The Claverings Part 13

"I shall have that quoted against me, now, for the next six months, whenever I am preaching wisdom in the nursery. But Florence is nearly as sensible as her brother."

"Much more so than I am."

"All the Burtons are full up to their eyes with good sense. And what a good thing it is! Who ever heard of any of them coming to sorrow?

Whatever they have to live on, they always have enough. Did you ever know a woman who has done better with her children, or has known how to do better, than Theodore's mother? She is the dearest old woman." Harry had heard her called a very clever old woman by certain persons in Stratton, and could not but think of her matrimonial successes as her praises were thus sung by her daughter-in-law.

They went on talking, while Sophy sat in Harry's lap, till there was heard the sound of a key in the latch of the front door, and the master of the house was known to be there. "It's Theodore," said his wife, jumping up and going out to meet him. "I'm so glad that you have been here a little before him, because now I feel that I know you. When he's here, I shan't get in a word." Then she went down to her husband, and Harry was left to speculate how so very charming a woman could ever have been brought to love a man who cleaned his boots with his pocket-handkerchief.

There were soon steps again upon the stairs, and Burton returned, bringing with him another man, whom he introduced to Harry as Mr. Jones.

"I didn't know my brother was coming," said Mrs. Burton, "but it will be very pleasant, as of course I shall want you to know him." Harry became a little perplexed. How far might these family ramifications be supposed to go? Would he be welcomed, as one of the household, to the hearth of Mrs. Jones; and if of Mrs. Jones, then of Mrs. Jones's brother? His mental inquiries, however, in this direction, were soon ended by his finding that Mr. Jones who a bachelor.

Jones, it appeared, was the editor, or sub-editor, or co-editor, of some influential daily newspaper. "He is a night bird, Harry--" said Mrs.

Burton. She had fallen into the way of calling him Harry at once, but he could not on that occasion bring himself to call her Cecilia. He might have done so had not her husband been present, but he was ashamed to do it before him. "He is a night bird, Harry," said she, speaking of her brother, "and flies away at nine o'clock that he may go and hoot like an owl in some dark city haunt that he has. Then, when he is himself asleep at breakfast time, his hootings are being heard round the town."

Harry rather liked the idea of knowing an editor. Editors were, he thought, influential people, who had the world very much under their feet--being, as he conceived, afraid of no men, while other men are very much afraid of them. He was glad enough to shake Jones by the hand, when he found that Jones was an editor. But Jones, though he had the face and forehead of a clever man, was very quiet, and seemed almost submissive to his sister and brother-in-law.

The dinner was plain, but good, and Harry after a while became happy and satisfied, although he had come to the house with something almost like a resolution to find fault. Men, and women also, do frequently go about in such a mood, having unconscionably from some small circ.u.mstance, prejudged their acquaintances, and made up their mind that their acquaintances should be condemned. Influenced in this way, Harry had not intended to pa.s.s a pleasant evening, and would have stood aloof and been cold, had it been possible to him; but he found that it was not possible; and after a little while he was friendly and joyous, and the dinner went off very well. There was some wild fowl, and he was agreeably surprised as he watched the mental anxiety and gastronomic skill with which Burton went through the process of preparing the gravy, with lemon and pepper, having in the room a little silver pot, and an apparatus of fire for the occasion. He would as soon have expected the Archbishop of Canterbury himself to go through such an operation in the dining-room at Lambeth as the hard-working man of business whom he had known in the chambers of the Adelphi.

"Does he always do that, Mrs. Burton?" Harry asked.

"Always," said Burton, "when I get the materials. One doesn't bother oneself about a cold leg of mutton, you know, which is my usual dinner when we are alone. The children have it hot in the middle of the day."

"Such a thing never happened to him yet, Harry," said Mrs. Burton.

"Gently with the pepper," said the editor. It was the first word he had spoken for some time.

"Be good enough to remember that, yourself, when you are writing your article to-night."

"No, none for me, Theodore, said Mrs. Burton.

"Cissy!"

"I have dined really. If I had remembered that you were going to display your cookery, I would have kept some of my energy, but I forgot it."

"As a rule," said Burton, "I don't think women recognize any difference in flavors. I believe wild duck and hashed mutton would be quite the same to my wife if her eyes were blinded. I should not mind this, if it were not that they are generally proud of the deficiency. They think it grand."

"Just as men think it grand not to know one tune from another," said his wife.

When dinner was over, Burton got up from his seat. "Harry," said he, "do you like good wine?" Harry said that he did. Whatever women may say about wild fowl, men never profess an indifference to good wine, although there is a theory about the world, quite as incorrect as it is general, that they have given up drinking it. "Indeed I do," said Harry.

"Then I'll give you a bottle of port," said Burton, and so saying he left the room.

"I'm very glad you have come to-day," said Jones, with much gravity. "He never gives me any of that when I'm alone with him; and he never, by any means, brings it out for company."

"You don't mean to accuse him of drinking it alone, Tom?" said his sister, laughing.

"I don't know when he drinks it; I only know when he doesn't."

The wine was decanted with as much care as had been given to the concoction of the gravy, and the clearness of the dark liquid was scrutinized with an eye that was full of anxious care. "Now, Cissy, what do you think of that? She knows a gla.s.s of good wine when she gets it, as well as you do Harry, in spite of her contempt for the duck."

As they sipped the old port, they sat round the dining-room fire, and Harry Clavering was forced to own to himself that he had never been more comfortable.

"Ah," said Burton, stretching out his slippered feet, "why can't it all be after-dinner, instead of that weary room at the Adelphi?"

"And all old port?" said Jones.

"Yes, and all old port. You are not such an a.s.s as to suppose that a man in suggesting to himself a continuance of pleasure suggests to himself also the evils which are supposed to accompany such pleasure. If I took much of the stuff I should get cross and sick, and make a beast of myself but then what a pity it is that it should be so."

"You wouldn't like much of it, I think," said his wife.

"That is it," said he. "We are driven to work because work never palls on us, whereas pleasure always does. What a wonderful scheme it is when one looks at it all. No man can follow, pleasure long continually. When a man strives to do so, he turns his pleasure at once into business, and works at that. Come, Harry, we musn't have another bottle, as Jones would go to sleep among the type." Then they all went up stairs together. Harry, before he went away, was taken again up into the nursery, and there kissed the two little girls in their cots. When he was outside the nursery door, on the top of the stairs, Mrs. Burton took him by the hand. "You'll come to us often," said she, "and make yourself at home here, will you not?" Harry could not but say that he would.

Indeed he did so without hesitation, almost with eagerness, for he had liked her and had liked her house. "We think of you, you know," she continued, "quite as one of ourselves. How could it be otherwise when Flo is the dearest to us of all beyond our own?"

"It makes me so happy to hear you say so," said he.

"Then come here and talk about her. I want Theodore to feel that you are his brother; it will be so important to you in the business that it should be so." After that he went away, and as he walked back along Piccadilly, and then up through the regions of St. Giles to his house in Bloomsbury Square, he satisfied himself that the life of Onslow Crescent was a better manner of life than that which was likely to prevail in Bolton Street.

When he was gone his character was of course discussed between the husband and wife in Onslow Crescent. "What do you think of him?" said the husband.

"I like him so much! He is so much nicer than you told me--so much pleasanter and easier; and I have no doubt he is as clever, though I don't think he shows that at once."

"He is clever enough; there's no doubt about that."

"And did you not think he was pleasant?"

"Yes; he was pleasant here. He is one of those men who get on best with women. You'll make much more of him for awhile than I shall. He'll gossip with you and sit idling with you for the hour together, if you'll let him. There's nothing wrong about him, and he'd like nothing better than that."

"You don't believe that he's idle by disposition? Think of all that he has done already."

"That's just what is most against him. He might do very well with us if he had not got that confounded fellowship; but having got that, he thinks the hard work of life is pretty well over with him."

"I don't suppose he can be so foolish as that, Theodore."

"I know well what such men are, and I know the evil that is done to them by the cramming they endure. They learn many names of things--high-sounding names, and they come to understand a great deal about words. It is a knowledge that requires no experience and very little real thought. But it demands much memory; and when they have loaded themselves in this way, they think that they are instructed in all things. After all, what can they do that is of real use to mankind?

What can they create?"

"I suppose they are of use."

"I don't know it. A man will tell you, or pretend to tell you--for the chances are ten to one that he is wrong--what sort of lingo was spoken in some particular island or province six hundred years before Christ.

What good will that do any one, even if he were right? And then see the effect upon the men themselves! At four-and-twenty a young fellow has achieved some wonderful success, and calls himself by some outlandish and conceited name--a double first, or something of the kind. Then he thinks he has completed everything, and is too vain to learn anything afterward. The truth is, that at twenty-four no man has done more than acquire the rudiments of his education. The system is bad from beginning to end. All that compet.i.tion makes false and imperfect growth. Come, I'll go to bed."

What would Harry have said if he had heard all this from the man who dusted his boots with his handkerchief?

Chapter IX

Too Prudent By Half