"But I thought you didn't want to have any more furniture arranging to do," Hilda contested, acrimoniously. "There are two quite empty rooms at the other end of the passage."
"Yes, but I like the room in which the apples are. John will appreciate my desire for a sympathetic milieu."
"Come, come, we will move the apples," John promised, hurriedly.
Better that the apples should roll from room to room eternally than that he should be driven into offering Laurence a corner of the library, for he suspected that notwithstanding the disclaimer this was his brother-in-law's real objective.
"It doesn't say anything about apples in the encyclopedia," muttered Harold in an aggrieved voice."Apoplexy treatment of, Apothecaries measure, Appetite loss of. This may be due to general debility, irregularity in meals, overwork, want of exercise, constipation, and many other...."
"Goodness gracious me, whatever has the boy got hold of?" exclaimed his grandmother.
"Grandmama, if you mix Lanoline with an equal quantity of Sulphur you can cure Itch," Harold went on with his spectacles glued to the page. "And, oh, Grandmama, you know you told me not to make a noise the other day because your heart was weak. Well, you're suffering from flatulence.The encyclopedia says that many people who are suffering from flatulence think they have heart disease."
"Will no one stop the child?" Grandmama pleaded.
Laurence snatched away the book from his nephew and put it in his pocket.
"That book is mine, I believe, Harold," he said, firmly, and not even Hilda dared protest, so majestic was Laurence and so much fluttered was poor Grandmama.
John seized the opportunity to make his escape; but when he was at last seated before his table the feet of the first act limped pitiably; Laurence had trodden with all his might upon their toes; his work that morning was chiropody, not composition, and bungling chiropody at that. After lunch Laurence was solemnly inducted to his new study, and he may have been conscious of an ecclesiastical parallel in the manner of his taking possession, for he made a grave joke about it.
"Let us hope that I shall not be driven out of my new living by being too—ah—broad."
His wife did not realize that he was being droll and had drawn down her lips to an expression of pained sympathy, when she saw the others all laughing and Laurence smiling his acknowledgments; her desperate effort to change the contours of her face before Laurence noticed her failure to respond sensibly gave the impression that she had nearly swallowed a loose tooth.
"Perhaps you'd like me to bring up your tea, dear, so that you won't be disturbed?" she suggested.
"Ah, tea ..." murmured Laurence. "Let me see. It's now a quarter-past two. Tea is at half-past four. I will come down for half an hour. That will give me a clear two hours before dinner. If I allow a quarter of an hour for arranging my table, that will give me four hours in all. Perhaps considering my strenuous morning four hours will be enough for the first day. I don't like the notion of working after dinner," he added to John.
"No?" queried John, doubtfully. He had hoped that his brother-in-law would feel inspired by the port: it was easy enough to avoid him in the afternoon, especially since on the first occasion that he had been taken for a drive in the new dogcart he had evidently been imbued with a detestation of driving that would probably last for the remainder of his life; in fact he was talking already of wanting to sell Primrose and the vicarage chaise.
"Though of course on some evenings I may not be able to help it," added Laurence. "I mayhaveto work."
"Of course you may," John assented, encouragingly. "I dare say there'll be evenings when the mere idea of waiting even for coffee will make you fidgety. You mustn't lose the mood, you know."
"No, of course, I appreciate that."
"There's nothing so easily lost as the creative gift, Balzac said."
"Did he?" Laurence murmured, anxiously. "But I promise you I shall let nothing interfere with meif—" the conjunction fizzed from his mouth like soda from a syphon, "ifI'm in the—ah—mood. The mood—yes—ah—precisely." His brow began to lower; the mood was upon him; and everybody stole quietly from the room. They had scarcely reached the head of the stairs when the door opened again and Laurence called after Edith: "I should prefer that whoever brings me news of tea merely knocks without coming in. I shall assume that a knock upon my door means tea. But I don't wish anybody to come in."
Laurence disappeared. He seemed under the influence of a strong mental aphrodisiac and was evidently guaranteeing himself against being discovered in an embarrassing situation with his Muse.
"This is very good for me," thought John. "It has taught me how easily a man may make a confounded ass of himself without anybody's raising a finger to warn him. I hope I didn't give that sort of impression to those two women on board. I shall have to watch myself very carefully in future."
At this moment Emily announced that Lawyer Deacle was waiting to see Mr. Touchwood, which meant that the twenty-acre field was at last his. The legal formalities were complete; that very afternoon John had the pleasure of watching the fierce little Kerry cows munch the last grass they would ever munch in his field. But it was nearly dusk when they were driven home, and John lost five balls in celebrating his triumph with a brassy.
Laurence appeared at tea in a velveteen coat, which probably provided the topic for the longest whisper that even Frida had ever been known to utter.
"Come, come, Frida," said her father. "You won't disturb us by saying aloud what you want to say." He had leaned over majestically to emphasize his rebuke and in doing so brushed with his sleeve Grandmama's wrist.
"Goodness, it's a cat," the old lady cried, with a shudder. "I shall have to go away from here, Johnnie, if you have a cat in the house. I'd rather have mice all over me than one of those horrid cats. Ugh! the nasty thing!"
She was not at all convinced of her mistake even when persuaded to stroke her son-in-law's coat.
"I hope it's been properly shooed out. Harold, please look well under all the chairs, there's a good boy."
During the next few days John felt that he was being in some indefinable way ousted by Laurence from the spiritual mastery of his own house. John was averse from according to his brother-in-law a greater forcefulness of character than he could ascribe to himself; if he had to admit that he really was being supplanted somehow, he preferred to search for the explanation in the years of theocratic prestige that gave a background to the all-pervasiveness of that sacerdotal personality. Yet ultimately the impression of his own relegation to a secondary place remained elusive and incommunicable. He could not for instance grumble that the times of the meals were being altered nor complain that in the smallest detail the domestic mechanism was being geared up or down to suit Laurence; the whole sensation was essentiallyof a spiritual eviction, and the nearest he could get to formulating his resentment (though perhaps resentment was too definite a word for this vague uneasiness) was his own gradually growing opinion that of all those at present under the Ambles roof Laurence was the most important. This loss of importance was bad for John's work, upon which it soon began to exert a discouraging influence, because he became doubtful of his own position, hypercritical of his talent, and timid about his social ability. He began to meditate the long line of failures to dramatize the immortal tale of Joan of Arc immortally, to see himself dangling at the end of this long line of ineptitudes and to ask himself whether bearing in mind the vastness of even our own solar system it was really worth while writing at all. It could not be due to anything or anybody but Laurence, this sense of his own futility; not even when a few years ago he had reached the conclusion that as a realistic novelist he was a failure had he been so profoundly conscious of his own insignificance in time and space.
"I shall have to go away if I'm ever to get on with this play," he told himself.
Yet still so indefinite was his sense of subordinacy at Ambles that he accused his liver (an honest one that did not deserve the reproach) and bent over his table again with all the determination he could muster. The concrete fact was still missing; his capacity for self-deception was still robust enough to persuade him that it was all a passing fancy, and he might have gone plodding on at Ambles for the rest of the winter if one morning about a week after Laurence had begun to write, the door of his own library had not opened to the usurper, manuscript in hand.
"I don't like to interrupt you, my dear fellow.... I know you have your own work to consider ... but I'm anxious for your opinion—in fact I should like to read you my first act."
It was useless to resist: if it were not now, it would be later.
"With pleasure," said John. Then he made one effort. "Though I prefer reading to myself."
"That would involve waiting for the typewriter. Yes, my screed is—ah—difficult to make out. And I've indulged in a good many erasures and insertions. No, I think you'd better let me read it to you."
John indicated a chair and looked out of the window longingly at the birds, as patients in the hands of a dentist regard longingly the sparrows in the dingy evergreens of the dentist's back garden.
"When we had our little talk the other day," Laurence began, "you will remember that I spoke of a drama I had already written, of which the disciple Thomas was the protagonist. This drama notwithstanding the probably obstructive attitude of the Lord Chamberlain I have rewritten, or rather I have rewritten the first act. I call the play—ah—Thomas."
"It sounds a little trivial for such a serious subject, don't you think?" John suggested. "I mean, Thomas has come to be associated in so many people's minds with footmen. Wouldn'tSaint Thomasbe better, and really rather more respectful? Many people still have a great feeling of reverence for apostles."
"No, no,Thomasit is:Thomasit must remain. You have forgotten perhaps that I told you he was the prototype of the man in the street. It is the simplicity, the unpretentiousness of the title that for me gives it a value. Well, to resume.Thomas. A play in four acts. By Laurence Armytage.By the way, I'm going to spell my name with a y in future. Poetic license. Ha-ha! I shall not advertise the change in theTimes. But I think it looks more literary with a y.Act the First. Scene the First. The shore of the Sea of Galilee.I say nothing else. I don't attempt to describe it. That is what I have learnt from Shakespeare. This modern passion for description can only injure the greatness of the theme.Enter from the left the Virgin Mary."
"Enter who?" asked John in amazement.
"The Virgin Mary. The mother ..."
"Yes, I know who she is, but ... well, I'm not a religious man, Laurence, in fact I've not been to church since I was a boy ... but ... no, no, you can't do that."
"Why not?"
"It will offend people."
"I want to offend people," Laurence intoned. "If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out."
"Well, you did," said John. "You put in ayinstead."
"I'm not jesting, my dear fellow."
"Nor am I," said John. "What I want you to understand is that you can't bring the Virgin Mary on the stage. Why, I'm even doubtful about Joan of Arc's vision of the Archangel Michael. Some people may object, though I'm counting on his being generally taken for St. George."
"I know that you are writing a play about Joan of Arc, but—and I hope you'll not take unkindly what I'm going to say—but Joan of Arc can never be more than a pretty piece of medievalism, whereas Thomas ..."
John gave up, and the next morning he told the household that he was called back to London on business.
"Perhaps I shall have some peace here," he sighed, looking round at his dignified Church Row library.
"Mrs. James called earlier this morning, sir, and said not to disturb you, but she hoped you'd had a comfortable journey and left these flowers, and Mrs. George has telephoned from the theater to say she'll be here almost directly."
"Thank you, Mrs. Worfolk," John said. "Perhaps Mrs. George will be taking lunch."
"Yes, sir, I expect she will," said his housekeeper.
MRS. GEORGE TOUCHWOOD—or as she was known on the stage, Miss Eleanor Cartright—was big-boned, handsome, and hawklike, with the hungry look of the ambitious actress who is drawing near to forty—she was in fact thirty-seven—and realizes that the disappointed adventuresses of what are called strong plays are as near as she will ever get to the tragedy queens of youthful aspiration. Such an one accustomed to flash her dark eyes in defiance of a morally but not esthetically hostile gallery and to have the whole of a stage for the display of what well-disposed critics hailed as vitality and cavaliers condemned as lack of repose, such an one in John's tranquil library was, as Mrs. Worfolk put it, "rather too much of a good thing and no mistake"; and when Eleanor was there, John experienced as much malaise as he would have experienced from being shut up in a housemaid's closet with a large gramophone and the housemaid. This claustrophobia, however, was the smallest strain that his sister-in-law inflicted upon him; she affected his heart and his conscience more acutely, because he could never meet her without a sensation of guilt on account of his not yet having found a part for her in any of his plays, to which was added the fear he always felt in her presence that soon or late he should from sheer inability to hold out longer award her the leading part in his play. George had often seriously annoyed him by his unwillingness to help himself; but at the thought of being married for thirteen years to Eleanor he had always excused his brother's flaccid dependence.
"George is a bit of a sponge," James had once said, "but Eleanor! Eleanor is the roughest and toughest loofah that was ever known. She is irritant and absorbent at the same time, and by gad, she has the appearance of a loofah."
The prospect of Eleanor's company at lunch on the morning after his return to town gave John a sensation of having escaped the devil to fall into the deep sea, of having jumped from the frying-pan into the fire, in fact of illustrating every known proverbial attempt to express the distinction without the difference.
"It's a great pity that Eleanor didn't marry Laurence," he thought. "Each would have kept the other well under, and she could have played Mary Magdalene in that insane play of his. And, by Jove, if theyhadmarried, neither of them would have been a relation! Moreover, if Laurence had been caught by Eleanor, Edith might never have married at all and could have kept house for me. And if Edith hadn't married, Hilda mightn't have married, and then Harold would never have been born."
John's hard pruning of his family-tree was interrupted by a sense of the house's having been attacked by an angry mob—an illusion that he had learnt to connect with his sister-in-law's arrival. To make sure, however, he went out on the landing and called down to know if anything was the matter.
"Mrs. George is having some trouble with the taxi-man, sir," explained Maud, who was holding the front-door open and looking apprehensively at the pictures that were clattering on the walls in the wind.
"Why does she take taxis?" John muttered, irritably. "She can't afford them, and there's no excuse for such extravagance when the tube is so handy."
At this moment Eleanor reached the door, on the threshold of which she turned like Medea upon Jason to have the last word with the taxi-driver before the curtain fell.
"Did Mr. Touchwood get my message?" she was asking.
"Yes, yes," John called down. "I'm expecting you to lunch."
When he watched Eleanor all befurred coming upstairs, he felt not much less nervous than a hunter of big gameface to face with his first tiger; the landing seemed to wobble like a howdah; now he had fired and missed, and she was embracing him as usual. How many times at how many meetings with Eleanor had he tried unsuccessfully to dodge that kiss—which always seemed improper whether because her lips were too red, or too full, he could never decide, though he always felt when he was released that he ought to beg her husband's pardon.
"You were an old beast not to come and see us when you got back from America; but never mind, I'm awfully glad to see you, all the same."
"Thank you very much, Eleanor. Why are you glad?"
"Oh, you sarcastic old bear!"
This perpetual suggestion of his senility was another trick of Eleanor's that he deplored; dash it, he was two years younger than George, whom she called Georgieboy.
"No, seriously," Eleanor went on. "I was just going to wire and ask if I could send the kiddies down to the country. Lambton wants me for a six weeks' tour before Xmas, and I can't leave them with Georgie. You see, if this piece catches on, it means a good shop for me in the new year."
"Yes, I quite understand your point of view," John said. "But what I don't understand is why Bertram and Viola can't stay with their father."
"But George is ill. Surely you got my letter?"
"I didn't realize that the presence of his children might prove fatal. However, send them down to Ambles by all means."
"Oh, but I'd much rather not after the way Hilda wrote to me, and now that you've come back there's no need."
"I don't quite understand."
"Well, you won't mind having them here for a short visit? Then they can go down to Ambles for the Christmas holidays."
"But the Christmas holidays won't begin for at least six weeks."
"I know."
"But you don't propose that Bertram and Viola should spend six weeks here?"
"They'll be no bother, you old crosspatch. Bertram will be at school all day, and I suppose that Maud or Elsa will always be available to take Viola to her dancing-lessons. You remember the dancing-lessons you arranged for?"
"I remember that I accepted the arrangement," said John.
"Well, she's getting on divinely, and it would be a shame to interrupt them just now, especially as she's in the middle of a Spanish series. Hercachuchais ..." Eleanor could only blow a kiss to express what Viola'scachuchawas. "But then, of course, I had a Spanish grandmother."
When John regarded her barbaric personality he could have credited her with being the granddaughter of a cannibal queen.
"So I thought that her governess could come here every morning just as easily as to Earl's Court. In fact, it will be more convenient, or at any rate, equally convenient for her, because she lives at Kilburn."
"I dare say it will be equally convenient for the governess," said John, sardonically.
"And I thought," Eleanor continued, "that it would be a good opportunity for Viola to have French lessons every afternoon. You won't want to have her all the time with you, and the French governess can give the children their tea. That will be good for Bertram's accent."
"I don't doubt that it will be superb for Bertram's accent, but I absolutely decline to have a French governess bobbing in and out of my house. It's bound to make trouble with the servants who always think that French governesses are designing and licentious, and I don't want to create a false impression."
"Well, aren't you an old prude? Who would ever think that you had any sort of connection with the stage? By the way, you haven't told me if there'll be anything for me in your next."
"Well, at present the subject of my next play is a secret ... and as for the cast...."
John was so nearly on the verge of offering Eleanor the part of Mary of Anjou, for which she would be as suitable as a giraffe, that in order to effect an immediate diversion he asked her when the children were to arrive.
"Let me see, to-day's Saturday. To-morrow I go down to Bristol, where we open. They'd better come to-night, because to-morrow being Sunday they'll have no lessons, which will give them time to settle down. Georgie will be glad to know they're with you."
"I've no doubt he'll be enchanted," John agreed.
The bell sounded for lunch, and they went downstairs.
"I've got to be back at the theater by two," Eleanor announced, looking at the horridly distorted watch upon her wrist. "I wonder if we mightn't ask Maud to open half-a-bottle of champagne? I'm dreadfully tired."
John ordered a bottle to be opened; he felt rather tired himself.
"Let us be quite clear about this arrangement," he began, when after three glasses of wine he felt less appalled by the prospect, and had concluded that after all Bertram and Viola would not together be as bad as Laurence with his play, not to mention Harold with his spectacles and entomology, his interrogativeness and his greed. "The English governess will arrive every morning for Viola. What is her name?"
"Miss Coldwell."
"Miss Coldwell then will be responsible for Viola all the morning. The French governess is canceled, and I shall come to an arrangement with Miss Coldwell by which she will add to her salary by undertaking all responsibility for Viola until Viola is in bed. Bertram will go to school, and I shall rely upon Miss Coldwell to keep an eye on his behavior at home."
"And don't forget the dancing-lessons."
"No, I had Madame What's-her-name's account last week."
"I mean, don't forget to arrange for Viola to go."
"That pilgrimage will, I hope, form a part of what Miss Coldwell would probably call 'extras.' And after all perhaps George will soon be fit."
"The poor old boy has been awfully seedy all the summer."
"What's he suffering from? Infantile paralysis?"
"It's all very well for you to joke about it, but you don't live in a wretched boarding-house in Earl's Court. You mustn't let success spoil you, John. It's so easy when everything comes your way to forget the less fortunate people. Look at me. I'm thirty-four, you know."
"Are you really? I should never have thought it."
"I don't mind your laughing at me, you old crab. But I don't like you to laugh at Georgie."
"I never do," John said. "I don't suppose that there's anybody alive who takes George as seriously as I do."
Eleanor brushed away a tear and said she must get back to the rehearsal.
When she was gone John felt that he had been unkind, and he reproached himself for letting Laurence make him cynical.
"The fact is," he told himself, "that ever since I heard Doris Hamilton make that remark in the saloon of theMurmania, I've become suspicious of my family. She began it, and then by ill luck I was thrown too much with Laurence, who clinched it. Eleanor is right: Iamletting myself be spoilt by success. After all, there's no reason why those two children shouldn't come here.Theywon't be writing plays about apostles. I'll send George a box of cigars to show that I didn't mean to sneer at him. And why didn't I offer to pay for Eleanor's taxi? Yes, I am getting spoilt. I must watch myself. And I ought not to have joked about Eleanor's age."
Luckily his sister-in-law had finished the champagne, for if John had drunk another glass he might have offered her the part of the Maid herself.
The actual arrival of Bertram and Viola passed off moresuccessfully. They were both presentable, and John was almost flattered when Mrs. Worfolk commented on their likeness to him, remembering what a nightmare it had always seemed when Hilda used to excavate points of resemblance between him and Harold. Mrs. Worfolk herself was so much pleased to have him back from Ambles that she was in the best of good humours, and even the statuesque Maud flushed with life like some Galatea.
"I think Maud's a darling, don't you, Uncle John?" exclaimed Viola.
"We all appreciate Maud's—er—capabilities," John hemmed.
He felt that it was a silly answer, but inasmuch as Maud was present at the time he could not, either for his sake or for hers give an unconditional affirmative.
"I swopped four blood-allys for an Indian in the break," Bertram announced.
"With an Indian, my boy, I suppose you mean."
"No, I don't. I mean for an Indian—an Indian marble. And I swopped four Guatemalas for two Nicaraguas."
"You ought to be at the Foreign Office."
"But the ripping thing is, Uncle John, that two of the Guatemalas are fudges."
"Such a doubtful coup would not debar you from a diplomatic career."
"And I say, what is the Foreign Office? We've got a French chap in my class."
"You ask for an explanation of the Foreign Office. That, my boy, might puzzle the omniscience of the Creator."
"I say, I don't twig very well what you're talking about."
"The attributes of the Foreign Office, my boy, are rigidity where there should be suppleness, weakness where there should be firmness, and for intelligence the substitution of hair brushed back from the forehead."
"I say, you're ragging me, aren't you? No, really, what is the Foreign Office?"
"It is the ultimate preserve of a privileged imbecility."
Bertram surrendered, and John congratulated himself upon the possession of a nephew whose perseverance and curiosity had been sapped by a scholastic education.
"Harold would have tackled me word by word during one of our walks. I shall enter into negotiations with Hilda at Christmas to provide for his mental training on condition that I choose the school. Perhaps I shall hear of a good one in the Shetland Islands."
When Mrs. Worfolk visited John as usual at ten o'clock to wish him good-night, she was enthusiastic about Bertram and Viola.
"Well, really, sir, if yaul pardon the liberty, I must say I wouldn't never of believed that Mrs. George's childrencouldbe so quiet and nice-behaved. They haven't given a bit of trouble, and I've never heard Maud speak so highly of anyone as of Miss Viola. 'That child's a regular little angel, Mrs. Worfolk,' she said to me. Well, sir, I'm bound to say that children does brighten up a house. I'm sure I've done my best what with putting flowers in all the vawses and one thing and another, but really, well I'm quite taken with your little nephew and niece, and I've had some experience of them, I mean to say, what with my poor sister's Herbert and all. Ihaveput the tantalus ready. Good-night, sir."
"The fact of the matter is," John assured himself, "that when I'm alone with them I can manage children perfectly. I only hope that Miss Coldwell will fall in with my ideas. If she does, I see no reason why we shouldn't spend an extremely pleasant time all together."
Unfortunately for John's hope of a satisfactory coalition with the governess he received a hurried note by messenger from his sister-in-law next morning to say that Miss Coldwell was laid up: the precise disease was illegible in Eleanor's communication, but it was serious enough to keep Miss Coldwell at home for three weeks. "Meanwhile," Eleanor wrote, "she is trying to get her sister to come down from"—the abode of the sister was equally illegible. "But the mostimportant thing is," Eleanor went on, "that little V. shouldn't miss her dancing-lessons. So will you arrange for Maud to take her every Tuesday and Friday? And, of course, if there's anything you want to know, there's always George."
Of George's eternal being John had no doubts; of his knowledge he was less sanguine: the only thing that George had ever known really well was the moment to lead trumps.
"However," said John, in consultation with his housekeeper, "I dare say we shall get along."
"Oh, certainly we shall, sir," Mrs. Worfolk confidently proclaimed, "well, I mean to say, I've been married myself."
John bowed his appreciation of this fact.
"And though I never had the happiness to have any little toddlers of my own, anyone being married gets used to the idea of having children. There's always the chance, as you might say. It isn't like as if I was an old maid, though, of course, my husband died in Jubilee year."
"Did he, Mrs. Worfolk, did he?"
"Yes, sir, he planed off his thumb when he was working on one of the benches for the stands through him looking round at a black fellow in a turban covered in jewelry who was driving to Buckingham Palace. One of the new arrivals, it was; and his arm got blood poisoning. That's how I remember it was Jubilee year, though usually I'm a terror for knowing when anything did occur. He wouldn't of minded so much, he said, only he was told it was the Char of Persia and that made him mad."
"Why? What had he got against the Shah?"
"He hadn't got nothing against the Char. But it wasn't the Char; and if he'd of known it wasn't the Char he never wouldn't of turned round so quick, and there's no saying he wouldn't of been alive to this day. No, sir, don't you worry about this governess. I dare say if she'd of come she'd only of caused a bit of unpleasantness all round."
At the same time, John thought, when he sent for thechildren in order to make the announcement of Miss Coldwell's desertion, notwithstanding Mrs. Worfolk's optimism it was a pity that the first day of their visit should be a Sunday.
"I'm sorry to say, Viola, and, of course, Bertram, this applies equally to you, that poor Miss Coldwell has been taken very ill."
That strange expression upon the children's faces might be an awkward attempt to express their youthful sympathy, but it more ominously resembled a kind of gloating ecstacy, as they stood like two cherubs outside the gates of paradise, or two children outside a bunshop.
"Very ill," John went on, "so ill indeed that it is feared she will not be able to come for a few days, and so...."
Whatever more John would have said was lost in the riotous acclamations with which Bertram and Viola greeted the sad news. After the first cries and leaps of joy had subsided to a chanted duet, which ran somehow like this:
"Oh, oh, Miss Coldwell,
She can't come to Hampstead,
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,
Miss Coldwell's not coming:"
John ventured to rebuke the singers for their insensibility to human suffering.
"For she may be dangerously ill," he protested.
"Howfizzing," Bertram shouted.
"She might die."
The prospect that this opened before Bertram was apparently too beautiful for any verbal utterance, and he remained open-mouthed in a mute and exquisite anticipation of liberty.
"What and never come to us ever again?" Viola breathed, her blue eyes aglow with visions of a larger life.
John shook his head, gravely.
"Oh, Uncle John," she cried, "wouldn't that be glorious?"
Bertram's heart was too full for words: he simply turned head over heels.
"But you hard-hearted little beasts," their uncle expostulated.
"She's most frightfully strict," Viola explained.
"Yes, we shouldn't have been able to do anything decent if she'd come," Bertram added.
A poignant regret for that unknown governess suffering from her illegible complaint pierced John's mind. But perhaps she would recover, in which case she should spend her convalescence at Ambles with Harold; for if when in good health she was strict, after a severe illness she might be ferocious.
"Well, I'm not at all pleased with your attitude," John declared. "And you'll find me twice as strict as Miss Coldwell."
"Oh, no, we shan't," said Bertram with a smile of jovial incredulity.
John let this contradiction pass: it seemed an imprudent subject for debate. "And now, to-day being Sunday, you'd better get ready for church."
"Oh, but we always dress up on Sunday," Viola said.
"So does everybody," John replied. "Go and get ready."
The children left the room, and he rang for Mrs. Worfolk.
"Master Bertram and Miss Viola will shortly be going to church, and I want you to arrange for somebody to take them."
Mrs. Worfolk hesitated.
"Who was you thinking of, sir?"
"I wasn't thinking of anybody in particular, but I suppose Maud could go."
"Maud has her rooms to do."
"Well, Elsa."
"Elsa has her dinner to get."
"Well, then, perhaps you would ..."
"Yaul pardon the liberty, sir, but I never go to church except of an eveningsometimes; I never could abide being stared at."
"Oh, very well," said John, fretfully, as Mrs. Worfolk retired. "Though I'm hanged ifI'mgoing to take them," he added to himself, "at any rate without a rehearsal."
The two children soon came back in a condition of complete preparation and insisted so loudly upon their uncle's company that he yielded; though when he found himself with a child on either side of him in the sabbath calm of the Hampstead streets footfall-haunted, he was appalled at his rashness. There was a church close to his own house, but with an instinct to avoid anything like a domestic scandal he had told his nephew and niece that it was not a suitable church for children, and had led them further afield through the ghostly November sunlight.
"But look here," Bertram objected, "we can't go through any slums, you know, because the cads will bung things at my topper."
"Not if you're with me," John argued. "I am wearing a top-hat myself."
"Well, they did when I went for a walk with Father once on Sunday."
"The slums round Earl's Court are probably much fiercer than the slums round Hampstead," John suggested. "And anyway here we are."
He had caught a glimpse of an ecclesiastical building, which unfortunately turned out to be a Jewish tabernacle and not open: a few minutes later, however, an indubitably Anglican place of worship invited their attendance, and John trying not to look as bewildered as he felt let himself be conducted by a sidesman to the very front pew.
"I wonder if he thinks I'm a member of parliament. But I wish to goodness he'd put us in the second row. I shall be absolutely lost where I am."
John looked round to catch the sidesman's eye and plead for a less conspicuous position, but even as he turned his head a terrific crash from the organ proclaimed that it was too late and that the service had begun.
By relying upon the memories of youthful worship John might have been able to cope successfully with Morning Prayer, even with that florid variation of it which is generally known as Mattins. Unluckily the church he had chosen for the spiritual encouragement of his nephew and niece was to the church of his recollections as Mount Everest to a molehill. As a simple spectator without encumbrances he might have enjoyed the service and derived considerable inspiration from it for the decorative ecclesiasticism of his new play; as an uncle it alarmed and confused him. The lace-hung acolytes, the candles, the chrysanthemums, the purple vestments and the ticking of the thurible affected him neither with Protestant disgust nor with Catholic devoutness, but much more deeply as nothing but incentives to the unanswerable inquiries of Bertram and Viola.
"What are they doing?" whispered his nephew.
"Hush!" he whispered back in what he tried to feel was the right intonation of pious reproof.
"What's that little boy doing with a spoon?" whispered his niece.
"Hush!" John blew forth again. "Attend to the service."
"But it isn't a real service, is it?" she persisted.
Luckily the congregation knelt at this point, and John plunged down with a delighted sense of taking cover. Presently he began to be afraid that his attitude of devotional self-abasement might be seeming a little ostentatious, and he peered cautiously round over the top of the pew; to his dismay he perceived that Bertram and Viola were still standing up.
"Kneel down at once," he commanded in what he hoped would be an authoritative whisper, but which was in the result an agonized croak.
"I want to see what they're doing," both children protested.
Bertram's Etons appeared too much attentuated for a sharp tug, nor did John feel courageous enough in the front row to jerk Viola down upon her knees by pulling her petticoats,which might come off. He therefore covered his face with his hands in what was intended to look like a spasm of acute reverence and growled at them both to kneel down, unless they wanted to be sent back instantly to Earl's Court. Evidently impressed by this threat the children knelt down; but they were no sooner upon their knees than the perverse congregation rose to its feet, the concerted movement taking John so completely unawares that he was left below and felt when he did rise like a naughty boy who has been discovered hiding under a table. He was not put at ease by Viola's asking him to find her place in the prayer-book; it seemed to him terrible to discern the signs of a vindictive spirit in one so young.
"Hush," he whispered. "You must remember that we're in the front row and must be careful not to disturb the—" he hesitated at the word "performers" and decided to envelop whatever they were in a cough.
There were no more questions for a while, nothing indeed but tiptoe fidgetings until two acolytes advanced with lighted candles to a position on each side of the deacon who was preparing to read the gospel.
"Why can't he see to read?" Bertram asked. "It's not dark."
"Hush," John whispered. "This is the gospel"
He knew he was safe in affirming so much, because the announcement that he was about to read the gospel had been audibly given out by the deacon. At this point the congregation crossed its innumerable features three times, and Bertram began to giggle; immediately afterward fumes poured from the swung censer, and Viola began to choke. John felt that it was impossible to interrupt what was presumably considered thepièce de resistanceof the service by leading the two children out along the whole length of the church; yet he was convinced that if he did not lead them out their gigglings and snortings would have a disastrous effect upon the soloist. Then he had a brilliant idea: Viola was obviously much upset by the incense and he would escorther out into fresh air with the solicitude that one gives to a sick person: Bertram he should leave behind to giggle alone. He watched his nephew bending lower and lower to contain his mirth; then with a quick propulsive gesture he hurried Viola into the aisle. Unfortunately when with a sigh of relief he stood upon the steps outside and put on his hat he found that in his confusion he had brought out Bertram's hat, which on his intellectual head felt like a precariously balanced inkpot; and though he longed to abandon Bertram to his well merited fate he could not bring himself to walk up Fitzjohn's Avenue in Bertram's hat, nor could he even contemplate with equanimity the notion of Bertram's walking up under his. Had it been a week-day either of them might have passed for an eccentric advertisement, but on a Sunday....
"And if I stand on the steps of a church holding this minute hat in my hand," he thought, "people will think I'm collecting for some charity. Confound that boy! And I can't pretend that I'm feeling too hot in the middle of November. Dash that boy! And I certainly can't wear it. A Japanese juggler wouldn't be able to wear it. Damn that boy!"
Yet John would rather have gone home in a baby's bonnet than enter the church again, and the best that could be hoped was that Bertram dismayed at finding himself alone would soon emerge. Bertram, however, did not emerge, and John had a sudden fear lest in his embarrassment he might have escaped by another door and was even now rushing blindly home. Blindly was the right adverb indeed, for he would certainly be unable to see anything from under his uncle's hat. Viola, having recovered from her choking fit, began to cry at this point, and an old lady who must have noted with tender approval John's exit came out with a bottle of smelling-salts, which she begged him to make use of. Before he could decline she had gone back inside the church leaving him with the bottle. If he could have forced the contents down Viola's throat without attracting more attention hewould have done so, but by this time one or two passers-by had stopped to stare at the scene, and he heard one of them tell his companion that it was a street conjurer just going to perform.
"Will anything make you stop crying?" he asked his niece in despair.
"I want Bertram," she wailed.
And at that moment Bertram appeared, led out by two sidesmen.
"Your little boy doesn't know how to behave himself in church," one of them informed John, severely.
"I was only looking for my hat," Bertram explained. "I thought it had rolled into the next pew. Let go of my arm. I slipped off the hassock. I couldn't help making a little noise, Uncle John."
John was grateful to Bertram for thus exonerating him publicly from the responsibility of having begotten him, and he inquired almost kindly what had happened.
"The hassock slipped, and I fell into the next pew."
"I'm sorry my nephew made a noise," said John to the sidesman. "My niece was taken ill, and he was left behind by accident. Thank you for showing him the way out, yes. Come along, Bertram, I've got your hat. Where's mine?" Bertram looked blankly at his uncle.
"Do you mean to say—" John began, and then he saw a passing taxi to which he shouted.
"Those smelling-salts belong to an old lady," he explained hurriedly and quite inadequately to the bewildered sidesman into whose hands he had thrust the bottle. "Come along," he urged the children, and when they were scrambling into the taxi he called back to the sidesmen, "You can give to the jumble sale any hat that is swept up after the service."
Inside the taxi John turned to the children.
"One would think you'd never been inside a church before," he said, reproachfully.
"Bertram," said Viola, in bland oblivion of all that heruncle had endured, "when we dress up to-day shall we act going to church, or finish Robinson Crusoe?"
"Wait till we see what we can find for dressing up," Bertram advised.
John displayed a little anxiety.
"Dressing up?" he repeated.
"We always dress up every Sunday," the children burst forth in unison.
"Oh, I see—it's a kind of habit. Well, I dare say Mrs. Worfolk will be able to find you an old duster or something."
"Duster," echoed Viola, scornfully. "That's not enough for dressing up."
"I didn't suggest a duster as anything but a supplement to your ordinary costume. I didn't anticipate that you were going to rely entirely upon the duster."
"I say, V, can you twig what Uncle John says?"
Viola shook her head.
"Nor more can I," said Bertram, sympathetically.
Before the taxi reached Church Row, John found himself adopting a positively deferential manner towards his nephew and his niece, and when they were once again back in the quiet house, the hall of which was faintly savoury with the maturing lunch he asked them if they would mind amusing themselves for an hour while he wrote some letters.
"For I take it you won't want to dress up immediately," he added as an excuse for attending to his own business.
The children confirmed his supposition, but went on to inform him that the domenical régime at Earl's Court prescribed a walk after church.
"Owing to the accident to my hat I'm afraid I must ask you to let me off this morning."
"Right-o," Bertram agreed, cheerfully. "But I vote we come up and sit with you while you write your letters. I think letters are a beastly fag, don't you?"
John felt that the boy was proffering his own and his sister's company in a spirit of altruism, and he could notmuster enough gracelessness to decline the proposal. So upstairs they all went.
"I think this is rather a ripping room, don't you, V?"
"The carpet's very old," said Viola.
"Have you got any decent books?" Bertram inquired, looking round at the shelves. "Any Henty's, I mean, or anything?"
"No, I'm afraid I haven't," said John, apologetically.
"Or bound up Boys Own Papers?"
John shook his head.
"But I'll tell you what I have got," he added with a sudden inspiration. "Kingsley'sHeroes."
"Is that a pi book?" asked Bertram, suspiciously.
"Not at all. It's about Greek gods and goddesses, essentially broad-minded divinities."
"Right-o. I'll have a squint at it, if you like," Bertram volunteered. "Come on, V, don't start showing off your rotten dancing. Come and look at this book. It's got some spiffing pictures."
"Lunch won't be very long," John announced in order to propitiate any impatience at what they might consider the boring entertainment he was offering.
Presently the two children left their uncle alone, and he observed with pride that they took with them the book. He little thought that so mild a dose of romance as could be extracted from Kingsley'sHeroeswould before the twilight of that November day run through 36 Church Row like fire. But then John did not know that there was a calf's head for dinner that night; he had not realized the scenic capacity of the cistern cupboard at the top of the house; and most of all he had not associated with dressing up on Sunday afternoon the histrionic force that Bertram and Viola inherited from their mother.
"Is it Androméda or Andrómeda?" Bertram asked at lunch.
"Andrómeda, my boy," John answered. "Perseus and Andromeda."
"I think it would make a jolly good play, don't you?" Bertram went on.
Really, thought John, this nephew was a great improvement upon that spectacled inquisitor at Ambles.
"A capital play," he agreed, heartily. "Are you thinking of writing it?"
"V and I thought we'd do it instead of finishing Robinson Crusoe. Well, you see, you haven't got any decent fur rugs, and V's awfully stupid about having her face blacked."
"It's my turn not to be a savage," Viola pleaded in defense of her squeamishness.
"I said you could be Will Atkins as well. I know I'd jolly well like to be Will Atkins myself."
"All right," Viola offered. "You can, and I'll be Robinson."
"You can't change like that in the middle of a play," her brother argued.
John, who appreciated both Viola's dislike of burnt-cork and Bertram's esthetic objection to changing parts in the middle of a piece, strongly recommended Perseus and Andromeda.
"Of course, you got the idea from Kingsley? Bravo, Bertram," he said, beaming with cordial patronage.
"And I suppose," his nephew went on, "that you'd rather we played at the top of the house. I expect it would be quieter, if you're writing letters. Mother said you often liked to be quiet." He alluded to this desire rather shamefully, as if it were a secret vice of his uncle, who hurriedly approved the choice of the top landing for the scene of the classic drama.
"Then would you please tell Mrs. Worfolk that we can have the calf's head?"
"The what?"
"V found a calf's head in the larder, and it would make a fizzing Gorgon's head, but Mrs. Worfolk wouldn't let us have it."
John was so much delighted with the trend of Bertram'singenuity that he sent for Mrs. Worfolk and told her that the calf's head might be borrowed for the play.
"I'll take no responsibility for your dinner," said his housekeeper, warningly.
"That's all right, Mrs. Worfolk. If anything happens to the head I shan't grumble. There'll always be the cold beef, won't there?"
Mrs. Worfolk turned up her eyes to heaven and left the room.
"Well, I think I've arranged that for you successfully."
"Thank you, Uncle John," said Bertram.
"Thank you, Uncle John," said Viola.
What nice quiet well-mannered children they were, after all; and he by no means ought to blame them for the fiasco of the churchgoing; the setting had of course been utterly unfamiliar; these ritualistic places of worship were a mistake in an unexcitable country like England. John retired to his library and lit a Corona with a sense that he thoroughly deserved a good cigar.
"Children are not difficult," he said to himself, "if one tries to put oneself in their place. That request for the calf's head undoubtedly showed a rare combination of adaptiveness with for a schoolboy what was almost a poetic fancy. Harold would have wanted to know how much the head weighed, and whether in life it preferred to browse on buttercups or daisies; but when finally it was cooked he would have eaten twice as much as anybody else. I prefer Bertram's attitude; though naturally I can appreciate a housekeeper's feelings. These cigars are in capital condition. Really, Bertram's example is infectious, and by gad, I feel quite like a couple of hours with Joan. Yes, it's a pity Laurence hasn't got Bertram's dramatic sense. A great pity."
The sabbath afternoon wore on, and though John did not accumulate enough energy to seat himself at his table, he dreamed a good deal of wonderful situations in the fourth act, puffing away at his cigar and hearing from time to timedistant shouts and scamperings; these, however, did not keep him from falling into a gentle doze, from which he was abruptly wakened by the opening of the library door.
"Ah, is that tea?" he asked cheerfully in that tone with which the roused sleeper always implies his uninterrupted attention to time and space.
"No, sir, it's me," a grim voice replied. "And if you don't want us all to be drowned where we stand, it being a Sunday afternoon, and not a plumber to be got, and Maud in the hysterics, and those two young Tartars screaming like Bedlamites, and your dinner ruined and done for, and the feathers gone from Elsa's new hat, per-raps you could come upstairs, Mr. Touchwood. Gordon's head indeed, and the boy as naked as a stitch!"
John jumped to his feet and hurried out on the landing; at the same moment Bertram with nothing to cover him except a pudding-shape on his head, a tea-tray on his arm, a Turkish scimitar at his waist, and the pinions of a blue and green bird tied round his ankles leapt six stairs of the flight above and alighting at his uncle's feet, thrust the calf's head into his face.
"You're turned to stone, Phineus," he yelled. "You can't move. You've seen the Gorgon."
"There he goes again with his Gordon and his Gladstone," said Mrs. Worfolk. "How dare you be so daring?"
"The Gorgon's sister," cried Bertram lunging at her with the scimitar. "Beware, I am invisible."
Whereupon he enveloped the calf's head in a napkin, held the tea-tray before his face, and darted away upstairs.
"I'm afraid he's a little over-excited," said John, doubtfully.
At this moment a stream of water began to flow past his feet and pour down upon him from the landing above.
"Why, the house is full of water," he gasped.
"It's what I'm trying to tell you, sir," Mrs. Worfolk fumed. "He's done something with that there cistern and burst it. I can't stop the water."
John followed Perseus on his wild flight up the stairs down which every moment water was flowing more freely. When he reached the cistern cupboard he discovered Maud bound fast to the disordered cistern, while Viola holding in her mouth a large ivory paper-knife and wearing what looked like Mrs. Worfolk's sealskin jacket that John had given her last Christmas was splashing at full length in a puddle on the floor and clawing at Maud's skirts with ferocious growls and grunts.
"You dare try to undress me again, Master Bertram," the statuesque Maud was screaming.
"Well, Andromeda's got practically nothing on in the book, and you said you'd rather not be the sea-monster," Bertram was arguing. "Andromeda," he cried seeing by the manner of his uncle's advance that the curtain must now be rung down upon the play, "I have turned the monster to stone. Go on, V, you can't move from now on."
Viola stiffened and without a twitch let the stream of water pour down upon her, while Bertram planting his foot in the small of her back waved triumphantly the Gorgon's head, both of whose ears gave way under the strain, so that John's dinner was soon as wet as he was.
The cistern emptied itself at last; Maud was released; Bertram and Viola were led downstairs to be dried and on Mrs. Worfolk's recommendation sent instantly to bed.
"I told you," said Bertram, "that if Miss Coldwell had come, we couldn't have done anything decent."
What woman, John wondered, might serve as a comparable deterrent? The fantastic idea of appealing for aid to Doris Hamilton flashed through his mind, but on second thoughts he felt that there would be something undignified in asking her to come at such a moment. Then he remembered how often he had heard his sister-in-law Beatrice lament her childlessness. Why should he not visit James and Beatrice this very evening? He owed them a visit, and his domestics were all obviously too much agitated even to contemplate the preparation of dinner. Mrs. Worfolk wouldperhaps be in a better temper when he got back and he would explain to her that the seal was a marine animal, the skin of which would not be injured by water.
"I think I'll ask Mrs. James to give us a helping hand this week," John suggested. "I shall be rather busy myself."
"Yes, sir, and so shall I, trying to get the house straight again which it looks more like Shooting the Chutes at Earl's Court than a gentleman's house, I'm bound to say."
"Still it might have been worse, Mrs. Worfolk. They might have played with another element. Fire, for instance. That would have been much more awkward."
"And it's thanks to me the house isn't on fire as well," Mrs. Worfolk shrilled in her indignation. "For if that young Turk didn't come charging down into the kitchen and trying to tell me that the kitchen-fire was a serpent and start attacking it tooth and nail. And there was poor Elsa shut up in the coal-cellar and hollering fit to break anyone's heart. 'She's Daniel in a tower of brass,' he says as bold as a tower of brass himself."
"And what were you, Mrs. Worfolk?" John asked.
"Oh, his lordship had the nerve to say I was an atlas. 'Yes,' I said, 'my lord, you let me catch hold of you and I'll make your behind look like an atlas before I've done with it.'"
"Do you think that Mrs. James could control them?" John asked.
"I wouldn't say as the Lord Mayor himself could control them, but it's not for me to give advice when good food can be turned into Gordon's heads. And whatever give them the idea, I don't know, for I'm sure General Gordon was a very handsome man to look at. Yaul excuse me, sir, but if you don't want to catch your death, you'd better change your things."
John followed Mrs. Worfolk's advice, and an hour later he was walking through the misty November night in the direction of St. John's Wood.
IFa taxi had lurked in any of the melancholy streets through which John was making his way to Hill Road he would have taken refuge in it gratefully, for there was no atmosphere that preyed upon his mind with such a sense of desolation as the hour of evening prayer in a respectable Northern suburb. The occasional footsteps of uninspired lovers dying away into by-streets; the occasional sounds of stuffy worship proceeding from church or chapel; the occasional bark of a dog trying to obtain admittance to an empty house; the occasional tread of a morose policeman; the occasional hoot of a distant motor-horn; the occasional whiff of privet-shrubberies and of damp rusty railings; the occasional effusions of chlorotic gaslight upon the raw air, half fog, half drizzle; the occasional shadows that quivered upon the dimly luminous blinds of upper windows; the occasional mutterings of housemaids in basements—not even John's buoyant spirit could rise above such a weight of depressing adjuncts to the influential Sabbath gloom. He began to accuse himself of having been too hasty in his treatment of Bertram and Viola; the scene at Church Row viewed in retrospect seemed to him cheerful and, if the water had not reached his Aubusson rug, perfectly harmless. No doubt, in the boarding-house at Earl's Court such behavior had been considered impossible. Had not the children talked of finishing Robinson Crusoe and alluded to his own lack of suitable fur rugs? Evidently last week the drama had been interrupted by the landlady because they had been spoiling her fur rugs. John was on the point of going back to Church Row and inviting the children to celebrate his return in a jolly impromptu supper, when he remembered that there were at least five more Sundays before Christmas. Next Sunday they wouldprobably decide to revive the Argonauts, a story that, so far as he could recall the incidents, offered many opportunities for destructive ingenuity. Then, the Sunday after, there would be Theseus and the Minotaur; if there were another calf's head in the larder, Bertram might easily try to compel Mrs. Worfolk to be the Minotaur and wear it, which might mean Mrs. Worfolk's resignation from his service, a prospect that could not be faced with equanimity. But would the presence of Beatrice exercise an effective control upon this dressing up, and could he stand Beatrice for six weeks at a stretch? He might, of course, engage her to protect him and his property during the first few days, and after that to come for every week end. Suppose he did invite Doris Hamilton, but, of course, that was absurd—suppose he did invite Beatrice, would Doris Hamilton—would Beatrice come? Could it possibly be held to be one of the duties of a confidential secretary to assist her employer in checking the exuberance of his juvenile relations? Would not Miss Hamilton decide that her post approximated too nearly to that of a governess? Obviously such a woman had never contemplated the notion of becoming a governess. But had she ever contemplated the notion of becoming a confidential secretary? No, no, the plan was fantastic, unreal ... he must trust to Beatrice and hope that Miss Coldwell would presently recover, or that Eleanor's tour would come to a sudden end, or that George would have paid what he owed his landlady and feel better able to withstand her criticism of his children. If all these hopes proved unfounded, a schoolboy, like the rest of human nature, had his price—his noiselessness could be bought in youth like his silence later on. John was turning into Hill Road when he made this reflection; he was within the area of James' cynical operations.
John's eldest brother was at forty-six an outwardly rather improved, an inwardly much debased replica of their father. The old man had not possessed a winning personality, but his energy and genuine powers of accomplishment had madehim a successful general practitioner, because people overlooked his rudeness in the confidence he gave them and forgave his lack of sympathy on account of his obvious devotion to their welfare. He with his skeptical and curious mind, his passion for mathematics and hatred of idealism, and his unaffected contempt for the human race could not conceive a worse hell in eternity than a general practice offered him in life; but having married a vain, beautiful, lazy and conventional woman, he could not bring himself to spoil his honesty by blaming for the foolish act anything more tangible than the scheme of creation; and having made himself a damned uncomfortable bed with a pretty quilt, as he used to say, he had decided that he must lie on it. No doubt, many general practitioners go through life with the conviction that they were intended to devote themselves to original research; but Dr. Robert Touchwood from what those who were qualified to judge used to say of him had reason to feel angry with his fate.
James, who as a boy had shown considerable talent, was chosen by his father to inherit the practice. It was typical of the old gentleman that he did not assume this succession as the right of the eldest son, but that he deliberately awarded it to James as the most apparently adequate of his offspring. Unfortunately James, who was dyspeptic even at school, chose to imitate his father's mannerisms while he was still a student at Guy's and helping at odd hours in the dispensary. Soon after he had taken his finals and had seen his name engraved upon the brass plate underneath his father's, old Dr. Touchwood fell ill of an incurable disease and James found himself in full charge of the practice, which he proceeded to ruin, so that not long after his father's death he was compelled to sell it for a much smaller sum than it would have fetched a few years before. For a time he played alternately with the plan of setting up as a specialist in Harley Street or of burying himself in the country to write a monograph on British dragon-flies—for some reason these fierce and brilliant insects touched a responsive chordin James. He finally decided upon the dragon-flies and went down to Ockham Common in Surrey to search forSympetrum Fonscolombii, a rare migrant that was reported from that locality in 1892. He could not prove that it was any more indigenous than himself to the sophisticated county, but in the course of his observations he met Beatrice Pyrke, the daughter of a prosperous inn-keeper in a neighboring town, and married her. Notwithstanding such a catch—he used to vow that she was more resplendent than evenAnax Imperator—he continued to take an interest in dragon-flies, until his monograph was unluckily forestalled a few years later. It was owing to an article of his in one of the entomological journals that he encountered Daniel Curtis—a meeting which led to Hilda's marriage. In those days—John had not yet made a financial success of literature—this result had seemed to the embittered odonatist a complete justification of the many hours he had wasted in preparing for his never-to-be written monograph, because his sister's future had for some time been presenting a disagreeable and insoluble problem. Besides observing dragon-flies, James spent one year in making a clock out of fishbones, and another year in perfecting a method of applying gold lacquer to poker-work.
A more important hobby, however, that finally displaced all the others was foreign literature, in the criticism of which he frequently occupied pages in the expensive reviews, pages that gradually grew numerous enough to make first one book and then another. James' articles on foreign literature were always signed; but he also wrote many criticisms of English literature that were not signed. This hack-work exasperated him so much that he gradually came to despising the whole of English literature after the eighteenth century with the exception of the novels of George Meredith. These he used to read aloud to his wife when he was feeling particularly bilious and derive from her nervous bewilderment a savage satisfaction. In her the critic possessed a perpetual incarnation of the British public that he so deeplyscorned, and he treated his wife in the same way as he fancied he treated the larger entity: without either of them he would have been intellectually at a loose end. For all his admiration of French literature James spoke the language with a hideous British accent. Once on a joint holiday John, who for the whole of a channel-crossing had been listening to his brother's tirades against the rottenness of modern English literature and his pæans on behalf of modern French literature, had been much consoled when they reached Calais to find that James could not make himself intelligible even to a porter.
"But," as John had said with a chuckle, "perhaps Meredith couldn't have made himself intelligible to an English porter."
"It's the porter's fault," James had replied, sourly.
For some years now the critic with his wife and a fawn-coloured bulldog had lived in furnished apartments at 65 Hill Road, a creeper-matted house of the early 'seventies which James characterized as quiet and Beatrice as handy; in point of fact it was neither, being exposed to barrel-organs and remote from busses. A good deal of the original furniture still incommoded the rooms; but James had his own chair, Beatrice had her own footstool, and Henri Beyle the bulldog his own basket. The fire-place was crowned by an overmantel of six decorative panels, all that was left of James' method of applying gold lacquer to poker-work. There were also three or four family portraits, which John for some reason coveted for his own library, and a drawer-cabinet of faded and decrepit dragon-flies. Some bookshelves filled with yellow French novels gave an exotic look to the drab room, which, whenever James was not smoking his unusually foul pipes, smelt of gravy and malt vinegar except near the window, where the predominant perfume was of ferns and oilcloth. Between the living-room and the bedroom were double-doors hidden by brown plush curtains, which if opened quickly revealed nothing but a bleak expanse of bed and a gray window fringed with ragged creepers.When a visitor entered this room to wash his hands he used to look at James' fishbone clock under its bell-glass on a high chest of drawers and shiver in the dampness; the fireplace was covered by a large wardrobe, and one of Beatrice's hats was often on the bed, the counterpane of which was stenciled with Beyle's paws. John, who loathed this bedroom, always said he did not want to wash his hands, when he took a meal at Hill Road.
The depression of his Sunday evening walk had made John less critical than he usually was of James' rooms, and he heard the gate of the front-garden swing back behind him with a sense of pleasurable expectation.
"There will be cold mutton for supper," he said to himself, thinking rather guiltily of the calf's head that he might have eaten and to partake of which he had not invited his brother and Beatrice. "Cold mutton and a very wet salad, with either tinned pears or tinned pineapple to follow—or perhaps stewed figs."
When John entered, James was deep in his armchair with Beyle snoring on his lap, where he served as a rest for the large book that his master was reading.
"Hullo," the critic exclaimed without attempting to rise. "You are back in town then?"
"Yes, I came back on Friday."
"I thought you wouldn't be able to stand the country for long. Remember what Horry Walpole said about the country?"
"Yes," said John, quickly. He had not the least idea really, but he had long ago ceased to have any scruples about preventing James first of all from trying to remember a quotation, secondly from trying to find it, thirdly from asking Beatrice where she had hidden the book in which it was to be found, and finally from not only reading it when the book was found, but also from reading page after page of irrelevant matter in the context. "Though Ambles is really very jolly," he added. "I'm expecting you and Beatrice to spend Christmas with me, you know."
James grunted.
"Well, we'll see about that. I don't belong to the Dickens Fellowship and I shall be pretty busy. You popular authors soon forget what it means to be busy. So you've had another success? Who was it this time—Lucretia Borgia, eh?" he laughed, bitterly. "Good lord, it's incredible, isn't it? But the English drama's in a sick state—a very sick state."
"All contemporary art is in a sick state according to the critics," John observed. "Critics are like doctors; they are not prejudiced in favor of general good-health."