Mrs. Assheton's house in Sussex Square, Brighton, was appointed with that
finish of smooth stateliness which robs stateliness of its formality, and
conceals the amount of trouble and personal attention which has,
originally in any case, been spent on the production of the smoothness.
Everything moved with the regularity of the solar system, and, superior
to that wild rush of heavy bodies through infinite ether, there was never
the slightest fear of comets streaking their unconjectured way across the
sky, or meteorites falling on unsuspicious picnicers. In Mrs. Assheton's
house, supreme over climatic conditions, nobody ever felt that rooms
were either too hot or too cold, a pleasantly fresh yet comfortably warm
atmosphere pervaded the place, meals were always punctual and her
admirable Scotch cook never served up a dish which, whether plain or
ornate, was not, in its way, perfectly prepared. A couple of deft and
noiseless parlour-maids attended to and anticipated the wants of her
guests, from the moment they entered her hospitable doors till when, on
their leaving them, their coats were held for them in the most convenient
possible manner for the easy insertion of the human arm, and the tails of
their dinner-coats cunningly and unerringly tweaked from behind. In every
way in fact the house was an example of perfect comfort; the softest
carpets overlaid the floors, or, where the polished wood was left bare,
the parquetry shone with a moonlike radiance; the newest and most
entertaining books (ready cut) stood on the well-ordered shelves in the
sitting-room to beguile the leisure of the studiously minded; the
billiard table was always speckless of dust, no tip was ever missing from
any cue, and the cigarette boxes and match-stands were always kept
replenished. In the dining-room the silver was resplendent, until the
moment when before dessert the cloth was withdrawn, and showed a rosewood
table that might have served for a mirror to Narcissus.
Mrs. Assheton, until her only surviving son Morris had come to live with
her some three months ago on the completion of his four years at
Cambridge, had been alone, but even when she was alone this ceremony of
drawing the cloth and putting on the dessert and wine had never been
omitted, though since she never took either, it might seem to be a
wasted piece of routine on the part of the two noiseless parlourmaids.
But she did not in the least consider it so, for just as she always
dressed for dinner herself with the same care and finish, whether she was
going to dine alone or whether, as tonight, a guest or two was dining
with her, as an offering, so to speak, on the altar of her own
self-respect, so also she required self-respect and the formality that
indicated it on the part of those who ministered at her table, and
enjoyed such excellent wages. This pretty old-fashioned custom had always
been the rule in her own home, and her husband had always had it
practised during his life. And since then--his death had occurred some
twenty years ago--nothing that she knew of had happened to make it less
proper or desirable. Kind of heart and warm of soul though she was, she
saw no reason for letting these excellent qualities cover any slackness
or breach of observance in the social form of life to which she had been
accustomed. There was no cause, because one was kind and wise, to eat
with badly cleaned silver, unless the parlour-maid whose office it was to
clean it was unwell. In such a case, if the extra work entailed by her
illness would throw too much on the shoulders of the other servants, Mrs.
Assheton would willingly clean the silver herself, rather than that it
should appear dull and tarnished. Her formalism, such as it was, was
perfectly simple and sincere. She would, without any very poignant regret
or sense of martyrdom, had her very comfortable income been cut down to a
tenth of what it was, have gone to live in a four-roomed cottage with one
servant. But she would have left that four-roomed cottage at once for
even humbler surroundings had she found that her straitened circumstances
did not permit her to keep it as speckless and _soignée_ as was her
present house in Sussex Square.
This achievement of having lived for nearly sixty years so decorously may
perhaps be a somewhat finer performance than it sounds, but Mrs. Assheton
brought as her contribution to life in general a far finer offering than
that, for though she did not propose to change her ways and manner of
life herself, she was notoriously sympathetic with the changed life of
the younger generation, and in consequence had the confidence of young
folk generally. At this moment she was enjoying the fruits of her liberal
attitude in the volubility of her son Morris, who sat at the end of the
table opposite to her. His volubility was at present concerned with his
motor-car, in which he had arrived that afternoon.
"Darling mother," he was saying, "I really was frightened as to whether
you would mind. I couldn't help remembering how you received Mr.
Taynton's proposal that you should go for a drive in his car. Don't you
remember, Mr. Taynton? Mother's nose _did_ go in the air. It's no use
denying it. So I thought, perhaps, that she wouldn't like my having one.
But I wanted it so dreadfully, and so I bought it without telling her,
and drove down in it to-day, which is my birthday, so that she couldn't
be too severe."
Mr. Taynton, while Morris was speaking, had picked up the nutcrackers the
boy had been using, and was gravely exploding the shells of the nuts he
had helped himself to. So Morris cracked the next one with a loud bang
between his white even teeth.
"Dear Morris," said his mother, "how foolish of you. Give Mr. Morris
another nutcracker," she added to the parlour-maid.
"What's foolish?" asked he, cracking another.
"Oh Morris, your teeth," she said. "Do wait a moment. Yes, that's right.
And how can you say that my nose went in the air? I'm sure Mr. Taynton
will agree with me that that is really libellous. And as for your being
afraid to tell me you had bought a motor-car yourself, why, that is
sillier than cracking nuts with your teeth."
Mr. Taynton laughed a comfortable middle-aged laugh.
"Don't put the responsibility on me, Mrs. Assheton," he said. "As long as
Morris's bank doesn't tell us that his account is overdrawn, he can do
what he pleases. But if we are told that, then down comes the cartloads
of bricks."
"Oh, you are a brick all right, Mr. Taynton," said the boy. "I could
stand a cartload of you."
Mr. Taynton, like his laugh, was comfortable and middle-aged. Solicitors
are supposed to be sharp-faced and fox-like, but his face was
well-furnished and comely, and his rather bald head beamed with
benevolence and dinner.
"My dear boy," he said, "and it is your birthday--I cannot honour
either you or this wonderful port more properly than by drinking your
health in it."
He began and finished his glass to the health he had so neatly proposed,
and Morris laughed.
"Thank you very much," he said. "Mother, do send the port round. What an
inhospitable woman!"
Mrs. Assheton rose.
"I will leave you to be more hospitable than me, then, dear," she said.
"Shall we go, Madge? Indeed, I am afraid you must, if you are to catch
the train to Falmer."
Madge Templeton got up with her hostess, and the two men rose too. She
had been sitting next Morris, and the boy looked at her eagerly.
"It's too bad, your having to go," he said. "But do you think I may come
over to-morrow, in the afternoon some time, and see you and Lady
Templeton?"
Madge paused a moment.
"I am so sorry," she said, "but we shall be away all day. We shan't be
back till quite late."
"Oh, what a bore," said he, "and I leave again on Friday. Do let me come
and see you off then."
But Mrs. Assheton interposed.
"No, dear," she said, "I am going to have five minutes' talk with Madge
before she goes and we don't want you. Look after Mr. Taynton. I know he
wants to talk to you and I want to talk to Madge."
Mr. Taynton, when the door had closed behind the ladies, sat down again
with a rather obvious air of proposing to enjoy himself. It was quite
true that he had a few pleasant things to say to Morris, it is also true
that he immensely appreciated the wonderful port which glowed, ruby-like,
in the nearly full decanter that lay to his hand. And, above all, he,
with his busy life, occupied for the most part in innumerable small
affairs, revelled in the sense of leisure and serene smoothness which
permeated Mrs. Assheton's house. He was still a year or two short of
sixty, and but for his very bald and shining head would have seemed
younger, so fresh was he in complexion, so active, despite a certain
reassuring corpulency, was he in his movements. But when he dined
quietly like this, at Mrs. Assheton's, he would willingly have sacrificed
the next five years of his life if he could have been assured on really
reliable authority--the authority for instance of the Recording
Angel--that in five years time he would be able to sit quiet and not work
any more. He wanted very much to be able to take a passive instead of an
active interest in life, and this a few hundreds of pounds a year in
addition to his savings would enable him to do. He saw, in fact, the goal
arrived at which he would be able to sit still and wait with serenity and
calmness for the event which would certainly relieve him of all further
material anxieties. His very active life, the activities of which were so
largely benevolent, had at the expiration of fifty-eight years a little
tired him. He coveted the leisure which was so nearly his.
Morris lit a cigarette for himself, having previously passed the wine to
Mr. Taynton.
"I hate port," he said, "but my mother tells me this is all right. It
was laid down the year I was born by the way. You don't mind my
smoking do you?"
This, to tell the truth, seemed almost sacrilegious to Mr. Taynton, for
the idea that tobacco, especially the frivolous cigarette, should burn in
a room where such port was being drunk was sheer crime against human and
divine laws. But he could scarcely indicate to his host that he should
not smoke in his own dining-room.
"No, my dear Morris," he said, "but really you almost shock me, when you
prefer tobacco to this nectar, I assure you nectar. And the car, now,
tell me more about the car."
Morris laughed.
"I'm so deeply thankful I haven't overdrawn," he said. "Oh, the car's a
clipper. We came down from Haywards Heath the most gorgeous pace. I saw
one policeman trying to take my number, but we raised such a dust, I
don't think he can have been able to see it. It's such rot only going
twenty miles an hour with a clear straight road ahead."
Mr. Taynton sighed, gently and not unhappily.
"Yes, yes, my dear boy, I so sympathise with you," he said. "Speed and
violence is the proper attitude of youth, just as strength with a more
measured pace is the proper gait for older folk. And that, I fancy is
just what Mrs. Assheton felt. She would feel it to be as unnatural in you
to care to drive with her in her very comfortable victoria as she would
feel it to be unnatural in herself to wish to go in your lightning speed
motor. And that reminds me. As your trustee--"
Coffee was brought in at this moment, carried, not by one of the discreet
parlour-maids, but by a young man-servant. Mr. Taynton, with the port
still by him, refused it, but looked rather curiously at the servant.
Morris however mixed himself a cup in which cream, sugar, and coffee were
about equally mingled.
"A new servant of your mother's?" he asked, when the man had left the
room.
"Oh no. It's my man, Martin. Awfully handy chap. Cleans silver, boots and
the motor. Drives it, too, when I'll let him, which isn't very often.
Chauffeurs are such rotters, aren't they? Regular chauffeurs I mean. They
always make out that something is wrong with the car, just as dentists
always find some hole in your teeth, if you go to them."
Mr. Taynton did not reply to these critical generalities but went back
to what he had been saying when the entry of coffee interrupted him.
"As your mother said," he remarked, "I wanted to have a few words with
you. You are twenty-two, are you not, to-day? Well, when I was young we
considered anyone of twenty-two a boy still, but now I think young
fellows grow up more quickly, and at twenty-two, you are a man nowadays,
and I think it is time for you, since my trusteeship for you may end any
day now, to take a rather more active interest in the state of your
finances than you have hitherto done. I want you in fact, my dear fellow,
to listen to me for five minutes while I state your position to you."
Morris indicated the port again, and Mr. Taynton refilled his glass.
"I have had twenty years of stewardship for you," he went on, "and
before my stewardship comes to an end, which it will do anyhow in three
years from now, and may come to an end any day--"
"Why, how is that?" asked Morris.
"If you marry, my dear boy. By the terms of your father's will, your
marriage, provided it takes place with your mother's consent, and after
your twenty-second birthday, puts you in complete control and possession
of your fortune. Otherwise, as of course you know, you come of age,
legally speaking, on your twenty-fifth birthday."
Morris lit another cigarette rather impatiently.
"Yes, I knew I was a minor till I was twenty-five," he said, "and I
suppose I have known that if I married after the age of twenty-two, I
became a major, or whatever you call it. But what then? Do let us go and
play billiards, I'll give you twenty-five in a hundred, because I've
been playing a lot lately, and I'll bet half a crown."
Mr. Taynton's fist gently tapped the table.
"Done," he said, "and we will play in five minutes. But I have something
to say to you first. Your mother, as you know, enjoys the income of the
bulk of your father's property for her lifetime. Outside that, he left
this much smaller capital of which, as also of her money, my partner and
I are trustees. The sum he left you was thirty thousand pounds. It is now
rather over forty thousand pounds, since we have changed the investments
from time to time, and always, I am glad to say, with satisfactory
results. The value of her property has gone up also in a corresponding
degree. That, however, does not concern you. But since you are now
twenty-two, and your marriage would put the whole of this smaller sum
into your hands, would it not be well for you to look through our books,
to see for yourself the account we render of our stewardship?"
Morris laughed.
"But for what reason?" he asked. "You tell me that my portion has
increased in value by ten thousand pounds. I am delighted to hear it. And
I thank you very much. And as for--"
He broke off short, and Mr. Taynton let a perceptible pause follow before
he interrupted.
"As for the possibility of your marrying?" he suggested.
Morris gave him a quick, eager, glance.
"Yes, I think there is that possibility," he said. "I hope--I hope it is
not far distant."
"My dear boy--" said the lawyer.
"Ah, not a word. I don't know--"
Morris pushed his chair back quickly, and stood up--his tall slim figure
outlined against the sober red of the dining-room wall. A plume of black
hair had escaped from his well-brushed head and hung over his forehead,
and his sun-tanned vivid face looked extraordinarily handsome. His
mother's clear-cut energetic features were there, with the glow and
buoyancy of youth kindling them. Violent vitality was his also; his was
the hot blood that could do any deed when the life-instinct commanded it.
He looked like one of those who could give their body to be burned in the
pursuit of an idea, or could as easily steal, or kill, provided only the
deed was vitally done in the heat of his blood. Violence was clearly his
mode of life: the motor had to go sixty miles an hour; he might be one of
those who bathed in the Serpentine in mid-winter; he would clearly dance
all night, and ride all day, and go on till he dropped in the pursuit of
what he cared for. Mr. Taynton, looking at him as he stood smiling there,
in his splendid health and vigour felt all this. He felt, too, that if
Morris intended to be married to-morrow morning, matrimony would probably
take place.
But Morris's pause, after he pushed his chair back and stood up, was only
momentary.
"Good God, yes; I'm in love," he said. "And she probably thinks me a
stupid barbarian, who likes only to drive golfballs and motorcars.
She--oh, it's hopeless. She would have let me come over to see them
to-morrow otherwise."
He paused again.
"And now I've given the whole show away," he said.
Mr. Taynton made a comfortable sort of noise. It was compounded of
laughter, sympathy, and comprehension.
"You gave it away long ago, my dear Morris," he said.
"You had guessed?" asked Morris, sitting down again with the same
quickness and violence of movement, and putting both his elbows on
the table.
"No, my dear boy, you had told me, as you have told everybody, without
mentioning it. And I most heartily congratulate you. I never saw a more
delightful girl. Professionally also, I feel bound to add that it seems
to me a most proper alliance--heirs should always marry heiresses.
It"--Mr. Taynton drank off the rest of his port--"it keeps properties
together."
Hot blood again dictated to Morris: it seemed dreadful to him that any
thought of money or of property could be mentioned in the same breath as
that which he longed for. He rose again as abruptly and violently as he
had sat down.
"Well, let's play billiards," he said. "I--I don't think you understand a
bit. You can't, in fact."
Mr. Taynton stroked the tablecloth for a moment with a plump white
forefinger.
"Crabbed age and youth," he remarked. "But crabbed age makes an appeal to
youth, if youth will kindly call to mind what crabbed age referred to
some five minutes ago. In other words, will you, or will you not, Morris,
spend a very dry three hours at my office, looking into the account of my
stewardship? There was thirty thousand pounds, and there now is--or
should we say 'are'--forty. It will take you not less than two hours, and
not more than three. But since my stewardship may come to an end, as I
said, any day, I should, not for my own sake, but for yours, wish you to
see what we have done for you, and--I own this would be a certain private
gratification to me--to learn that you thought that the trust your dear
father reposed in us was not misplaced."
There was something about these simple words which touched Morris. For
the moment he became almost businesslike. Mr. Taynton had been, as he
knew, a friend of his father's, and, as he had said, he had been steward
of his own affairs for twenty years. But that reflection banished the
businesslike view.
"Oh, but two hours is a fearful time," he said. "You have told me the
facts, and they entirely satisfy me. And I want to be out all day
to-morrow, as I am only here till the day after. But I shall be down
again next week. Let us go into it all then. Not that there is the
slightest use in going into anything. And when, Mr. Taynton, I become
steward of my own affairs, you may be quite certain that I shall beg you
to continue looking after them. Why you gained me ten thousand pounds in
these twenty years--I wonder what there would have been to my credit now
if I had looked after things myself. But since we are on the subject I
should like just this once to assure you of my great gratitude to you,
for all you have done. And I ask you, if you will, to look after my
affairs in the future with the same completeness as you have always done.
My father's will does not prevent that, does it?"
Mr. Taynton looked at the young fellow with affection.
"Dear Morris," he said gaily, "we lawyers and solicitors are always
supposed to be sharks, but personally I am not such a shark as that. Are
you aware that I am paid £200 a year for my stewardship, which you are
entitled to assume for yourself on your marriage, though of course its
continuance in my hands is not forbidden in your father's will? You are
quite competent to look after your affairs yourself; it is ridiculous for
you to continue to pay me this sum. But I thank you from the bottom of my
heart for your confidence in me."
A very close observer might have seen that behind Mr. Taynton's kind gay
eyes there was sitting a personality, so to speak, that, as his mouth
framed these words, was watching Morris rather narrowly and anxiously.
But the moment Morris spoke this silent secret watcher popped back again
out of sight.
"Well then I ask you as a personal favour," said he, "to continue being
my steward. Why, it's good business for me, isn't it? In twenty years you
make me ten thousand pounds, and I only pay you £200 a year for it.
Please be kind, Mr. Taynton, and continue making me rich. Oh, I'm a jolly
hard-headed chap really; I know that it is to my advantage."
Mr. Taynton considered this a moment, playing with his wine glass. Then
he looked up quickly.
"Yes, Morris, I will with pleasure do as you ask me," he said.
"Right oh. Thanks awfully. Do come and play billiards."
Morris was in amazing luck that night, and if, as he said, he had been
playing a lot lately, the advantage of his practice was seen chiefly in
the hideous certainty of his flukes, and the game (though he received
twenty-five) left Mr. Taynton half a crown the poorer. Then the winner
whirled his guest upstairs again to talk to his mother while he himself
went round to the stables to assure himself of the well-being of the
beloved motor. Martin had already valeted it, after its run, and was just
locking up when Morris arrived.
Morris gave his orders for next day after a quite unnecessary examination
into the internal economy of the beloved, and was just going back to the
house, when he paused, remembering something.
"Oh Martin," he said, "while I am here, I want you to help in the house,
you know at dinner and so on, just as you did to-night. And when there
are guests of mine here I want you to look after them. For instance, when
Mr. Taynton goes tonight you will be there to give him his hat and coat.
You'll have rather a lot to do, I'm afraid."
Morris finished his cigarette and went back to the drawing-room where Mr.
Taynton was already engaged in the staid excitements of backgammon with
his mother. That game over, Morris took his place, and before long the
lawyer rose to go.
"Now I absolutely refuse to let you interrupt your game," he said. "I
have found my way out of this house often enough, I should think. Good
night, Mrs. Assheton. Good night Morris; don't break your neck my dear
boy, in trying to break records."
Morris hardly attended to this, for the game was critical. He just rang
the bell, said good night, and had thrown again before the door had
closed behind Mr. Taynton. Below, in answer to the bell, was standing
his servant.
Mr. Taynton looked at him again with some attention, and then glanced
round to see if the discreet parlour-maids were about.
"So you are called Martin now," he observed gently.
"Yes, sir."
"I recognised you at once."
There was a short pause.
"Are you going to tell Mr. Morris, sir?" he asked.
"That I had to dismiss you two years ago for theft?" said Mr. Taynton
quietly. "No, not if you behave yourself."
Mr. Taynton looked at him again kindly and sighed.
"No, let bygones be bygones," he said. "You will find your secret is safe
enough. And, Martin, I hope you have really turned over a new leaf, and
are living honestly now. That is so, my lad? Thank God; thank God. My
umbrella? Thanks. Good night. No cab: I will walk."