Poor Relations Part 42

She hurriedly poured away the contents of Harold's cup, which proved that the worms were only an invention of his cousin. Yet the joke was successful in its way, because there was no more tea, and therefore Harold had to go without a third cup. Edith, whose agitation had been intense while her husband was brooding in the pa.s.sage over Frida's chokes, could stay still no longer, but went out to a.s.sist with tugs and taps of consolation. The colorless visitor departed with his disobedient dog, and soon a thin pipe was heard in vain whistles upon the twilight like the lisp of reeds along the dreary margin of a December stream.

John welcomed this recrudescence of maternal compet.i.tion, which seemed likely to imperil the alliance, and he was grateful to Bertram and Viola for their provocation of it. But he had scarcely congratulated himself, when Hugh came in and at once laid himself out to be agreeable to Miss Hamilton.

"You've put the summerhouse in hand?" John asked, fussily, in order to make it perfectly clear to his brother that he was not the owner of Ambles.

Hugh shook his head.

"My dear man, it's Boxing Day. Besides, I know you only wanted to get rid of me this afternoon. By the way, Aubrey's going back to town to-night. Can he have the dog-cart?"

John looked round at the unbidden guest with a protest on his lips; he had planned to keep Aubrey as a diversion for Hugh, and had taken quite a fancy to him. Aubrey however, had to be at the office next day, and John was distressed to lose the cheerful young man's company, although it had been embarra.s.sing when Grandmama had shuddered every time he opened his mouth. Another disadvantage of his departure was the direction of the old lady's imagination toward an imminent marriage between Hugh and Miss Hamilton, which was extremely galling to John, especially as the rest of the family was united in suggesting a similar conjunction between her and himself.

"I don't want to say a word against her, Johnnie," Grandmama began to mutter one evening about a week later when every game of patience had failed in turn through congestion of the hearts. "I'm not going to say she isn't a lady, and perhaps she doesn't mean to make eyes at Hughie."

John would have liked to tell his mother that she was on the verge of senile decay; but the dim old fetish of parental respect blinked at him from the jungle of the past, and in a vain search for a way of stopping her without being rude he let her ramble on.

"Of course, she has very nice eyes, and I can quite understand Hughie's taking an interest in her. I don't grudge the dear boy his youth. We all get old in time, and its natural that with us old fogies round him he _should_ be a little interested in Miss Hamilton. All the same, it wouldn't be a prudent match. I dare say she thinks I shall have something to leave Hugh, but I told her only yesterday that I should leave little or nothing."

"My dear Mama, I can a.s.sure you that my secretary--my secretary," John repeated with as much pomposity as might impress the old lady, "is not at all dazzled by the glamour of your wealth or James' wealth or George's wealth or anybody's wealth for that matter."

He might have said that the donkey's ears were the only recognizable feature of Midas in the Touchwood family had there been the least chance of his mother's understanding the cla.s.sical allusion.

"I don't mean to hint that she's _only_ after Hugh's money. I've no doubt at all that she's excessively in love with him."

"Really?" John exclaimed with such a scornfully ironical intonation that his mother asked anxiously if he had a sore throat.

"You might take a little honey and borax, my dear boy," she advised, and immediately continued her estimate of the emotional situation. "Yes, as I say, excessively in love! But there can't be many young women who resist Hugh. Why, even as a boy he had his little love affairs. Dear me, how poor papa used to laugh about them. 'He's going to break a lot of hearts,' poor papa used to say."

"I don't know about hearts," John commented, gruffly. "But he's broken everything else, including himself. However, I can a.s.sure you, Mama, that Miss Hamilton's heart is not made of pie-crust, and that she is more than capable of looking after herself."

"Then you agree with me that she has a selfish disposition. I _am_ glad you agree with me. I didn't trust her from the beginning; but I thought you seemed so wrapped up in her cleverness--though when I was young women didn't think it necessary to be clever--that you were quite blind to her selfishness. But I _am_ glad you agree with me. There's n.o.body who has more sympathy for true love than I have. But though I always said that love makes the world go round, I've never been partial to vulgar flirtations. Indeed, if it had to be, I'd rather they got engaged properly, even if it did mean a long engagement--but leading poor Hughie on like this--well, I must speak plainly, Johnnie, for, after all, I am your mother, though I know it's the fashion now to think that children know more than their parents, and, in my opinion, you ought to put your foot down. There! I've said what I've been wanting to say for a week, and if you jump down my throat, well, then you must, and that's all there is to it."

Now, although John thought his mother fondly stupid and was perfectly convinced when he asked himself the question that Miss Hamilton was as remote from admiring Hugh as he was himself, he was nevertheless unable to resist observing Hugh henceforth with a little of the jealousy that most men of forty-two feel for juniors of twenty-seven. He was not prepared to acknowledge that his opinion of Miss Hamilton was colored by any personal emotion beyond the unqualified respect he gave to her practical qualities, and he was sure that the only reason for anxiety about possible developments between her and Hugh was the loss to himself of her valuable services.

"I've reached an age," he told his reflection, whose crow's-feet were seeming more conspicuous than usual in the clear wintry weather, "when a man becomes selfish in small matters. Let me be frank with myself. Let me admit that I do dislike the idea of an entanglement with Hugh, because I _have_ found in Miss Hamilton a perfect secretary whom I should be extremely sorry to lose. Is that surprising? No, it is quite natural. Curious! I noticed to-day that Hugh's hair is getting very thin on top. Mine, however, shows no sign of baldness, though fair men nearly always go bald before dark men. But I'm inclined to fancy that few observers would give me fifteen years more than Hugh."

If John had really been conscious of a rival in his youngest brother, he might have derived much encouragement from the att.i.tude of all the other members of the family, none of whom seemed to think that Hugh had a look in. But, since he firmly declined to admit his secretary's potentiality for anything except efficient clerical work, he was only irritated by it.

"Are you going to marry Miss Hamilton?" Harold actually wanted to know one evening. He had recently been snubbed for asking the company what was the difference between gestation and digestion, and was determined to produce a conundrum that could not be evaded by telling him that he would not understand the answer. John's solution was to look at his watch and say it was time for him and Bertram to be in bed, hoping that Bertram would take it out of his cousin for calling attention to their existence. One of Bertram's first measures at Ambles had been to m.u.f.fle, impede, disorganize and finally destroy the striking of the drawing-room clock. When this had been accomplished he could count every night on a few precious minutes s.n.a.t.c.hed from the annihilation of bed during which he sat mute as a mummy in a kind of cataleptic ecstasy. The betrayer of this profound peace sullenly gathered up the rubbish with which he was wont to litter the room every night, and John saw Bertram's eye flash like a Corsican sharpening the knife of revenge. But whatever was in store for Harold lacked savor when John heard from the group of mothers, aunts, sisters, and sisters-in-law the two words "Children know" dying away in a sibilance of affirmative sighs.

After that it was small consolation to hear a scuffle outside in the hall followed by the crash of Harold's dispersed collections and a wail of protest. For the sake of a childish quarrel Hilda and Eleanor were not going to break up the alliance to which they were now definitely committed.

"It's so nice for poor Harold to have Bertram to play with him,"

volunteered one mother.

"Yes, and it's nice for Bertram too, because Harold's such a little worker," the other agreed.

Even George's opaque eyes glimmered with an illusion of life when he heard his wife praise her nephew; she had not surprised him so completely since on a wet afternoon, thirteen years ago, she accepted his hand. It was even obvious to Edith that she must begin to think about taking sides; and, having exhausted her intelligence by this discovery, she had not enough wit left to see that now was her opportunity to trade upon John's sentimental affection for herself, but proceeded to sacrifice her own daughter to the success of the hostile alliance.

"I think perhaps it's good for Frida to be teased sometimes," she ventured.

As for Beatrice, she was not going to draw attention to her childlessness by giving one more woman the chance of feeling superior to herself, and her thwarted maternity was placed at the disposal of the three mothers. Indeed it was she who led the first foray, in which she was herself severely wounded, as will be seen.

Among the unnecessary vexations and unsatisfactory pleasures which the human side of John inflicted upon the well-known dramatist, John Touchwood, was the collection of press-cuttings about himself and his work; one of Miss Hamilton's least congenial tasks was to preserve in a sc.r.a.p-book these tributes to egoism.

"You don't really want me to stick in this paragraph from _High Life_?"

she would protest.

"Which one is that?"

"Why, this ridiculous announcement that you've decided to live on the upper slopes of the Andes for the next few months in order to gather material for a tragedy about the Incas."

"Oh, I don't know. It's rather amusing, I think," John would insist, apologetically. Then, rather lamely, he would add, "You see, I subscribe."

Miss Hamilton, with a sigh, would dip her brush in the paste.

"I can understand your keeping the notices of your productions, which I suppose have a certain value, but this sort of childish gossip...."

"Gossip keeps my name before the public."

Then he would fancy that he caught a faint murmur about "lack of dignity," and once even he thought she whispered something about "lack of humor."

Therefore, in view of the importance he seemed to attach to the most irrelevant paragraph, Miss Hamilton could not be blamed for drawing his attention to a long article in one of those critical quarterlies or monthlies that are read in club smoking-rooms in the same spirit of desperation in which at railway stations belated travelers read time-tables. This article was ent.i.tled _What Is Wrong With Our Drama?_ and was signed with some obscurely allusive pseudonym.

"I suppose I am involved in the general condemnation?" said John, with an attempt at a debonair indifference.

Had he been alone he might have refrained from a descent into particulars, but having laid so much stress upon the salvage of worthless flotsam, he could not in Miss Hamilton's presence ignore this large wreck.

"_Let us pause now to contemplate the roundest and the rosiest of our romantic cherubs._ Ha-ha! I suppose the fellow thinks that will irritate me. As a matter of fact, I think it's rather funny, don't you? Rather clever, I mean. Eh? _But, after all, should we take Mr. Touchwood seriously? He is only an exuberant schoolboy prancing about with a pudding-dish on his head and shouting 'Let's pretend I'm a Knight-at-Arms' to a large and susceptible public. Let us say to Mr.

Touchwood in the words of an earlier romantic who was the fount and origin of all this Gothic stucco:_

_'O what can ail thee, Knight-at-Arms,_ _So staggered by the critics' tone?_ _The pit and gallery are full,_ _And the play has gone.'_

"I don't mind what he says about _me_," John a.s.sured his secretary. "But I do resent his parodying Keats. Yes, I do strongly resent that. I wonder who wrote it. I call it rather personal for anonymous criticism."

"Shall I stick it in the book?"

"Certainly," the wounded lion uttered with a roar of disdain. At least that was the way John fancied he said "certainly."

"Do you really want to know who wrote this article?" she asked, seriously, a minute or two later.

"It wasn't James?" the victim exclaimed in a flash of comprehension.

"Well, all I can tell you is that two or three days ago your brother received a copy of the review and a letter from the editorial offices. I was sorting out your letters and noticed the address on the outside.

Afterwards at breakfast he opened it and took out a check."

"James would call me a rosy cherub," John muttered. "Moreover, I did tell him about Bertram and the pudding-dish when he was playing at Perseus. And--no, James doesn't admire Keats."

"Poor man," said Miss Hamilton, charitably.