'Oh! I'm all right, mother. How are you?'
I perceived instantly that she was more excited than my arrival
ordinarily made her. There were tears in her smiling eyes, and she was
as nervous as a young girl. She did indeed look remarkably young for a
woman of forty-five, with twenty-five years of widowhood and a brief
but too tempestuous married life behind her.
The thought flashed across my mind: 'By some means or other she has got
wind of my engagement. But how?'
But I said nothing. I, too, was naturally rather nervous. Mothers are
kittle cattle.
'I'll tell her at supper,' I decided.
And she hovered round me, like a sea-gull round a steamer, as I went
upstairs.
There was a ring at the door. She flew, instead of letting the servant
go. It was a porter with my bag.
Just as I was coming down-stairs again there was another ring at the
door. And my mother appeared magically out of the kitchen, but I was
beforehand with her, and with a laugh I insisted on opening the front
door myself this time. A young woman stood on the step.
'Please, Mrs Dawson wants to know if Mrs Durance can kindly lend her
half-a-dozen knives and forks?'
'Eh, with pleasure,' said my mother, behind me. 'Just wait a minute,
Lucy. Come inside on the mat.'
I followed my mother into the drawing-room, where she kept her silver
in a cabinet.
'That's Mrs Dawson's new servant,' my mother whispered. 'But she
needn't think I'm going to lend her my best, because I'm not.'
'I shouldn't, if I were you,' I supported her.
And she went out with some second-best in tissue paper, and beamed on
Mrs Dawson's servant with an assumed benevolence.
'There!' she exclaimed. 'And the compliments of the season to your
mistress, Lucy.'
After that my mother disappeared into the kitchen to worry an entirely
capable servant. And I roamed about, feeling happily excited, examining
the drawing-room, in which nothing was changed except the incandescent
light and the picture postcards on the mantelpiece. Then I wandered
into the dining-room, a small room at the back of the house, and here
an immense surprise awaited me.
Supper was set for three!
'Well,' I reflected. 'Here's a nice state of affairs! Supper for three,
and she hasn't breathed a word!'
My mother was so clever in social matters, and especially in the
planning of delicious surprises, that I believed her capable even of
miracles. In some way or other she must have discovered the state of my
desires towards Agnes. She had written, or something. She and Agnes had
been plotting together by letter to startle me, and perhaps
telegraphing. Agnes had fibbed in telling me that she could not
possibly come to Bursley for Christmas; she had delightfully fibbed.
And my mother had got her concealed somewhere in the house, or was
momentarily expecting her. That explained the tears, the nervousness,
the rushes to the door.
I crept out of the dining-room, determined not to let my mother know
that I had secretly viewed the supper-table. And as I was crossing the
lobby to the drawing-room there was a third ring at the door, and a
third time my mother rushed out of the kitchen.
'By Jove!' I thought. 'Suppose it's Agnes. What a scene!'
And trembling with expectation I opened the door. It was Mr Nixon.
Now, Mr Nixon was an old friend of the family's, a man of forty-nine or
fifty, with a reputation for shrewdness and increasing wealth. He owned
a hundred and seventy-five cottages in the town, having bought them
gradually in half-dozens, and in rows; he collected the rents himself,
and attended to the repairs himself, and was celebrated as a good
landlord, and as being almost the only man in Bursley who had made
cottage property pay. He lived alone in Commerce Street, and, though
not talkative, was usually jolly, with one or two good stories tucked
away in the corners of his memory. He was my mother's trustee, and had
morally aided her in the troublous times before my father's early death.
'Well, young man,' cried he. 'So you're back in owd Bosley!' It amused
him to speak the dialect a little occasionally.
And he brought his burly, powerful form into the lobby.
I greeted him as jovially as I could, and then he shook hands with my
mother, neither of them speaking.
'Mr Nixon is come for supper, Philip,' said my mother.
I liked Mr Nixon, but I was not too well pleased by this information,
for I wanted to talk confidentially to my mother. I had a task before
me with my mother, and here Mr Nixon was plunging into the supper. I
could not break it gently to my mother that I was engaged to a strange
young woman in the presence of Mr Nixon. Mr Nixon had been in to supper
several times during previous visits of mine, but never on the first
night.
However, I had to make the best of it. And we sat down and began on the
ham, the sausages, the eggs, the crumpets, the toast, the jams, the
mince-tarts, the Stilton, and the celery. But we none of us ate very
much, despite my little plump mother's protestations.
My suspicion was that perhaps something had gone slightly wrong with my
mother's affairs, and that Mr Nixon was taking the first opportunity to
explain things to me. But such a possibility did not interest me, for I
could easily afford to keep my mother and a wife too. I was still
preoccupied in my engagement--and surely there is nothing astonishing
in that--and I began to compose the words in which, immediately on the
departure of Mr Nixon after supper, I would tackle my mother on the
subject.
When we had reached the Stilton and celery, I intimated that I must
walk down to the post-office, as I had to dispatch a letter.
'Won't it do tomorrow, my pet?' asked my mother.
'It will not,' I said.
Imagine leaving Agnes two days without news of my safe arrival and
without assurances of my love! I had started writing the letter in the
train, near Willesden, and I finished it in the drawing-room.
'A lady in the case?' Mr Nixon called out gaily.
'Yes,' I replied with firmness.
I went forth, bought a picture postcard showing St Luke's Square,
Bursley, most untruthfully picturesque, and posted the card and the
letter to my darling Agnes. I hoped that Mr Nixon would have departed
ere my return; he had made no reference at all during supper to my
mother's affairs. But he had not departed. I found him solitary in the
drawing-room, smoking a very fine cigar.
'Where's the mater?' I demanded.
'She's just gone out of the room,' he said. 'Come and sit down. Have a
weed. I want a bit of a chat with you, Philip.'