Somehow Good Part 32

When Julius came to Krakatoa Villa, he came already half disillusioned about Sally. What sort of an _accolade_ he expected on arriving to keep his pa.s.sion on its legs, Heaven only knows! He certainly had been chilled by her easy-going invitation to her mother's. A definite declaration of callous indifference would not have been half so effective. Sally had the most extraordinary power of pointing out that she stipulated to be considered as a chap; or conveying it, which came to the same thing. On the other hand, Laet.i.tia, who had been freely spoken of by Sally as "making a great a.s.s of herself about social tommy-rot and people's positions," and who was aware of the justice of the accusation, had been completely jerked out of the region of Grundy by Julius's splendid rendering of Tartini, and had felt disconcerted and ashamed; for Tishy was a thorough musician at heart. The consequence was an _amende honorable_ to the young man, on whom--he having no idea whatever of its provoking cause--it produced the effect that might have been antic.i.p.ated. Any young lady who wishes to enslave a young man will really do better work by showing an interest in himself than by any amount of fascination and allurement, on the lines of Greuze. We are by no means sure that it is safe to reveal this secret, so do not let it go any farther. Young women are formidable enough, as it is, without getting tips from the camp of the enemy.

Anyhow, Sally became a totally different ident.i.ty to Mr. Julius Bradshaw. He, for his part, underwent a complete transformation in hers--so much so that the vulgar child was on one occasion quite taken aback at a sudden recollection of his _debut_, and said to her stepfather: "Only think, Jeremiah! Tishy's Julius is really that young idiot that came philandering after me Sundays, and I had quite forgotten it!"

The young idiot had settled down to a reasonable personality; if not to a manifestation of his actual self, at any rate as near as he was likely to go to it for some time to come; for none of us ever succeeds in really showing himself to his fellow-creatures outright. That's impossible.

Sally had never said very much to her friend of this pre-introduction phase of Julius--had, in fact, thought little enough about it. Perhaps her taking care to say nothing at all of it in his later phase was her most definite acknowledgment of its existence at any time. It was only a laughable incident. She saw at once, when she took note of that sofa _seance_, which way the cat was going to jump; and we are bound to say it was a cat that soon made up its mind, and jumped with decision.

Mrs. Sales Wilson's endeavour to intercept that cat had been prompt and injudicious. She destroyed whatever chance there was of a sudden _volte-face_ on its part--and oh, the glorious uncertainty of this cla.s.s of cat!--first by taking no notice of it aggressively, next by catching hold of its tail, too late. In the art of ignoring bystanders, she was no match for the cat. And detention seemed only to communicate impetus.

Julius Bradshaw's first receptions at the Ladbroke Grove House had been based mainly on his Stradivarius. The Dragon may be said to have admitted the instrument, but only to have tolerated its owner, as one might tolerate an organman who owned a distinguished monkey. Still, the position was an ambiguous one. The Dragon felt she had made a mistake in not shutting the door against this lion at first. She had "let him in, to see if she could turn him out again," and the crisis of the campaign had come over the question whether Mr. Bradshaw might, or should, or could be received into the inner bosom of the household--that is to say, the dinner-bosom. The Dragon said no--she drew the line at that. Tea, yes--dinner, no!

After many small engagements over the question in the abstract, the plot thickened with reference to the arrangements of a particular Thursday evening. The Dragon felt that a decisive battle must be fought; the more so that her son Egerton, whom she had relied on to back her against a haberdasher, though he might have been useless against a jockey or a professional cricketer, had gone over to the enemy, and announced (for the Professor had failed to communicate the virus of scholarship to this young man) that he was unanimous that Mr. Bradshaw should be forthwith invited to dinner.

His mother resorted to the head of the household as to a Court of Appeal, but not, as we think, in a manner likely to be effective. Her natural desire to avenge herself on that magazine of learning for marrying her produced an unconciliatory tone, even in her preamble.

"I suppose," she said, abruptly entering his library in the vital centre of a delectable refutation of an ignoramus--"I suppose it's no use looking to you for sympathy in a matter of this sort, but----"

"I'm busy," said the Professor; "wouldn't some other time do as well?"

"I knew what I had to expect!" said the lady, at once allowing her desire to embitter her relations with her husband to get the better of her interest in the measure she desired to pa.s.s through Parliament.

She left the room, closing the door after her with venomous quietness.

The refutation would have to stand over; it was spoiled now, and the delicious sarcasm that was on his pen's tip was lost irrevocably. He blotted a sentence in the middle, put his pen in a wet sponge, and opened his door. He jerked it savagely open to express his att.i.tude of mind towards interruption. His "_What_ is it?" as he did so was in keeping with the door-jerk.

"I can speak of nothing to you if you are so _tetchy_"--a word said spitefully, with a jerk explanatory of its meaning. "Another time will do better, now. I prefer to wait."

When these two played at the domestic game of exasperate-my-neighbour, the temper lost by the one was picked up by the other, and added to his or her pack. It was so often her pack that there must have been an unfair allotment of knaves in it when dealt--you know what that means in beggar-my-neighbour? On this occasion Mrs. Wilson won heavily.

It was not every day that she had a chance of showing her great forbearance and self-restraint, on the stairs to an audience of a man in leather kneecaps who was laying a new drugget in the pa.s.sage, and a model of discretion with a dustpan, whose self-subordination was beyond praise; her daughter Athene in the pa.s.sage below inditing her son Egerton for a misappropriation of three-and-fivepence; and a faint suspicion of Laet.i.tia's bedroom door on the jar, for her to listen through, above.

It wasn't fair on the Professor, though; for even before he exploded, his lady-wife had had ample opportunity of reconnoitring the battle-field, and, as it were, negotiating with auxiliaries, by a show of gentle sweetness which had the force of announcement that she was being misunderstood elsewhere. But she would bear it, conscious of rect.i.tude. Now, the Professor didn't know there was any one within hearing; so he snapped, and she bit him _sotto voce_, but raised a meek voice to follow:

"Another time will be better. I prefer to wait." This was all the public heard of her speech. But she went into the library.

"What do you want to speak to me about?" Thus the Professor, remaining standing to enjoin the temporary character of the interview; to countercheck which the lady sank in an armchair with her back to the light. Both she and Laet.i.tia conveyed majesty in swoops--filled up _fauteuils_--could motion humbler people to take a seat beside them.

"Tishy's Goody runs into skirts--so does _she_ if you come to that!"

was Sally's marginal note on this point. The countercheck was effectual, and from her position of vantage the lady fired her first shot.

"You know perfectly well what I want to speak about." The awkward part of this was that the Professor did know.

"Suppose I do; go on!" This only improved his position very slightly, but it compelled the bill to be read a first time.

"Do you wish your daughter to marry a haberdasher?"

"I do not. If I did, I should take her round to some of the shops."

But his wife is in no humour to be jested with. "If you cannot be serious, Mr. Wilson, about a serious matter, which concerns the lifelong well-being of your eldest daughter, I am only wasting my time in talking to you." She threatens an adjournment with a slight move.

Her husband selects another att.i.tude, and comes to business.

"You may just as well say what you have come to say, Roberta. It's about Laet.i.tia and this young musician fellow, I suppose. Why can't you leave them alone?" Now, you see, here was a little triumph for Roberta--she had actually succeeded in getting the subject into the realm of discussion without committing herself to any definite statement, or, in fact, really saying what it was. She could prosecute it now indirectly, on the lines of congenial contradiction of her husband.

"I fully expected to be accused of interfering with what does not concern me. I am not surprised. My daughter's welfare is, it appears, to be of as little interest to me as it is to her father. Very well."

"What do you wish me to do? Will you oblige me by telling me what it is you understand we are talking about?" A gathering storm of determination must be met, the Dragon decides, by a corresponding access of asperity on her part. She rises to the occasion.

"I will tell you about what I do _not_ understand. But I do not expect to be listened to. I do _not_ understand how any father can remain in his library, engaged in work which cannot possibly be remunerative, while his eldest daughter contracts a disgraceful marriage with a social inferior." The irrelevance about remuneration was ill-judged.

"I can postpone the Dictionary--if that will satisfy you--and go on with some articles for the Encyclopaedia, which pay very well, until after the ceremony. Is the date fixed?"

"It is easy for you to affect stupidity, and to answer me with would-be witty evasions. But if you think to deter me from my duty--a mother's duty--by such pitiful expedients you are making a great mistake. You make my task harder to me, Septimus, but you do not discourage me. You know as well as I do--although you choose to affect the contrary--that what I am saying does not relate to any existing circ.u.mstances, but only to what may come about if you persist in neglecting your duty to your family. I came into this room to ask you to exercise your authority with your daughter Laet.i.tia, or if not your authority--for she is over twenty-one--your influence. But I see that I shall get no help.

It is, however, what I expected--no more and no less." And the skirts rustle with an intention of getting up and going away injured.

Mrs. Wilson had a case against her husband, if not a strong one. His ideas of the duties of a male parent were that he might incur paternity of an indefinite number of sons and daughters, and discharge all his obligations to them by providing their food and education. Having paid quittance, he was at liberty to be absorbed in his books. Had his payments been large enough to make his wife's administration of the household easy, he might have been justified, especially as she, for her part, was not disposed to allow him any voice in any matter.

Nevertheless, she castigated him frightfully at intervals for not exercising an authority she was not prepared to permit. He was nothing but a ninepin, set up to be knocked down, an Aunt Sally who was never allowed to keep her pipe in her mouth for ten consecutive seconds. The natural consequence of which was that his children despised him, but to a certain extent loved him; while, on the other hand, they somewhat disliked their mother, but (to a certain extent) respected her. It is very hard on the historian and the dramatist that every one is not quite good or quite bad. It would make their work so much easier. But it would not be nearly so interesting, especially in the case of the last-named.

The Professor may have had some feeling on these lines when he stopped the skirts from rustling out of the apartment by a change in his manner.

"Tell me seriously what you wish me to do, Roberta."

"I wish you to give attention, if not to the affairs--_that_ I cannot expect--of your household, at least to this--you may call it foolish and pooh-pooh it--business of Laet.i.tia and this young man--I really cannot say young gentleman, for it is mere equivocation not to call him a haberdasher."

The Professor resisted the temptation to criticize some points of literary structure, and accepted the obvious meaning of this.

"Tell me what he really is."

"I have told you repeatedly. He is nothing--unless we palter with the meaning of words--but a clerk in the office at the stores where we pay a deposit and order goods on a form. They were originally haberdashers, so I don't see how you can escape from what I have said. But I have no doubt you will try to do so."

"How comes he to be such a magnificent violinist? Are they all...?"

"I know what you are going to say, and it's foolish. No, they are not all magnificent violinists. But you know the story quite well."

"Perhaps I do. But now listen. I want to make out one thing. This young man talked quite freely to me and Egerton about his place, his position, salary--everything. And yet you say he isn't a gentleman."

"Of course he isn't a gentleman. I don't the least understand what you mean. It's some prevarication or paradox." Mrs. Wilson taps the chair-arm impatiently.

"I mean this--if he isn't a gentleman, how comes it that he isn't ashamed of being a haberdasher? Because he _isn't_. Seemed to take it all as a matter of course."

"I cannot follow your meaning at all. And I will not trouble you to explain it. The question now is--will you, or will you not, _do_ something?"

"Has the young gentleman?"--Mrs. Wilson snorted audibly--"Well, has this young haberdasher made any sort of definite declaration to Laet.i.tia?"

"I understand not. But it's impossible not to see."

"Would it not be a little premature for me to say anything to him?"

"Have I asked you to do so?"

"I am a little uncertain what it is you have asked me to do."