That prodigious observer had not failed to notice them, and though
Arthur’s interview with him had been quite remarkably frank and
outspoken, the Colonel was not to be taken in that way. Indeed, the fact
that Arthur had denied with such directness the truth of that brilliant
conjecture the Colonel had made when he saw the picture of Jeannie
rather tended to confirm his belief in his own acuteness. “Meant to put
me off the scent, sir, meant to put me off the scent!” he said, angrily,
as he waited to let his three daughters catch him up at the Guildhall.
And he added, savagely, looking at Maria, who was near collapse: “But he
doesn’t take me in that way!”
But our strategist was not quite certain how to act. The secret joy of
knowing he was right, and had seen through all these flimsy attempts to
baffle him, was gratifying, but it was like money locked up, which he
could not use. On the other hand, he had not enjoyed that moment when,
in the presence of his wife, Arthur had spoken of the absurd and foolish
report which some busybody had invented, and which, so he had heard, had
reached Colonel Raymond. People, so thought the Colonel bitterly, talked
so, and let things get about, and if he again alluded to what he knew so
well about Arthur and Jack Collingwood another interview might occur
between Arthur and himself. It was bad enough when only Mrs. Raymond was
present, but the Colonel turned quite cold at the thought that the next
rendezvous might be at the club, in the presence of all his old cronies.
It was only a timely and unhesitating retreat which had perhaps saved
him the other day on the question of cousinship, and even then he was
far from certain that the others had not suspected some awkwardness.
Colonel Raymond began to feel ill-used. Why should these Aveshams,
particularly that insolent Arthur, come and settle in Wroxton and render
precarious the Colonel’s immemorial position as cousin and friend of
noble families? Why, if they must come, could they not have treated him
more like a cousin, and have told him the truth about this affair,
rather than try to hoodwink him with denials? “Why, the thing was as
plain as the nose on my face!” stormed the Colonel as he ascended the
club steps (and indeed his nose was not beautiful), “and to go and tell
me that Jeannie had never seen young Collingwood, when the very next day
I see them with my own eyes lounging in the public street together, is
an insult to me and a disgrace to them!”
The party at Bolton Street were happily ignorant of these thunderings,
and their tranquility was undisturbed. Jeannie had, indeed, told Arthur
that the Colonel had seen herself and Jack together that afternoon, and
they wondered with some amusement what he would make of it.
“I made myself pretty clear to him yesterday,” said Arthur,
thoughtfully; “but he is a poisonous sort of animal. He is given, I
notice, to repeating himself. I hope he won’t do so, Jeannie, on this
occasion; otherwise I shall have to repeat myself to him. Yet you say
he cut you. That makes the question simpler.”
“Why a gossip is a gossip is more than I can understand,” said Jeannie.
“And where the pleasure of repeating as true what you made up yourself
comes in is altogether beyond me.”
“It is one of the pleasures of the imagination,” said Arthur, taking off
his coat. “Go away and dress, Jeannie, and leave me to do the same. We
shall be late.”
“We always are,” said Jeannie, still lingering. “Isn’t it odd--” and she
paused.
Arthur began unlacing his boots.
“Well?”
“Isn’t it odd that Mrs. Collingwood should be Mr. Collingwood’s mother?”
“It would be odder if she wasn’t,” remarked Arthur.
Miss Fortescue had taken rather a fancy to Jack, and she showed it by
treating him as she treated her nephew and niece--that is to say, she
was rude to him. It was a bad sign for Miss Fortescue to be polite to
any one; it implied she did not like him. But no one could have called
her polite to Jack. She had asked him several questions on very
different subjects during dinner, and to each he had returned an answer
showing he knew something of the various questions. That was Miss
Fortescue’s test.
“Yes, you seem to know,” she said; “in fact, I think you know too much,
Mr. Collingwood. The mind of a well-informed man is a horrible thing. It
is like a curiosity-shop, full of odds and ends which are of no use to
anybody.”
Jeannie and Arthur burst out laughing.
“Answer her back,” said Arthur; “she won’t mind.”
Jack was sensible enough to know that Miss Fortescue could not be so
rude, if her object was to be rude.
“If I had not been able to tell you about pearl-oysters and
Cayenne-pepper,” he said, “you would only have said, ‘The mind of an
ignorant man is a horrible thing. It is like a new jerry-built villa
unfurnished.’”
“Just so,” said Miss Fortescue, “and the owner calls it a desirable
mansion.”
“But what is one to do?” said Jack. “Either one knows about a thing or
one does not. It is a choice between being a jerry-built villa or a
curiosity-shop.”
“Some people,” said Miss Fortescue, “fill their villa with curiosities.
It is possible to be well informed and completely uneducated.”
“Go it, Jack,” said Arthur; “she’s beginning to hit wildly.”
“Am I to apply that to myself?” asked Jack, turning to Miss Fortescue.
“Oh, that is so like an Englishman,” said she. “Whenever you suggest an
idea to an Englishman he cannot consider it in the abstract; he has to
think whether it applies to him.”
“Aunt Em never does that,” observed Jeannie; “she goes on the opposite
tack. If you tell her she is being offensive, quite personally, she
considers offensiveness in the abstract, and makes remarks about true
courtesy.”
“Have some hare, Aunt Em?” said Arthur. “I shot it two days ago.”
“Did you kill it at once?” asked Miss Fortescue.
“No, I wounded it,” said Arthur, quite regardless of truth. “It
screamed.”
“Butcher!” said Aunt Em.
“Shall I give you some?” repeated Arthur.
Miss Fortescue glanced at the menu-card.
“Only a very little,” she said.
“But where is the proper mean, Miss Fortescue?” resumed Jack. “How can
one avoid both being well informed and being ignorant?”
“Well-informed people are those who know about the wrong things,” she
said.
“I and the pearl-oysters, for instance?”
Aunt Em groaned.
“The Englishman again,” she said. “The Englishman abroad! How well that
expresses the Englishman’s attitude toward ideas.”
“And the Englishman at home is the Englishman slaughtering innocent
beasts, I suppose,” said Arthur. “I’ve only given you a very small
piece, Aunt Em.”
“Yes, dear, you have taken me at my word,” said Miss Fortescue,
inspecting her plate. “That is very English, too. We are the heaviest,
most literal nation that ever disgraced this planet.”
“Poor planet!” said Jeannie. “How the people in Mars must look down on
us.”
“And rightly,” sighed Miss Fortescue. “How many Philistines one sees.”
“I’m one,” said Arthur, cheerfully. “Philistia, be thou glad of me!”
Miss Fortescue shook her head.
“Tell me any one you know who is not a Philistine,” said Jack.
Miss Fortescue raised her eyes to the ceiling, but Jack did not
understand the signal.
“Can’t you think of one?” he repeated.
“When Aunt Em raises her eyes,” said Jeannie, “we talk of something
else. Don’t apologize, Mr. Collingwood; you couldn’t have known.”
“A little more hare, Arthur,” said Aunt Em; “about as much as you gave
me before.”
Frank Bennett, Jack, and Arthur had all been up at Magdalen together,
and when the two were left in the smoking-room together Arthur, who only
knew vaguely the story, asked Jack about it.
“You wrote to me, I remember, after his death in May, and told me about
the woman he had lived with. What happened further?”
Jack got up.
“It is all very terrible,” he said. “The girl died only about ten days
ago, in giving birth to a baby. The baby is living. It was about that
that I went to see my mother this afternoon.”
“What did she suggest?”
“An orphanage,” said Jack. “It had been suggested before, and I think it
is quite out of the question. The case is not an orphanage case. There
is plenty of money. I hoped--no, I hardly hoped--that my mother would
suggest that the baby should be brought up in her house, for I owe a
great deal to Frank, and as he is dead without my being able to pay it,
I owe it to his memory. But she did not suggest it. So I think I shall
take the child and bring it up myself.”
He paused.
“Yes, I know there are objections,” he said. “To begin with, people will
talk. Luckily, however, there is nothing in the world which matters so
little as what such people say. The other objections are more
important. It would be better for the child not to be in London. But I
dare say things will work out somehow. For the present, at any rate, I
shall certainly do that. It is bad enough for a child to be fatherless
and nameless. What an ass poor Frank was! And what a good one!”
“What was the girl like?” asked Arthur. “Did you know her?”
“Yes, but very slightly. Oh, I can’t talk about it. She was nice. Frank
meant to marry her--that I know.”
“One means so much,” said Arthur.
“My dear fellow, don’t attempt to be cynical. You make a poor hand of
it; and really I know that he did mean to. But, as my mother pointed
out, that is no excuse.”
Arthur was silent a moment.
“I apologize,” he said; “I am sure you are right. I have an idea--no,
never mind. Have some whisky.”
They sat smoking for a spell without speech.
“You ought to be awfully happy here,” said Jack, at length. “You have a
charming house, and nothing particular to do. How I wish I had been
born a loafer. I have great inclinations that way, but no gift at all.
The real loafer is born, not made. I am always wanting to settle down,
or finish up, or get to work.”
“I want none of these things,” said Arthur, with conviction. “Settling
down, I suppose, means marrying. Are you going to marry, by the way?”
“I am going to do everything that there is to be done,” said Jack, “and
after that I shall find more things to do.”
“And all this in the near future?” he asked.
“You ask as many questions as Miss Fortescue,” said Jack. “I am in dread
of appearing well informed, so I shall not answer them.”
“Don’t. As soon as I know the answer to a question I lose all interest
in it.”
“It’s lucky, then, that you have still so many questions,” observed
Jack. “By the way, your sister did not mind about the picture, did she?
She set me so thoroughly at my ease about it that until this evening it
really never occurred to me that she easily might.”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t,” said Arthur.
“Good. I shall go to bed. When is breakfast?”
Arthur got up and lit a couple of candles.
“Breakfast is when you come down,” he said. “We bind ourselves to
nothing.”