1
MILLY'S illness was discussed at every tea-table in Seabourne, and
proved a grateful topic in the stiff little club as well. If the Ogdens
did nothing else, they certainly provided food for comment. Joan's Short
Hair, the Colonel's Death, Mrs. Ogden's Popish Tendencies and now
Milly's Consumption were hailed in turn with discreet enthusiasm.
Major Boyle, the doleful politician, killed Milly off at least a dozen
times that spring.
"Family's riddled with it!" he remarked lugubriously. "I happen to know
for a fact that three of the mother's brothers died of it."
General Brooke laughed asthmatically. "That's queer," he chuckled, "for
she only had _one_!"
Major Boyle sighed as though this in itself were a tragedy.
"Oh, really, only one? Then it must have been a brother and two
cousins--yes, that was it, two cousins--riddled with it!"
The little bank manager fidgeted in his chair, his mouth opened and shut
impatiently; if only they would let him get a word in edgeways. At last
he could contain himself no longer.
"Miss Joan told me----" he begun.
But Sir Robert Loo interrupted with intentional insolence. "You were
saying, Boyle, that two of the cousins died of consumption; which were
they, I wonder? I was at Christ Church with Peter Routledge, a cousin of
the mother's, awfully nice chap he was, but a bit of a wildster."
They began tossing the ball of conversation backwards and forwards and
around between themselves, keeping it the while well above the head of
the bank manager. Eton, Christ Church, old days in India, the Buffs, the
Guards, crack shots, shooting parties, phenomenal exploits with the rod
and line, lovely women. They nodded their heads, chewing the ends of
their cigars and murmured "By Gad!" and "My dear fellow!" the while they
exaggerated and romanced about the past.
They emptied their glasses and sucked in their moustaches. They lolled
back in the arm-chairs or straddled in front of the smoky fire. Their
eyes glowed with the enthusiasms of thirty or forty years ago. They
forgot that they were grey or white or bald, or mottled about the jowls,
that their stomachs protruded and their legs gave a little at the knees.
They forgot that their sons defied them and their wives thought them
bores, that their incomes were for the most part insufficient, and that
nearly all their careers had been ignominiously cut short by the age
limit. They lived again in their dashing youth, in the glorious days
when they had been heroes, at least in their own estimation; when a
scrap with savages had taken on the dimensions of Waterloo. When fine
girls and blood fillies met with about equal respect and admiration,
when moonlit nights on long verandas meant something other than an
attack of lumbago; and when, above all, they had classified their
fellow-men as being "One of us" or "An outsider."
There sat Mr. Pearson the bank manager, with the golden ball flying
around and above him, but never, oh! never within his grasp. He sighed,
he cleared his throat, he smoked a really good cigar that he could ill
afford; he envied. No, assuredly his youth provided no splendours. He
thought distastefully of the Grammar School, he spat mentally when he
remembered the Business College. He felt like a worm who is discovered
in a ducal salad, and he cringed a little and respected.
He, too, was bald these days, and his waistcoats gaped sometimes where
they buttoned; in seniority he was the equal of most of them, but in
family, opportunity, knowledge of life and love of fair women, judging
by their reminiscences, he was hopelessly their inferior.
He knew that they resented him as a blot on their club, and that time
would never soften this resentment. He knew all about their almost
invisible incomes, he even accorded financial accommodation to one or
another from time to time. He saw their bank books and treated with as
much tact as possible their minute overdrafts. Sometimes he was allowed
to offer advice regarding a change of investments or the best method
whereby to soften the heart of the Inland Revenue. But all this was at
the bank, in his own little office. Behind his roll-top desk he was a
power; in the little office it was they who hummed and hawed and found
it difficult to approach the subject, while he, urbane and smiling,
conscious of his strength, lent a patronizing ear to their doubts and
worries.
But positions were reversed in the smoking-room of the club. Securely
entrenched in their worn leather chairs, they became ungrateful, they
forgot, they ignored: "Eton, Christ Church, the Buffs, the Guards!" And
yet he would _not_ resign. He clung to the club like a bastard clings to
the memory of an aristocratic father--desperately, resentfully, with a
shamefaced sense of pride.
"My sister tells me," said Ralph Rodney, gently dragging the
conversation back to its original topic. "My sister tells me that
Milly's lungs are absolutely sound."
General Brooke snorted and Major Boyle shook his head mournfully. "Can't
be, can't be," he murmured; "the family's riddled with it!"
"I'm sorry to hear about poor old Peter Routledge," remarked Sir Robert,
pouring himself out another whisky. "I'd lost sight of him of late
years. Damned hard luck popping off like that, must have been fairly
young too; he was one of the best chaps on earth, you know, sound
through and through, if he was a bit of a wildster."
Over in a dark corner someone stirred. It was Admiral Bourne, whom they
had thought asleep; now he spoke for the first time. He sat up and,
taking off his glasses, wiped them.
"She was such a pretty little girl," he said tremulously. "Such a dear
little girl." And he dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief.
They pretended not to notice; he was a very old man now and almost
childish, with him tears and laughter had grown to be very near the
surface.
"How goes it with the mice, Admiral?" inquired someone kindly, to change
the subject.
He smiled through his tears and cheered up immediately. "Capital,
capital! Yes, indeed. And I think I've bred a real wonder at last, I've
never seen such a colour before, it's not Roan and it's not Mauve and
it's not Blue; it's a sort of--a sort of----" He hesitated, and forgot
what he was going to say.
They handed him an evening paper. "Thanks, thanks," he said gratefully.
"Thank you very much indeed," and subsided into his corner again.
2
In spite of gloomy prognostications Milly's health did nothing
melodramatic or startling as the months dragged on, though her cough
continued and she grew still thinner. At times she was overcome by
prolonged fits of weakness, but any change there was came quietly and
gradually, so that even Elizabeth was deceived. She watched Joan's
anxious face with growing impatience.
"Don't let yourself get hipped over Milly," she cautioned.