‘Dear Lord Inverbroom,—I am obliged for your favour just to hand, and regret I was out. I should be obliged if you would kindly fulfil the engagement you entered into with me, and put me up for election as agreed. I do not in the least fear the result of the election, and so trust you may be in error about it.‘Faithfully yours,‘Thomas Keeling.’
‘Dear Lord Inverbroom,—I am obliged for your favour just to hand, and regret I was out. I should be obliged if you would kindly fulfil the engagement you entered into with me, and put me up for election as agreed. I do not in the least fear the result of the election, and so trust you may be in error about it.
‘Faithfully yours,‘Thomas Keeling.’
This he read through before posting it. It was a sound business letter, saying just what it set out to say. But he wondered why it lacked that certain aroma of courtesy which distinguished the letter which it answered. He perceived that it was so, but no more knew how to remedy it than he knew how to fly. But he could walk pretty sturdily along the ground, and it required a stalwart push to upset him. And if the undesirable happened, and Lord Inverbroom’s fears proved to be well founded, he knew he had a sound knock ready for the whole assembly of those who collectively thought he was not good enough for them.
‘I’ll find an answer that’s good enough for them,’ he said to himself, as he slipped the letter into his post-box.
In spite of her practice in the conduct of social functions as Lady Mayoress, and her natural aptitude for knowing how to behave suitably, Mrs Keeling had one moment of extremest terror when the Royal Princess came up the steps of the hospital next day, between Keeling and Lord Inverbroom, to where the Lady Mayoress awaited her. Her knees so trembled that though she felt that there would not be the smallest difficulty in sinking down in the curtsey, or indeed in sinking into the earth altogether, she much doubted her power of ever raising herself again, and the gypsophila in the bouquet she was about to present shook so violently that it appeared to be but a gray mist among the daffodils which had been ascertained to be the Princess’s favourite flower. She would have liked to run away, but there was nowhere to run to, and indeed the gorgeous heaviness of her satin gown rendered all active locomotion impossible. Then Her Royal Highness shook her hand, thanked her for the beautiful flowers and inhaled the perfume of the scentless daffodils before giving them to her lady-in-waiting to carry, and Mrs Keeling found herself able to say, ‘Your favourite flowers, Your Royal Highness,’ which broke the spell of her terror. Then followed the declaration that the new wing was open and the tour was made through the empty wards, while Mrs Keeling so swelled with pride and anticipation that she felt that it was she who had been the yetanonymous benefactor. Sometimes she talked to the Princess, sometimes only to Lord Inverbroom, or was even so mindful of her proper place as to drop a condescending word or two to the bishop, whose onlylocus standithere, so she considered, was that he would presently be permitted to say grace. Lining the big hall and in corridors were the ‘common people’ of Bracebridge, Mrs Fyson and that class of person, and naturally Mrs Keeling swept by them, as she had swept by the footmen on that pleasant domestic evening at Lady Inverbroom’s.
Then came the lunch, in the town-hall near by, at which the bishop did his duty, and the guests theirs. There was a table and a raised dais for the principal of those, and on the floor of the hall a dozen others for the less distinguished. Close by against the wall were sitting those of Keeling’s staff who had been bidden to the ceremony, and he had already satisfied himself that Norah was there. Then at the close of lunch came Lord Inverbroom’s speech, and at the close of that the sentence for which Mrs Keeling had been waiting.
‘Your Royal Highness,’ he said, ‘and ladies and gentlemen, I will now ask you to drink the health of the munificent benefactor whose name, by his express desire, has till now remained a secret. I ask you to drink the health of our most honoured Mayor, Mr Thomas Keeling.’
Then followed the usual acclamation, and itwas sweet to the donor’s ears. But sweeter than it all to him was the moment when, as the guests sat down again and he rose to reply, he looked across at the table near the wall, and caught Norah’s eye. Just perceptibly she shook her head at him as if to reproach him with his ingeniousness the day before, but all her face was alight. He had never met so radiant an encounter from her....
Mrs Keeling was almost too superb to speak even to Lord Inverbroom in the interval after lunch, when presentations were made before the Princess drove to the station again. But she could not continue not to speak to anybody any more because of this great exaltation, and she was full of bright things as she went home with her husband.
‘It really all passed off very tolerably,’ she said; ‘do you not think so, my dear? And was it not gratifying? Just as the dear Princess shook hands with me for the second time before she drove away, holding my hand quite a long time, she said, “And I hear your friends will not call you Mrs Keeling very much longer.” Was not that delicately put? How common Lady Inverbroom looked beside her, but, after all, we can’t all be princesses. I was told by the lady-in-waiting, who was a very civil sort of woman indeed, that Her Royal Highness was going to stay with the poor Inverbrooms next month. I can hardly believe that: I should not think it was at all a likely sort of thing to happen, but I felt I really ought to warn Mrs—I did not quite catch her name—what a very poor sort of dinner her mistress would get, if she fared no better than we did. But we must keep our ears open next month to find out if it really does happen, though I dare say we shall be the first to know, for after to-day Lady Inverbroom could scarcely fail to ask us to dine and sleep again.’
‘I cannot conceive why she should do any such thing,’ remarked Keeling.
‘My dear, you are too modest. You may be sure Lady Inverbroom would be only too glad to get somebody to interest and amuse the Princess, for she has no great fund of wit and ability herself. I saw the Princess laughing three times at something you said to her, and I dare say I missed other occasions. Did you see her pearls? Certainly they were very fine, and I’m sure we can take it for granted they were genuine, but I saw none among them, and I had a good look at them before and behind, that would match my pearl pendant.’
They drove on a little way in silence, for Mrs Keeling’s utterance got a little choked up with pride and gratification, like a congested gutter, and in all her husband’s mental equipment there was nothing that could be responsive to these futilities. They evoked nothing whatever in him; he had not the soil from which they sprang, which Mrs Keeling had carted into her own psychical garden in such abundance since she had become Lady Mayoress. Besides, for the present therewas nothing real to him, not the lunch, not the public recognition, not the impending Club election, except that moment when he had fixed Norah’s glance, drawn it to himself as on an imperishable thread across the crowded rooms, when he rose to reply. He almost wished his wife would go on talking again: her babble seemed to build a wall round him, which cutting him off by its inanity from other topics that might engage him, left him alone with Norah. Very soon his wish was fully gratified.
‘How one frightens oneself for no reason,’ she said. ‘I declare when the Princess came up the steps, I was ready to run away. But it all passed in a moment, and by the time I had said, “Your favourite flowers, ma’am,”—did I tell you I said, “Your favourite flowers, ma’am?” and she gave me such a sweet smile, I felt as if I had known her for years. There are some sorts of people with whom I feel at home at once, and that was how I felt this morning. It must be very pleasant always to go about such people, and I declare I quite envied her lady-in-waiting, though if I was she I should certainly have something done to my teeth. I must run round and see Mamma this afternoon, and I should not wonder if I paid a few calls as well, for I am sure everybody will be pining to know what the Princess said all the time we were having a talk together over our coffee. I must try to recollect every word of that, thoughI am sure I shall find difficulty in doing so, for we chattered away as if we had known each other all our lives.’
‘I dare say you will recollect it very well, my dear,’ said he, ‘if you give your mind to it. And if you cannot remember you can make it up.’
‘Well, if that isn’t a rude speech! But perhaps you’re tired, Thomas, with all this grandeur. For me, I never felt fresher in my life: it comes quite natural to me.’
‘No, I am not the least tired,’ he said. ‘As soon as I have changed my clothes, I shall go down to my office.’
‘Pray leave that for another day. I cannot bear to think of your demeaning yourself with business after what we have been doing: I do not think it is quite respectful to the Princess.’
Suddenly the babble that he had rather welcomed became intolerable. It had cut him off from the world, as if some thick swarm of flies had settled outside the window, utterly obscuring the outlook. Now, in a moment the window seemed to have been opened, and they swarmed in, buzzing about and settling on him.
‘And where should we have been if I hadn’t demeaned myself with business?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t the new wing of the hospital and your pearl pendant, and your chatting like an old friend to a Princess all come out of my demeaning myself?’
Mrs Keeling paid no attention to this: she hardly heard.
‘And if she does come to stay with the Inverbrooms,’ she said, ‘I have no doubt she will express a wish to take lunch with us. We must see about getting a butler, Thomas. Parkinson is a good servant, but I should not like it to be known at court that I only kept a parlour maid.’
The carriage had stopped at the Gothic porch, and Keeling got out.
‘I will promise to let you have twenty butlers on the day she lunches with us,’ he said. ‘Come, get out, Emmeline, and take care how you walk. There’s something gone to your head. It may be champagne or it may be the Princess. I suspect it’s the Princess, and you’re intoxicated. Go indoors, and sleep it off, and let me find you sober at dinner-time. Take my arm.’
‘My dear, what things you say! I am ashamed of you, though I know it’s only your fun. The carriage must wait for me. I shall pay a call or two and then take a drive through the town. I think the citizens would feel it to be my duty to do that.’
Keeling found that Norah had got back to his office when he arrived, and was busy at the typewriting of the letters he had dictated to her that morning. She was in the little room opening off his, and the door was shut, but her presence wasindicated by the muffled clacking of her machine. That sound was infinitely more real to him than what he thought of as ‘the flummeries’ of the day, and he was far more interested in how she would take the divulging of the donor’s name than how all the rest of the town would take it. The significance which it held for him on account of the honour that would come to him, or on account of this matter of his election to the Club, mattered nothing in comparison to how she took it. He was determined to make no allusion to it himself, he would leave it to her to state the revision of her views about his support of the hospital.
While he waited for the completion of her work, he occupied himself with businesses that demanded his scrutiny, but all the while his ear was pricked to listen to the sound of her typewriting machine, or rather to listen for the silence of its cessation, for that would mean that Norah would presently come in with the letters for his signature. There was nothing in his work that demanded a close grip of his mind, and beneath the mechanical attention that he gave it, memory like some deep-water undertow was flowing on its own course past the hidden subaqueous landscape. There was a whole stretch of scenery there out of sight of the surface of his life. Till she had come into it, there was no man who possessed less of a secret history: he had his hobby of books as all the world knew, his blameless domestic conduct, his hardPuritan morality and religion, his integrity and success in money-making and keen business faculty. That was all there was to him. But now he had dived below that, yet without making any break in the surface. All that he had done and been before continued its uninterrupted course; his life beneath the deep waters did not make itself known by as much as a bubble coming to the surface.
Gradually, while still his ear was alert to catch the silence next door which would show that Norah had finished her work, his surface-faculties moved more slowly and drowsily. The page he was reading, concerning some estimate, lay long unturned before him, and his eye ceased to travel along the lines that no longer conveyed any meaning to him. It was not the ceremony of to-day that occupied him, nor the moment when all Bracebridge knew that it was he who had made this munificent gift. Those things formed but the vaguest of backgrounds, in which too a veiled hatred of his wife was mingled: in front of that grey mist was the sunlit windy down, the skylark, the tufts of blue-bell foliage, and the companionship which gave them all their significance. And how significant, he now asked himself, were these same things to his companion? Did they mean anything to her because of him? True, she had silently and unconsciously taken him into her confidence when they listened togetherto the sky-lost song, but would not anybody else, her brother for instance, have done just as well? Did her heart want him? He had no answer to that.
And what, if it was possible to introduce the hard angles of practical issues into these suffused dimnesses, was to be the end or even the continuation of this critical yet completely uneventful history? All the conduct, the habit, the traditions of his life were in utter discord with it. If he looked at it, even as far as it had gone, in the hard dry light which hitherto had guided him in his life, he could hardly think it credible that it was the case of Thomas Keeling which was under his scrutiny. But even more unconjecturable was the outcome. He could see no path of any sort ahead. If by some chance momentous revelation he knew that she wanted him with that quality of wanting which was his, what would happen? His whole reasonable and upright self revolted from the idea of clandestine intrigue, and with hardly less emphasis did it reject the idea of an honest, open, and deplorable break-up of his well-earned reputation and respectability. He could not really contemplate either course, but of the two the first was a shade the farther away from the confines of possibility. And if some similar revelation told him that he was nothing to Norah beyond a kind, just employer with certain tastes and perceptions akin to her own? There was no paththere either: he could not see how to proceed.... But he experienced no sense of self-censure in having got himself into this impossible place. It had not been his fault: only those who were quite ignorant of the nature of love could blame him for loving. A fish who did not need the air might as well say to a drowning man, ‘It is quite unnecessary to breathe; you have only to make a determined effort, and convince yourself that you needn’t breathe. Look at me: I don’t breathe, and I swim about in the utmost comfort. It is very wrong to breathe!’
Then suddenly all surmise and speculation was expunged from his mind, for no longer the clack of the typewriting machine came from next door. He heard the stir of a chair pushed back, and the rattle of a door handle. Norah was coming; who was of greater concern than all his thoughts about her.... And he was going to give her no quarter: she would have to introduce the subject of her feelings with regard to his niggardly hospital-subscription herself. He knew something of her pride from the affair of the book-plate, and he longed to see her take that armour off.
He looked rather grimly at his watch.
‘You are rather late,’ he said.
Apparently the breast-plate was not to be taken off just yet. She answered him as she had not answered him for many weeks.
‘I am afraid I am, sir,’ she said. ‘But you kindly invited me to go to the luncheon and the opening of the new wing. I have been working ever since.’
He delighted in her, in the astonishing irony of her calling him ‘sir’ again. He had deserved it too, for he had spoken to her with the old office manner.
‘Have you them ready for me now?’ he asked, keeping the farce up.
‘Yes, sir. They only want your signature.’
He drew the sheets towards him, and began signing in silence, wondering when she proposed to say how sorry she was for misjudging him about his generosity. Surely he could not have misinterpreted that radiant glance she gave him when he rose to reply to the toast of his health.
She had gone back for a moment into her room to fetch the pile of directed envelopes which she had forgotten. Most injudiciously he allowed himself a swift glance at her as she re-entered, and saw beyond doubt that the corners of her mouth were twitching, that her eyes danced with some merriment that she could not completely control. His own face was better in command, and he knew he wore his grimmest aspect as he continued glancing through her typed letters and scrawling his name at the foot. As usual, she took each sheet from him, blotted it, and put it into its envelope. She always refused to use the littlepiece of damped sponge for the gumming of the envelopes, but employed the tip of her tongue.
‘Is that all?’ he said, when he had gone through the pile.
‘Yes, sir.’
He rose. Had he been wrong about the glance he had got from her? If so, he might have been wrong in everything that concerned her from the first day of her appearance here.
‘I shall be getting home then,’ he said.
At the door he turned back again. Once more she had beaten him.
‘Look here, Miss Propert,’ he said. ‘There’s enough of this.’
She laughed straight out.
‘Oh, I am so glad you said that,’ she said. ‘I was going to let you turn the door-handle before I spoke.’
He put down his hat again.
‘Oh, you were, were you?’ he said. ‘Well, what were you going to say when I did turn the door-handle?’
‘I think you are rather brutal,’ she said. ‘You don’t help me out at all.’
‘Not an atom,’ he said.
‘You know quite well. First I was going to apologise for all the thoughts that had ever been in my mind about you and the hospital. I wasan utter fool not to have known that you were the most generous——’
He interrupted her.
‘Never mind that.’
‘But I do mind that. It was idiotic of me, and it was ungrateful of me. I should have known you better than that.’
She came a step closer.
‘Will you forgive me?’ she said. ‘I adored that moment when your name was announced. I felt so proud of serving you.’
He held out his hand.
‘That is very friendly of you,’ he said. ‘But we are friends, aren’t we?’
And again she looked at him with that brightness and radiance in her face that he had seen once before only.
Itis 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 swelledin 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 whichhis 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 wasthe 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 atonce. 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 therewas 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 yetgiven 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 thewilderness, 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 notone 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.’
‘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,
‘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 onirremediable 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 shruggedhis 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 oftea 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 backinto 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 isex officioa 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 letterof 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 aletter 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 itex 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 aman 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 eventuallyinduced 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 causesprobably 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 bundledinto 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 beento 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 ofsortes Virgilianæmight 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 MissPropert 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 somehowaffected 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 timehad 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 industriousneedle. 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, thehortus 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 somethingin 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 hadexpressed 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 badehim 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.