialistic mind, preferring whitewash to
Leonardo. Besides, as I told her, she never looks at the ceiling, and I
shall often look at my book. Have you come across anything lately which
life is not worth living without? Perhaps you had better not tell me if
you have, or I shall practise some further domestic economy.’
‘I shall be very pleased to show you anything I’ve got,’ said Keeling.
‘We will have a cup of tea in my library unless Lady Inverbroom is
waiting in your motor.’
‘Ah, that would be a great treat. Let us do that, in any case, Sir
Thomas. Surely we can go in some back way so as to escape my wife’s
notice if she is really waiting outside. It will do her good to wait:
she is very impatient.’
Keeling was completely puzzled: if he had ventured to speak in this
sense of Lady Keeling, he knew he would have made a sad mess of it. In
his mouth, the same material would have merely expressed itself in a
rude light. He tried rather mistakenly to copy the manner that was no
manner at all.
‘Ah, I should get a good scolding if I treated Lady Keeling like that,’
he said.
It did not sound right as he said it; he had the perception of that. He
perceived, too, that Lord Inverbroom did not pursue the style. Then,
presently arriving, they found that the waiting motor contained no
impatient Lady Inverbroom, and they stole into the library, at her
husband’s desire, so that no news of his coming should reach her, until
he had had a quarter of an hour there with his host. Then perhaps she
might be told, if Sir Thomas would have the goodness....
Lord Inverbroom sauntered about in the grazing, ambulatory fashion of
the book-lover and when his quarter of an hour was already more than
spent, he put the volume he was examining back into its place again
with a certain air of decision.
‘I should like to express to you by actual word of mouth, Sir Thomas,’
he said, ‘my regret at what happened to-day. I am all the more sorry for
it, because I notice that in our rules the landlord of the club is _ex
officio_ a member of it. If you only had told me that you had become our
landlord, I could have informed you of that, and spared you this
annoyance.’
There was no mistaking the sincerity of this, the good feeling of it.
Keeling was moved to be equally sincere.
‘I knew that already,’ he said.
Lord Inverbroom looked completely puzzled.
‘Then will you pardon me for asking why you did not take advantage of
it, and become a member of the club without any further bother?’
‘Because I wished to know that I was acceptable as a member of the club
to the other members,’ said Keeling. ‘They have told me that I am not.’
There was a good deal of dignity in this reply: it sprang from a feeling
that Lord Inverbroom was perfectly competent to appreciate.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘And what you have said much increases my
regret at the election going as it did.’ He paused a moment, evidently
thinking, and Keeling, had an opportunity to wager been offered him,
would have bet that his next words would convey, however delicately, the
hope that Keeling would reconsider his letter of the morning,
announcing the termination of the Club’s lease. He was not prepared to
do anything of the sort, and hoped, indeed, that the suggestion would
not be made. But that he should have thought that the suggestion was
going to be made showed very precisely how unintelligible to him was the
whole nature of the class which Lord Inverbroom represented. No such
suggestion was made, any more than half an hour ago any idea of a fresh
election being held was mooted.
‘I had the pleasure of speaking very warmly in your favour, Sir Thomas,’
said Lord Inverbroom, at length, ‘and, of course, of voting for you. I
may tell you that I am now considering, in consequence of the election,
whether I shall not resign the presidency of the Club. It is an unusual
proceeding to reject the president’s candidate; I think your rejection
reflects upon me.’
Keeling was being insensibly affected by his companion’s simplicity.
‘Behaviour’ seemed a very easy matter to Lord Inverbroom: it was a mere
matter of being simple....
‘I should be very sorry to have been the cause of that,’ he said, ‘and I
don’t think it would be logical of you. You urged me to withdraw, which
was the most you could do after you had promised to propose me.’
Lord Inverbroom’s sense of being puzzled increased. Here was a man who
had written a letter this morning turning the Club out of their
premises merely because he had been blackballed, who yet showed, both by
the fact of his seeking election in the ordinary way instead of claiming
it _ex officio_, and by this delicate unbusiness-like appreciation of
his own position, all those instincts which his letter of this morning
so flatly contradicted.
‘Yes, I urged you not to stand,’ he said, ‘and that is the only reason
why I hesitate about resigning. I should like you to know that if I
remain in my post, that is the cause of my doing so. Otherwise I should
resign.’
The other side of the question presented itself to Keeling. It would be
a rare stroke to deprive the Club not only of its premises but of its
president. Though he had just said that he hoped Lord Inverbroom would
not resign, he felt it would be an extreme personal pleasure if he did.
And then a further scheme came into his head, another nail in the coffin
of the County Club, and with that all his inherent caddishness rose
paramount over such indications of feelings as Lord Inverbroom
understood and appreciated.
‘Perhaps if you left the County Club,’ he said, ‘you would do us the
honour to join the Town Club. I am the president of that: I would think
it, however, an honour to resign my post if you would consent to take
it. I’ll warrant you there’ll be no mischance over that election.’
Lord Inverbroom suddenly stiffened.
‘You are very good to suggest that,’ he said. ‘But it would be utterly
out of the question. Well, Sir Thomas, I envy you your library. And
here, I see, is your new catalogue. Miss Propert told me she was working
at it. May I look at it? Yes, indeed, that is admirably done. Author and
title of the book and illustrator as well, all entered. Her father was a
great friend of mine. She may have told you that very tragic story.’
‘She has never mentioned her father to me. Was he--well, the sort of man
whom the County Club would not have blackballed?’
Perhaps that was the worst thing he had said yet, though, indeed, he
meant but a grimly humourous observation, not perceiving nor being able
to perceive in how odious a position he put his guest. But Lord
Inverbroom’s impenetrable armour of effortless good breeding could turn
even that aside. He laughed.
‘Well, after what the Club has done to-day,’ he said, ‘there is no
telling whom they would blackball. But certainly I should have been, at
one time, very happy to propose him.’
Keeling’s preoccupation with the Club suddenly ceased. He wanted so much
more to know anything that concerned Norah.
‘Perhaps you would tell me something about him,’ he said.
‘Ah, that would not be quite right, would it?’ said Lord Inverbroom,
still unperturbed, ‘if Miss Propert has not cared to speak to you of
him.’
Keeling found himself alternately envying and detesting this
impenetrable armour. There was no joint in it, it was abominably
complete. And even while he hated it, he appreciated and coveted it.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘No telling tales out of school.’
‘Quite so. And now will you take me to find my wife? Let us be in a
conspiracy, and not mention that we have been in the house half an hour
already. I should dearly like another half-hour, but all the time Lady
Keeling is bearing the infliction of a prodigiously long call.’
‘Lady Keeling will be only too gratified,’ said her husband.
‘That is very kind of her. But, indeed, I think we had better go.’
Gratification was certainly not too strong a term to employ with regard
to Lady Keeling’s feelings, nor, indeed, too strong to apply to Lady
Inverbroom’s when her call was brought to an end. The sublimity of
Princesses was not to be had every day, and the fortnight that had
elapsed since that memorable visit, with the return of the routine of
undistinguished Bracebridge, had caused so prolonged a visit from a
peeress to mount into Lady Keeling’s head like an hour’s steady drinking
of strong wine.
‘Well, I’ve never enjoyed an hour’s chat more,’ she said, as Keeling
returned after seeing their guests off, ‘and it seemed no more than five
minutes. She was all affability, wasn’t she, Alice? and so full of
admiration for all my--what did she call them? Some French word.’
‘Bibelots,’ suggested Alice.
‘Biblos; that was it. And she never seemed to think how time was flying,
for she never once alluded to her husband’s being so late. To be sure
she might have; she might perhaps have said she was afraid she was
keeping me from my occupations, for I could have assured her very
handsomely that I was more than pleased to sit and talk to her. And it
is all quite true, Thomas, about the Princess’s visit next month. You
may be sure I asked about that. She is coming down to spend three days
with them, very quietly, Lady Inverbroom said; yes, she said that twice
now I come to think of it, though I caught it perfectly the first time.
But I shall be very much surprised if I don’t get a note asking us to
dine and sleep, with Alice as well perhaps, for I said what a pleasure
it would be to Alice to see her beautiful house and grounds some day.
But I shall quite understand after what she said about the visit being
very quiet, why there will be no party. After all, it was a very
pleasant evening we spent there before when there were no guests at all.
I said how much we enjoyed quiet visits with no ceremony.’
‘Did you ask for any more invitations?’ said Keeling, as his wife paused
for breath.
‘My dear Thomas, you quite misunderstand me. I asked for nothing, except
that I might take Mamma some day for a drive through their park. I hope
I know how to behave better than that. Another thing, too: Miss Propert
has been there twice, once to tea and once to lunch. I hope she will not
have her head turned, for it seems that she did not take her meals in
the housekeeper’s room, but upstairs. But that is none of my business: I
am sure Lady Inverbroom may give her lunch on the top of the
church-steeple if she wishes, and I said very distinctly that I had
always found her a very well-behaved young woman, and mentioned nothing
about her bouncing in in the middle of my dinner-party, nor when she
spent Sunday morning in your library. Bygones are bygones. That’s what I
always say, and act on, too.’
This certainly appeared to have been the case: Lady Keeling’s
miscroscopic mind seemed to have diverted its minute gaze altogether
from Norah. To Keeling that was a miscroscopic relief, but no more, for
it seemed to him to matter very little what his wife thought about
Norah.
‘Lord Inverbroom was a great friend of Miss Propert’s father at one
time,’ he said. ‘He told me so only to-day.’
‘Oh, indeed. Very likely in the sense that a man may call his butler an
old friend of the family. I should be quite pleased to speak of
Parkinson like that. I am all for equality. We are all equal in the
sight of Heaven, as Mr Silverdale says. Dear me, I wish I was his equal
in energy: next month he holds a mission down at Easton Haven among all
those ruffians at the docks, in addition to all his parish work.’
‘He is doing far too much,’ said Alice excitedly, ‘but he won’t listen.
He is so naughty: he promises me he will be good, and not wear himself
out, but he goes on just the same as ever, except that he gets worse and
worse.’
Keeling listened to this with a mixture of pity and grim amusement. He
felt sure that his poor Alice was in love with the man, and was sorry
for Alice in that regard, but what grimly amused him was the utter
impotence of Alice to keep her condition to herself. He was puzzled
also, for all this spring Alice seemed to have remained as much in love
with him as ever, but not to have got either worse or better. Silverdale
filled her with some frantic and wholly maidenly excitement. It was like
the love of some antique spinster for her lap-dog, intense and
deplorable and sexless. He could even joke in a discreet manner with
poor Alice about it, and gratify her by so doing.
‘Well, all you ladies who are so much in love with him ought to be able
to manage him,’ he said.
Alice bent over her work (she had eventually induced Mr Silverdale to
sanction the creation of a pair of slippers) with a pleased, lop-sided
smile.
‘Father, you don’t know him,’ she said. ‘He’s quite, quite unmanageable.
You never saw any one so naughty.’
‘Punish him by not giving him his slippers. Give them me instead, and
I’ll wear them when he comes to dinner.’
Alice looked almost shocked at the notion of such unhallowed feet being
thrust into these hardly less than sacred embroideries: it was as if her
mother had suggested making a skirt out of the parrots and pomegranates
that adorned the ‘smart’ altar-cloth. But she divined that, in spite of
her father’s inexplicable want of reverence for the Master (they had
become Master and Helper, and sometimes she called him ‘sir,’ much as
Norah had called her father, but for antipodal reasons), there lurked
behind his rather unseemly jokes a kindly intention towards herself. He
might laugh at her, but somehow below that she felt (and she knew not
how) that a part of him understood, and did not laugh. It was as if he
knew what it meant to be in love, to thirst and to be unslaked, to be
hungry and not to be fed.
She gave him a quick glance out of her short-sighted eyes, a glance that
deprecated and yet eagerly sought for the sympathy which she knew was
somewhere about. And then Lady Keeling put in more of her wrecking and
shattering remarks, which so unerringly spoiled all the hints and
lurking colours in human intercourse.
‘Well, that would be a funny notion for Sir Thomas Keeling to wear
slippers at dinner,’ she said. ‘What a going-back to old days! I might
as well wear some high-necked merino gown. But what your father says is
quite true, Alice. We might really take Mr Silverdale in hand, and tell
him that’s the last he’ll see of us all, unless he takes more care of
himself. I saw him coming out of the County Club to-day, looking so
tired that I almost stopped my carriage and told him to go home to bed.
And talking of the County Club, Thomas, doesn’t your election come on
soon? You must be sure to take me to have lunch in the ladies’ room one
of these days. Lady Inverbroom told me she was lunching there to-day,
and had quite a clean good sort of meal. Nothing very choice, I expect,
but I dare say she doesn’t care much what she eats. I shall never forget
what a tough pheasant we had when we dined there. If I’d been told I was
eating a bit of leather, I should have believed it. Perhaps some day
when Lord and Lady Inverbroom are in Bracebridge again, we might all
have lunch together there.’
For the last six months Keeling had been obliged to keep a hand on
himself when he was with his wife, for either she had developed an
amazing talent for putting him on edge, or he a susceptibility for being
irritated by her. Both causes probably contributed, for since her
accession to greatness, her condescension had vastly increased, while he
on his side had certainly grown more sensitive to her pretentiousness.
It was with the utmost difficulty that he restrained himself from
snapping at her.
‘No, I’m afraid that can’t be, Emmeline,’ he said. ‘The election came
off to-day, and the Club has settled it can do without me.’
‘Well, I never heard of such a thing! They haven’t elected you, do you
mean, the Mayor of Bracebridge, and to say nothing of your being a
baronet? Who are those purse-proud people, I should like to know? My
dear Thomas, I have an idea. I should not wonder if Lord Inverbroom was
in it. He has been quite cock of the walk, as you may say, up till now,
and he doesn’t want any rival. What are you going to do? I hope you’ll
serve them out well for it somehow.’
‘I have done so already. I bought the freehold of the Club not so long
ago, and I have given them notice that I shall not renew their lease in
the summer.’
Lady Keeling clapped her soft fat hands together.
‘That’s the right sort of way to treat them,’ she said, in great glee.
‘That will pay them out. I never heard of such a thing as not electing a
baronet. Who do they think they are? What fun it will be to see all
their great sofas being bundled into the street. And they bought all
their furniture at your Stores, did they not? That is the cream of it to
my mind. I should not wonder if they want to sell it all back to you,
second-hand. That would be a fine joke.’
For the first time, now that his wife so lavishly applauded his action,
Keeling began to be not so satisfied with it. The fact that it commended
itself to her type of mind, was an argument against it: her praise
disgusted him: it was at least as impertinent as Norah’s disapprobation.
Alice fixed her faint eyes on her father.
‘Oh, I wish you hadn’t done that!’ she said. ‘Does Lord Inverbroom know
that?’
‘Mark my words,’ said his wife, ‘Lord Inverbroom’s at the bottom of it
all.’
‘Nothing of the kind, Emmeline,’ he said sharply. ‘Lord Inverbroom
proposed me.’
Then he turned to Alice.
‘Yes, he knows,’ he said. ‘I gave notice to him. And why do you wish I
hadn’t done it? I declare I’m getting like Mr Silverdale. All the ladies
are concerning themselves with me. There’s your mother saying I’ve done
right, and you and Miss Propert saying I’ve done wrong. There’s no
pleasing you all.’
‘And what has Miss Propert got to do with it,’ asked Lady Keeling, ‘that
she disapproves of what you’ve done? She’ll be wanting to run your
Stores for you next, and just because she’s been to lunch with Lord
Inverbroom. I never heard of such impertinence as Miss Propert giving
her opinion. You’ll have trouble with your Miss Propert. You ought to
give her one of your good snubs, or dismiss her altogether. That would
be far the best.’
Keeling felt as some practitioner of _sortes Virgilianæ_ might do when
he had opened at some strangely apposite text. To consult his wife about
anything was like opening a book at random, a wholly irrational
proceeding, but he could not but be impressed by the sudden
applicability of this. His wife did not know the situation, any more
than did the musty volume, but he wondered if she had not answered with
a strange wisdom, wholly foreign to her.
‘Now you have given your opinion, Emmeline,’ he said, ‘and you must
allow somebody else to talk. I want to know why Alice disapproves.’
Alice stitched violently at the slipper.
‘Mr Silverdale will be so sorry,’ she said. ‘He drops in there sometimes
for a rubber of bridge, for he thinks that it is such a good thing to
show that a clergyman can be a man of the world too.’
Keeling rose: this was altogether too much for him.
‘Well, we’ve wasted enough time talking about it all,’ he said, ‘if
that’s all the reason I’m to hear.’
‘But it isn’t,’ said Alice. ‘I can’t express it, but I can feel it. I
know I should agree with Miss Propert and Lord Inverbroom about it.
What did Miss Propert say?’
‘Well, talking of waste of time,’ observed Lady Keeling indignantly, ‘I
can’t think of any worse waste than caring to know what Miss Propert
said.’
Keeling turned to her.
‘Perhaps you can’t,’ he said, ‘and you’d better have your nap. That
won’t be waste of time. You’re tired with talking, and I’m sure I am
too.’
He left the room without more words, and Lady Keeling settled another
cushion against what must be called the small of her back.
‘Your father’s served them out well,’ she said. ‘That’s the way to get
on. To think of their not considering him good enough for their Club. He
has shown his spirit very properly. But the idea of Miss Propert telling
him what’s right and what isn’t, on twenty-five shillings a week.’
‘I can’t bear to think of Mr Silverdale not having his rubber of bridge
now and then,’ said Alice. ‘It was such a refreshment to him.’
* * * * *
Keeling had intended to pass an hour among his books to wash off the
scum, so to speak, of this atrocious conversation, but when he got to
his library, and had taken down his new edition of Omar Khayyam, which
Charles Propert had induced him to buy, he found it could give him very
little emotion. He was aware of the exquisite type, of the strange
sensuous wood-cuts that somehow affected him like a subtle odour, of
the beautiful binding, and not least of the text itself, but all these
perfections were no more than presented to him; they did not penetrate.
He could not rid himself of the scum; the odiousness of his wife’s
approbation would not be washed off. And what made it cling was the fact
that she had divined him correctly, had rejoiced at his ‘serving the
Club out.’ It was just that which Norah deprecated, and he felt that
Lord Inverbroom’s complete silence on the point, his forbearance to hint
ever so faintly that perhaps Keeling would reconsider his action,
expressed disapprobation as eloquently as Norah’s phrase, which he had
finished for her, had done. It was a caddish act, that was what they
both thought about it, and Alice, when she had finished her nonsense
about Mr Silverdale’s rubber of bridge, had a similar protest in her
mind. He did not rate poor Alice’s mind at any high figure; it was but
the fact that she was allied to the other two, and opposed to her
mother, that added a little weight to her opinion.
He wanted to be considered a gentleman, and when others declined to
receive him as such, he had but justified their verdict by behaving like
a cad.... He was a cad, here was the truth of it, as it struck him now,
and that was why he had behaved like one.
He shut his meaningless book, now intensely disliking the step he had
taken, which at the time had seemed so smart a rejoinder. Probably if
at this moment Lord Inverbroom had appeared, asking him to cancel it, he
would have done so. But that was exactly what it was certain Lord
Inverbroom would not do. There remained Norah; he wondered whether Norah
would refer to it again. Probably not: he had made clear that he thought
the offering of her opinion was a great impertinence. And now to his
annoyance he remembered that his wife had also considered it as such.
Again she agreed with him, and again the fact of her concurrence made
him lose confidence in the justice of his own view. He had instantly
acquitted Norah of deliberate impertinence; now he reconsidered whether
it had been an impertinence at all.... What if it was the simple desire
of a friend to save a friend from a blunder, an unworthiness?
* * * * *
He had grown to detest the time after dinner passed in the plushy,
painted drawing-room. Hitherto, in all these years of increasing
prosperity, during which the conscious effort of his brain had been
directed to business and money-making, he had not objected after the
work of the day to pass a quiescent hour or two before his early bedtime
giving half an ear to his wife’s babble, which, with her brain thickened
with refreshment, always reached its flood-tide of voluble incoherence
now, giving half an eye to Alice with her industrious needle. All the
time a vague simmer of mercantile meditation gently occupied him; his
mind, like some kitchen fire with the damper pushed in, kept itself just
alight, smouldered and burned low, and Alice’s needle was but like the
bars of the grate, and his wife’s prattle the mild rumble of water in
the boiler. It was all domestic and normal, in accordance with the
general destiny of prosperous men in middle age. Indeed, he was luckier
in some respects than the average, for there had always been for him his
secret garden, the _hortus inclusus_, into which neither his family nor
his business interests ever entered. Now even that had been invaded,
Norah’s catalogue had become to him the most precious of his books: she
was like sunshine in his secret garden or like a bitter wind, something,
anyhow, that got between him and his garden beds, while here in the
drawing-room in the domestic hour after dinner the fact of her made
itself even more insistently felt, for she turned Lady Keeling’s
vapidities, to which hitherto he had been impervious, into an active
stinging irritation, and even poor Alice’s industrious needle and the
ever-growing pattern of Maltese crosses on Mr Silverdale’s slippers was
like some monotonous recurring drip of water that set his nerves on
edge. This was a pretty state of mind, he told himself, for a hardheaded
business man of fifty, and yet even as with all the force of resolution
that was in him he tried to find something in his wife’s remarks that
could awake a relevant reasonable reply, some rebellious consciousness
in his brain would only concern itself with counting on the pink clock
the hours that lay between the present moment and nine o’clock next
morning. And then the pink clock melodiously announced on the
Westminster chime that it was half past ten, and Alice put her needle
into the middle of the last Maltese cross, and Lady Keeling waddled
across the room and tapped the barometer, which a marble Diana held in
her chaste hand, to see if the weather promised well for the bazaar
to-morrow. The evening was over, and there would not be another for the
next twenty-four hours.
* * * * *
He was always punctual at his office; lately he had been before his time
there, and had begun to open letters before Norah arrived. This happened
next morning, and among others that he had laid on his desk was Lord
Inverbroom’s acknowledgment of his notice to terminate the County Club’s
lease. Norah, when she came, finished this business for him, and in due
course handed him the completed pile. Then, as usual, she took her place
opposite him for the dictation of answers. She wore at her breast a
couple of daffodils, and he noticed that, as she breathed, the faint
yellow reflection they cast on her chin stirred upwards and downwards.
No word had passed between them since she had expressed regret for what
he considered her impertinence the day before, and this morning she did
not once meet his eye. Probably she considered herself in disgrace, and
it maddened him to see her quiet acceptance of it, which struck him as
contemptuous. She was like some noble slave, working, because she must
work, for a master she despised. Well, if that was her attitude, so be
it. She might despise, but he was master. At his request she read out a
letter she had just taken down. In the middle he stopped her.
‘No, you have got that wrong,’ he said. ‘What I said was this,’--and he
repeated it--‘please attend more closely.’
She made no reply, and two minutes afterwards he again found her at
fault. And the brutality, the desire to make the beloved suffer, which
in very ugly fashion often lies in wait close to the open high road of
love, became more active.
‘You are wasting your time and mine, Miss Propert,’ he said, ‘if you do
not listen.’
Again he waited for some reply, some expression of regret which she
undoubtedly owed him, but none came. Then, looking up, while her pencil
was busy, he saw that she did not reply because she could not. The
reflection of the daffodils trembled violently on her chin, and her
lower teeth were fast clenched on her upper lip to stifle the surrender
of her mouth. And when he saw that, all his brutality, all the impulse
that bade him hurt the thing he loved, drained out of him, and left him
hateful to himself.
He paused, leaving unfinished the sentence he was dictating, and sat
there silent, not daring to look at her. He still felt she despised him,
and now with additional reason; he resented the fact that any one should
do that, his pride choked him, and yet he was ashamed. But oh, the
contrast between this very uncomfortable moment, and the comfortable
evenings with Emmeline!
But he could not bring himself to apologise, and presently he resumed
his dictation. Norah, it appeared, had recovered control of herself, and
when that letter was finished, she read it over to him quite steadily.
The next she handed him was Lord Inverbroom’s acknowledgment, which he
had himself placed among the rest of the morning’s correspondence.
‘Is that just to be filed?’ she said, ‘or is there any answer?’
He took it up.
‘Yes, there’s an answer,’ he said, and dictated.
‘DEAR LORD INVERBROOM,--Re lease of premises of County Club. If you
will allow me I should like to cancel the notice of termination of
said lease which I sent you yesterday, if this would be any
convenience to the Club. I should like also to express to you
personally my regret for my action.’
He paused.
‘I think that’s all I need say, Miss Propert, isn’t it?’ he asked.
And then there came for him the direct glance, a little dim yet, with
the ‘clear shining after rain’ beaming through it.
‘Oh, I am so glad,’ she said. ‘And if it’s not impertinent may I suggest
something?’
Never had the clear glance lasted so long. He expanded and throve in it.
‘Well, go on; but take care,’ he said.
‘It’s only that you should write it yourself,’ she said. ‘It would be
more--more complete.’
‘And that will satisfy you?’
‘Quite. You will have done yourself justice.’
He pushed back his chair.
‘I don’t see why you should care,’ he said. ‘I’ve treated you like a
brute all morning.’
‘I know you have. I cared about that too.’
‘Would you like me to apologise?’ he asked.
She shook her head and pointed at the letter.
‘Not again,’ she said. ‘You’ve sent me a lovely apology already,
addressed to Lord Inverbroom.’
‘Have I, indeed? You must have everything your own way. And how are the
bluebells getting on?’
‘Quite well. They’ll all be out in a fortnight, I think. I went to look
again yesterday. The buds, fat little buttons, do you remember, have got
tall stalks now. And the lark is still singing.’
‘May we go there then on Saturday week?’ he asked.
She looked down a moment.
‘Yes,’ she said softly, raising her eyes again. ‘And now shall we get on
with the letters, Sir Thomas. There are still a good many not answered.’
‘I would sooner talk to you,’ he said.
‘You shall dictate. That will be talking. And I will try to listen very
attentively.’
‘Now don’t be mean, Miss Propert,’ said he.
For the second time that morning she let the clear glance shine on him.
It brightened like dawn, filling the space between them. And it smote on
his heart, stupefyingly sweet.