IN WHICH THE ADMONITUS LOCORUM BEGINS TO HAVE FUN
WITH TWO ENTIRELY RESPECTABLE MEMBERS OF
SOCIETY
 
The hall of the “Man at Arms” was ever a place of mystery. The high roof seemed to pass into infinite space, and on every side there appeared passages and dark oaken doors that led, one fancied, into the very heart of secrecy.
At the other end, opposite to the great doors, was the wide stone staircase leading to other floors, and down the passages to right and left deep-set windows let in shafts of light.
Mrs. Maradick greeted Mr. Bannister cordially, but with reserve. He was a little stout man like a top, scrupulously neat and always correct. He liked to convey to his guests the spirit of the place—that they were received from no mercenary point of view, but rather with the greeting of a friend. Of course, there would ultimately be a bill—it was only the horrid necessity of these, our grasping times—but let it be forgotten and put aside until the final leave-taking. He would have preferred, if possible, to send bills afterwards by post, directed by another hand; but that gave opportunity to unscrupulous adventurers. He would have liked to have entertained the whole world, at any rate the whole social world, free of charge; as it was—well, the bills were heavy. He was always disappointed when his guests failed to grasp this point of view; sometimes they were blustering and domineering, sometimes they were obsequious and timorous—either manner was disagreeable.
About Mrs. Maradick he was never quite sure. He was afraid that she scarcely grasped the whole situation; there was no doubt that she found it impossible to eliminate the bill altogether.
“And our rooms?”
Mrs. Maradick looked up at him. She was smiling, but it was a smile that threatened to disappear.
“I think you will be completely satisfied, Mrs. Maradick. A most delightful suite on the second floor with a view of the sea——”
“Ah—but our rooms. My husband wrote, I think. We had the same last year—I——”
“I’m afraid that there’s been a little difficulty. We had had previous orders. I would have written to explain had I not been sure that the rooms that we had allotted you would be completely satisfactory.”
“Now, Mr. Bannister, that is too bad of you.” The smile had gone and her eyes flashed. There was to be a battle as she had foreseen. “We had the same trouble last year, I think——”
“I am extremely sorry, Mrs. Maradick.” He watched her a little anxiously. This was one of the occasions on which he was not certain of her. Would she remember the true ethics of the situation? He hoped for her sake that she would. “I am really very sorry, but I am afraid in this case that there is nothing to be done. Sir Richard and Lady Gale ordered the rooms so long ago as last Christmas. It is of some importance to him, I believe, owing to reasons of health. They laid some stress on it.”
“Lady Gale?”
“Yes.” Mr. Bannister smiled again. “Really, Mrs. Maradick, I think that you would be perfectly satisfied with your rooms if you would come up for a moment.”
“Is Lady Gale here?” Mrs. Maradick was considering.
“Yes. They arrived last night.”
“Well,” this slowly and with hesitation, “let us go and see them, James. One never knows, after all.”
Maradick was relieved. He always waited in the background during these interviews—there were many throughout the year. But this was delightfully over. Had it been the Jones’s! Well, he had no doubt that it would have been a prolonged struggle; after all, there was a difference.
Mrs. Maradick hurried to the lift, her girls in close attendance, and Mr. Bannister at her side. Maradick was about to follow, when he felt a touch on his elbow and turned round. At his side stood a young man with dark curly hair and a snub nose; not snub enough to mind, but just enough to give you the impression that “everything turned up”—the corners of his mouth and the tips of his ears.
He seemed very young indeed, and had that very clean, clear skin that is the best thing in a decent young man; at least, that is more or less how Maradick summed him up. He was in evening dress, and it suited him.
“I say, I’m most awfully sorry.”
He was smiling, so Maradick smiled too.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
“About the rooms, you know. It is my people—my name is Gale—who have them. I’m afraid it was most annoying, and I’m sure my mother will be extremely sorry.” He blushed and stammered.
“Oh, please——” Maradick felt quite embarrassed. “It really doesn’t matter at all. My wife liked those rooms—we were there last year—and she’s naturally asked about them; but these others will suit us splendidly.”
“No, but your being there last year seems almost as though you had a right, doesn’t it? It is true about my father, it makes rather a difference to him, and they are ripping rooms.”
“Yes, of course,” Maradick laughed again, “we shall be perfectly comfortable.”
There was a moment’s pause. There was nothing more to say: then suddenly, simultaneously—“It’s very decent . . .” and at that they laughed again. Then Maradick hurried up the stairs.
The boy stayed where he was, the smile lingering at the corners of his mouth. Although it was half-past seven the daylight streamed into the hall. People were passing to and fro, and every now and again glanced at him and caught his infectious smile.
“By Jove, a pretty woman, but a bit of a Tartar,” he said, thinking of Mrs. Maradick; then he turned round and walked up the stairs, down a passage to the right, and in a moment young Gale had opened their sitting-room door. The rooms under discussion were certainly very delightful and the view was charming, down over the town and out to the sea beyond. There were glimpses of the crooked streets and twisted gables, and, at last, the little stone pier and a crowd of herring-boats sheltering under its protection.
In the sitting-room was Lady Gale, waiting to go down to dinner. At this time she was about fifty years of age, but she was straight and tall as she had been at twenty. In her young days as Miss Laurence, daughter of Sir Douglas Laurence, the famous Egyptologist, she had been a beauty, and she was magnificent now with a mass of snow-white hair that, piled high on her head, seemed a crown worthily bestowed on her as one of the best and gentlest women of her generation; but perhaps it was her eyes that made you conscious at once of being in the presence of some one whose judgment was unswerving with a tenderness of compassion that made her the confidante of all the failures and wastrels of her day. “Lady Gale will tell you that you are wrong,” some one once said of her; “but she will tell you so that her condemnation is better than another person’s praise.”
At her side stood a man of about thirty, strikingly resembling her in many ways, but lacking in animation and intelligence. You felt that his carefully controlled moustache was the most precious thing about him, and that the cut of his clothes was of more importance than the cut of his character.
“Well, Tony?” Lady Gale greeted him as he closed the door behind him. “Getting impatient? Father isn’t ready. I told him that we’d wait for him; and Alice hasn’t appeared——”
“No, not a bit.” He came over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not hungry, as a matter of fact, too big a tea. Besides, where’s Alice?”
“Coming. She told us not to wait, but I suppose we’d better.”
“Oh, I say! Mother! I’ve discovered the most awfully decent fellow downstairs, really; I hope that we shall get to know him. He looks a most thundering good sort.”
The red light from the setting sun had caught the church spire and the roofs of the market-place; the town seemed on fire; the noise of the fair came discordantly up to them.
“Another of your awfully decent chaps!” This from his brother. “My dear Tony, you discover a new one every week. Only I wish you wouldn’t thrust them on to us. What about the charming painter who borrowed your links and never returned them, and that delightful author-fellow who was so beastly clever that he had to fly the country——?”
“Oh, chuck it, Rupert. Of course one makes mistakes. I learnt a lot from Allison, and I know he always meant to send the links back and forgot; anyhow he’s quite welcome to them. But this chap’s all right—he is really—he looks jolly decent——”
“Yes; but, Tony,” said his mother, laughing, “I agree with Rupert there. Make your odd acquaintances if you like, but don’t bring them down on to us; for instance, that horrid little fat man you liked so much at one time, the poet——”
“Oh, Trelawny. He’s all right now. He’s going to do great things one day.”
“And meanwhile borrows money that he never intends to repay. No, Tony, these sudden acquaintances are generally a mistake, take my word for it. How long have you known this man downstairs?”
“Only a minute. He’s just arrived with his wife and two little girls.”
“And you know him already?”
“Well, you see his wife wanted these rooms—said she ordered them or something—and then went for old Bannister about it, and he, naturally enough, said that we’d got them; and then he stuck it on about their rooms and said that they were much the nicest rooms in the place, and then she went off fairly quiet.”
“Well, where did the man come in?”
“He didn’t at all, and, from the look of her, I shouldn’t think that he ever does. But I went up and said I was jolly sorry, and all that sort of thing——”
“Well, I’m——!” from Rupert. “Really, Tony! And what on earth was there to apologise for! If we are going to start saying pretty things to everyone in the hotel who wants these rooms we’ve got our work cut out.”
“Oh! I didn’t say pretty things; I don’t know why I really said anything at all. The spirit moved me, I suppose. I’m going to be friends with that man. I shall like him.”
“How do you know?”
“By three infallible signs. He looks you straight in the eyes, he’s got a first-class laugh, and he doesn’t say much.”
“Characteristics of most of the scoundrels in the kingdom,” Rupert said, yawning. “By Jove! I wish father and Alice would hurry up.”
A girl came in at that moment; Tony danced round her and then caught her hand and led her to his mother.
“Your Majesty! I have the honour of presenting her Grace the Duchess of——”
But the girl broke from him. “Don’t, Tony, please, you’re upsetting things. Please, Lady Gale, can’t we go down? I’m so hungry that no ordinary dinner will ever satisfy me.”
“Don’t you pretend, Alice,” cried Tony, laughing. “It’s the dress, the whole dress, and nothing but the dress. That we may astonish this our town of Treliss is our earnest and most humble desire.” He stopped. “It is high time, you know, mother; nearly half-past eight.”
“I know, but it’s your father. You might go and see if he’s nearly ready, Tony.”
As he moved across the room her eyes followed him with a devotion that was the most beautiful thing in the world. Then she turned to the girl.
Miss Alice Du Cane was looking very lovely indeed. Her dress was something wonderful in pink, and that was all that the ordinary observer would have discovered about it; very beautiful and soft, tumbling into all manner of lines and curves and shades as she walked. Quite one of the beauties of the season, Miss Alice Du Cane, and one of the loveliest visions that your dining-halls are likely to behold, Mr. Bannister! She was dark and tall and her smile was delightful—just a little too obviously considered, perhaps, but nevertheless delightful!
“Yes, dear, you look very nice.” Lady Gale smiled at her. “I only wish that all young ladies nowadays would be content to dress as simply; but, of course, they haven’t all got your natural advantages!”
Then the door opened once more and Sir Richard Gale appeared, followed closely by Tony. He was a man of magnificent presence and wonderful preservation, and he was probably the most completely selfish egoist in the kingdom; on these two facts he had built his reputation. The first gave him many admirers and the second gave him many enemies, and a splendid social distinction was the result.
He was remarkably handsome, in a military-cum-Embassy manner; that is, his moustache, his walk, and the swing of his shoulders were all that they should be. He walked across the room most beautifully, but, perhaps, just a little too carefully, so that he gave the onlooker the impression of something rather precariously kept together—it was the only clue to his age.
He spent his life in devising means of enabling his wife to give sign and evidence to the world of her affection. He was entirely capricious and unreliable, and took violent dislikes to very many different kinds of people. He had always been a very silent man, and now his conversation was limited to monosyllables; he disliked garrulous persons, but expected conversation to be maintained.
The only thing that he said now was “Dinner!” but everyone knew what he meant, and an advance was made: Lady Gale and her husband, Miss Du Cane between Rupert and Tony, accompanied by laughter and a good deal of wild jesting on the part of the last named.
The going in to dinner at home was always a most solemn affair, even when no one save the family were present. Sir Richard was seen at his best in the minutes during which the procession lasted, and it symbolised the dignity and solemnity befitting his place and family. The Gales go in to dinner! and then, Sir Richard Gale goes in to dinner!—it was the moment of the day.
And now how greatly was the symbolism increased. Here we are in the heart of the democracy, sitting down with our fellow-creatures, some of whom are most certainly commoners, sitting down without even a raised platform; not at the same table, it is true, but nevertheless on the same floor, beneath the same ceiling! It was indeed a wonderful and truly British ceremony.
He generally contrived to be a little late, but to-day they were very late indeed, and his shoulders were raised just a little higher and his head was just a little loftier than usual.
The room was full, and many heads were raised as they entered. They were a fine family, no doubt—Sir Richard, Lady Gale, Rupert—all distinguished and people at whom one looked twice, and then Alice was lovely. It was only Tony, perhaps, who might have been anybody; just a nice clean-looking boy people were inclined to call him, but they always liked him. Their table was at the other end of the room, and the procession was slow. Tony always hated it—“making a beastly monkey-show of oneself and the family”—but his father took his time.
The room was charming, with just a little touch of something unusual. Mr. Bannister liked flowers, but he was wise in his use of them; and every table had just that hint of colour, red and blue and gold, that was needed, without any unnecessary profusion.
There were a great many people—the season was at its height—and the Maradicks, although late, were fortunate to have secured a table by the windows. The girls were tired and were going to have supper in bed—a little fish, some chicken and some shape—Mrs. Maradick had given careful directions.
Through the windows came the scents of the garden and a tiny breeze that smelt of the sea. There were wonderful colours on the lawn outside. The moon was rising, a full moon like a stiff plate of old gold, and its light flung shadows and strange twisted shapes over the grass. The trees stood, tall and dark, a mysterious barrier that fluttered and trembled in the little wind and was filled with the whispers of a thousand voices. Beyond that again was the light pale quivering blue of the night-sky, in which flashed and wheeled and sparkled the stars.
Mr. and Mrs. Maradick were playing the game very thoroughly to-night; you could not have found a more devoted couple in the room. She looked charming in her fragile, kittenish manner, something fluffy and white and apparently simple, with a slender chain of gold at her throat and a small spray of diamonds in her hair. She was excited, too, by the place and the people and the whole change. This was, oh! most certainly! better than Epsom, and Mrs. Martin Fraser and Louie had faded into a very distant past. This was her métier!—this, with its lights and its fashion! Why didn’t they live in London, really in London? She must persuade James next year. It would be better for the girls, too, now that they were growing up; and they might even find somewhere with a garden. She chattered continuously and watched for the effect on her neighbours. She had noticed one man whisper, and several people had looked across.
“It is so wonderful that I’m not more tired after all that bolting and jolting, and you know I felt that headache coming all the time. . . only just kept it at bay. But really, now, I’m quite hungry; it’s strange. I never could eat anything in Epsom. What is there?”
The waiter handed her the card. She looked up at him with a smile. “Oh! no consommé! thank you. Yes, Filet de sole and Poularde braisée—oh! and Grouse à la broche—of course—just in time, James, to-day’s only the fifteenth. Cerises Beatrice—Friandises—oh! delightful! the very thing.”
“Bannister knows what to give us,” he said, turning to her.
She settled back in her seat with a little purr of pleasure. “I hope the girls had what they wanted. Little dears! I’m afraid they were dreadfully tired.”
He watched her curiously. There had been so many evenings like this—evenings when those around him would have counted him a lucky fellow; and yet he knew that he might have been a brick wall and she would have talked in the same way. He judged her by her eyes—eyes that looked through him, past him, quite coldly, with no expression and no emotion. She simply did not realise that he was there, and he suddenly felt cold and miserable and very lonely. Oh! if only these people round him knew, if they could only see as he saw. But perhaps they were, many of them, in the same position. He watched them curiously. Men and women laughing and chatting with that intimate note that seemed to mean so much and might, as he knew well, mean so little. Everybody seemed very happy; perhaps they were. Oh! he was an old, middle-aged marplot, a kill-joy, a skeleton at the feast.
“Isn’t it jolly, dear?” he said, laughing across the table; “this grouse is perfection.”
“Tell me,” she said, with that little wave of her wrist towards him that he knew so well—“tell me where the Gales are. I don’t suppose you know, though, but we might guess.”
“I do know,” he answered, laughing; “young Gale came and spoke to me just before I came up to dress. He seemed a nice young fellow. He came up and said something about the rooms—he had heard you speaking to Bannister. They came in just now; a fine-looking elderly man, a lady with beautiful white hair, a pretty girl in pink.”
“Oh! of course! I noticed them! Oh, yes! one could tell they were somebody.” She glanced round the room. “Yes, there they are, by the wall at the back; quite a lovely girl!” She looked at them curiously. “Oh, you spoke to young Gale, did you? He looks quite a nice boy. I hope they have liked the rooms, and, after all, ours aren’t bad, are they? Really, I’m not sure that in some ways——”
She rattled on, praising the grouse, the bread sauce, the vegetables. She speculated on people and made little jokes about them, and he threw the ball back again, gaily, merrily, light-heartedly.
“You know I don’t think Louie really cares about him. I often hoped for her sake, poor girl, that she did, because there’s no denying that she’s getting on; and it isn’t as if she’s got looks or money, and it’s a wonder that he’s stuck to her as he has. I’ve always said that Louie was a marrying woman and she’d make him a good wife, there’s no doubt of that.”
Her little eyes were glittering like diamonds and her cheeks were hot. People were arriving at the fruit stage, and conversation, which had murmured over the soup and hummed over the meat, seemed to Maradick to shriek over the grapes and pears. How absurd it all was, and what was the matter with him? His head was aching, and the silver and flowers danced before his eyes. The great lines of the silver birch were purple over the lawn and the full moon was level with the windows. It must have been the journey, and he had certainly worked very hard these last months in town; but he had never known his nerves like they were to-night, indeed he had often wondered whether he had any nerves at all. Now they were all on the jump; just as though, you know, you were on one of those roundabouts, the horses jumping up and down and round, and the lights and the other people jumping too. There was a ridiculous man at a table close to them with a bald head, and the electric light caught it and turned it into a fiery ball. Such a bald head! It shone like the sun, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from it: and still his wife went on talking, talking, talking—that same little laugh, that gesticulating with the fingers, that glance round to see whether people had noticed. In some of those first years he had tried to make her angry, had contradicted and laughed derisively, but it had had no effect. She simply hadn’t considered him. But she must consider him! It was absurd; they were husband and wife. He had said—what had he said that first day in church? He couldn’t remember, but he knew that she ought to consider him, that she oughtn’t to look past him like that just as though he wasn’t there. He pulled himself together with a great effort and finished the champagne in his glass: the waiter filled it again; then he leant back in his chair and began to peel an apple, but his fingers were trembling.
“That woman over there,” said Mrs. Maradick, addressing a table to her right and then glancing quickly to her left, “is awfully like Mrs. Newton Bassett—the same sort of hair, and she’s got the eyes. Captain Bassett’s coming home in the autumn, I believe, which will be rather a blow for Muriel Bassett if all they say is true. He’s been out in Central Africa or somewhere, hasn’t he? Years older than her, they say, and as ugly as—Oh, well! people do talk, but young Forrest has been in there an awful lot lately, and he’s as nice a young fellow as you’d want to meet.”
He couldn’t stand it much longer, so he put the apple down on his plate and finished the champagne.
“If I went out to Central Africa,” he said slowly, “I wonder whether——”
“These pears are delicious,” she answered, still looking at the table to her left.
“If I went out to Central Africa——” he said again.
She leant forward and played with the silver in front of her.
“Look here, I want you to listen.” He leant forward towards her so that he might escape the man with the bald head. “If I went out to Central Africa, you—well, you wouldn’t much mind, would you? Things would be very much the same. It’s rather comforting to think that you wouldn’t very much mind.”
Maradick’s hands were shaking, but he spoke quite calmly, and he did not raise his voice because he did not want the man with the bald head to hear.
“You wouldn’t mind, would you? Why don’t you say?” Then suddenly something seemed to turn in his brain, like a little wheel, and it hurt. “It’s been going on like this for years, and how long do you think I’m going to stand it? You don’t care at all. I’m just like a chair, a table, anything. I say it’s got to change—I’ll turn you out—won’t have anything more to do with you—you’re not a wife at all—a man expects——” He did not know what he was saying, and he did not really very much care. He could not be eloquent or dramatic about it like people were in books, because he wasn’t much of a talker, and there was that little wheel in his head, and all these people talking. It had all happened in the very briefest of moments. He hardly realised at the time at all, but afterwards the impression that he had of it was of his fingers grating on the table-cloth; they dug into the wood of the table.
For only a moment his fingers seemed, of their own accord, to rise from the table and stretch out towards her throat. Sheer animal passion held him, passion born of her placidity and indifference. Then suddenly he caught her eyes; she was looking at him, staring at him, her face was very white, and he had never seen anyone look so frightened. And then all his rage left him and he sat back in his chair again, shaking from head to foot. There were all those years between them and he had never said a word until now! Then he felt horribly ashamed of himself; he had been intolerably rude, to a lady. He wasn’t quite certain of what he had said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said slowly, “I have been very rude. I didn’t quite know what I was saying.”
For a moment they were silent. The chatter went on, and the waiter was standing a little way away; he had not heard anything.
“I am rather tired,” said Mrs. Maradick; “I think I’ll go up, if you don’t mind.”
He rose and offered her his arm, and they went out together. She did not look at him, and neither of them spoke.
Tony Gale was absurdly excited that evening, and even his father’s presence scarcely restrained him. Sir Richard never said very much, but he generally looked a great deal; to-night he enjoyed his dinner. Lady Gale watched Tony a little anxiously. She had always been the wisest of mothers in that she had never spoken before her time; the whole duty of parents lies in the inviting of their children’s confidence by never asking for it, and she had never asked. Then she had met Miss Alice Du Cane and had liked her, and it had struck her that here was the very girl for Tony. Tony liked her and she liked Tony. In every way it seemed a thing to be desired, and this invitation to accompany them to Cornwall was a natural move in the right direction. They were both, of course, very young; but then people did begin very young nowadays, and Tony had been “down” from Oxford a year and ought to know what he was about. Alice was a charming girl, and the possessor of much sound common-sense; indeed, there was just the question whether she hadn’t got a little too much. The Du Canes were excellently connected; on the mother’s side there were the Forestiers of Portland Hall down in Devon, and the Craddocks of Newton Chase—oh! that was all right. And then Tony had a fortune of his own, so that he was altogether independent, and one couldn’t be quite sure of what he would do, so that it was a satisfaction to think that he really cared for somebody that so excellently did! It promised to be a satisfactory affair all round, and even Sir Richard, a past master in the art of finding intricate objections to desirable plans, had nothing to say. Of course, it was a matter that needed looking at from every point of view. Of the Du Canes, there were not many. Colonel Du Cane had died some years before, and Lady Du Cane, a melancholy, faded lady who passed her time in such wildly exciting health-resorts as Baden-Baden and Marienbad, had left her daughter to the care of her aunt, Miss Perryn. There were other Du Canes, a brother at Eton and a sister in France, but they were too young to matter; and then there was lots of money, so really Alice had nothing to complain of.
But Lady Gale was still old-fashioned enough to mind a little about mutual affection. Did they really care for each other? Of course it was so difficult to tell about Tony because he cared about everyone, and was perpetually enthusiastic about the most absurdly ordinary people. His geese were all swans, there was no question; but then, as he always retorted, that was better than thinking that your swans, when you did meet them, were all geese. Still, it did make it difficult to tell. When, for instance, he rated a man he had met in the hall of the hotel for the first time, and for one minute precisely, on exactly the same scale as he rated friends of a lifetime, what were you to think? Then Alice, too, was difficult.
She was completely self-possessed and never at a loss, and Lady Gale liked people who made mistakes. You always knew exactly what Alice would say or think about any subject under discussion. She had the absolutely sane and level-headed point of view that is so annoying to persons of impulsive judgment. Not that Lady Gale was impulsive; but she was wise enough to know that some of the best people were, and she distrusted old heads on young shoulders. Miss Du Cane had read enough to comment sensibly and with authority on the literature of the day. She let you express your opinion and then agreed or differed with the hinting of standards long ago formed and unflinchingly sustained, and some laughing assertion of her own ignorance that left you convinced of her wisdom. She always asserted that she was shallow, and shallowness was therefore the last fault of which she was ever accused.
She cared for Tony, there was no doubt of that; but then, so did everybody. Lady Gale’s only doubt was lest she was a little too matter-of-fact about it all; but, after all, girls were very different nowadays, and the display of any emotion was the unpardonable sin.
“Grouse! Hurray!” Tony displayed the menu. “The first of the year. I’m jolly glad I didn’t go up with Menzies to Scotland; it’s much better here, and I’m off shooting this year——”
“That’s only because you always like the place you’re in better than any other possible place, Tony,” said Alice. “And I wish I had the virtue. Oh! those dreary months with mother at Baden! They’re hanging over me still.”
“Well, I expect they gave your mother a great deal of pleasure, my dear,” said Lady Gale, “and that after all is something, even nowadays.”
“No, they didn’t, that’s the worst of it. She didn’t want me a bit. There was old Lady Pomfret and Mrs. Rainer, and oh! lots of others; bridge, morning, noon, and night, and I used to wander about and mope.”
“You ought to have been writing letters to Tony and me all the time,” said Rupert, laughing. “You’ll never get such a chance again.”
“Well, I did, didn’t I, Tony? Speak up for me, there’s a brick!”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Tony. “They were jolly short, and there didn’t seem to be much moping about it.”
“That was to cheer you up. You didn’t want me to make you think that I was depressed, did you?”
Sir Richard had finished his grouse and could turn his attention to other things. He complained of the brilliancy of the lights, and some of them were turned out.
“Where’s your man, Tony?” said Rupert. “Let’s see him.”
“Over there by the window—a man and a woman at a table by themselves—a big man, clean shaven. There, you can see him now, behind that long waiter—a pretty woman in white, laughing.”
“Oh, well! He’s better than some,” Rupert grudgingly admitted. “Not so bad—strong, muscular, silent hero type—it’s a pretty woman.” He fastened his eye-glass, an attention that he always paid to anyone who really deserved it.
“Yes, I like him,” said Lady Gale; “what did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t quite catch it; Marabin, or Mara—no, I don’t know—Mara—something. But I say, what are we going to do to-night? We must do something. I was never so excited in my life, and I don’t a bit know why.”
“Oh, that will pass,” said Rupert; “we know your moods, Tony. You must take him out into the garden, Alice, and quiet him down. Oh! look, they’re going, those Marabins or whatever their names are. She carries herself well, that woman.”
Dinner always lasted a long time, because Sir Richard enjoyed his food and had got a theory about biting each mouthful to which he entirely attributed his healthy old age; it entailed lengthy meals.
They were almost the last people in the room when at length they rose to go, and it was growing late.
“It’s so sensible of them not to pull blinds down,” said Tony, “the moon helps digestion.” Sir Richard, as was his custom, went slowly and majestically up to his room, the others into the garden.
“Take Alice to see the view from the terraces, Rupert,” said Lady Gale. “Tony and I will walk about here a little.”
She put her arm through her son’s, and they passed up and down the walks in front of the hotel. The vision of the town in the distance was black, the gardens were cold and white under the moon.
“Oh! it is beautiful.” Lady Gale drew a deep breath. “And when I’m in a place like this, and it’s England, I’m perpetually wondering why so many people hurry away abroad somewhere as soon as they’ve a minute to spare. Why, there’s nothing as lovely as this anywhere!”
Tony laughed. “There’s magic in it,” he said. “I hadn’t set foot in the place for quarter of an hour before I knew that it was quite different from all the other places I’d ever been in. I wasn’t joking just now at dinner. I meant it quite seriously. I feel as if I were just in for some enormous adventure—as if something important were most certainly going to happen.”
“Something important’s always happening, especially at your time of life; which reminds me, Tony dear, that I want to talk to you seriously.”
He looked up in her face. “What’s up, mother?”
“Nothing’s up, and perhaps you will think me a silly interfering old woman; but you know mothers are queer things, Tony, and you can’t say that I’ve bothered you very much in days past.”
“No.” He suddenly put his arm round her neck, pulled her head towards his and kissed her. “It’s all right. There’s nobody here to see, and it wouldn’t matter a bit if there were. No, you’re the very sweetest and best mother that mortal man ever had, and you’re cursed with an ungrateful, undutiful scapegrace of a son, more’s the pity.”
“Ah,” she said, shaking her head, “that’s just what I mean. Your mother is a beautiful and delightful joke like everything and everybody else. It’s time, Tony, that you were developing. You’re twenty-four, and you seem to me to be exactly where you were at eighteen. Now I don’t want to hurry or worry you, but the perpetual joke won’t do any longer. It isn’t that I myself want you to be anything different, because I don’t. I only want you to be happy; but life’s hard, and I don’t think you can meet it by playing with it.”
He said nothing, but he gave her arm a little squeeze.
“Then you know,” she went on, “you have absolutely no sense of proportion. Everybody and everything are on exactly the same scale. You don’t seem to me to have any standard by which you estimate things. Everybody is nice and delightful. I don’t believe you ever disliked anybody, and it has always been a wonder to all of us that you haven’t lost more from suffering so many fools gladly. I always used to think that as soon as you fell in love with somebody—really and properly fell in love with some nice girl—that that seriousness would come, and so I didn’t mind. I don’t want to hurry you in that direction, dear, but I would like to see you settled. Really, Tony, you know, you haven’t changed at all, you’re exactly the same; so much the same that I’ve wondered a little once or twice whether you really care for anybody.”
“Poor old mother, and my flightiness has worried you, has it? I am most awfully sorry. But God made the fools as well as the wits, and He didn’t ask the fools which lot they wanted to belong to.”
“No, but, Tony, you aren’t a fool, that’s just it. You’ve got the brain of the family somewhere, only you seem to be ashamed of it and afraid that people should know you’d got it, and your mother would rather they did know. And then, dear, there is such a thing as family pride. It isn’t snobbery, although it looks like it; it only means, don’t be too indiscriminate. Don’t have just anybody for a friend. It doesn’t matter about their birth, but it does matter about their opinions and surroundings. Some of them have been—well, scarcely clean, dear. I’m sure that Mr. Templar wasn’t a nice man, although I dare say he was very clever; and that man to-night, for instance: I dare say he’s an excellent man in every way, but you owe it to the family to find out just a little about him first; you can’t tell just in a minute——”
He stopped her for a minute and looked up at her quite seriously. “I’ll be difficult to change, mother, I’m afraid. How you and father ever produced such a vagabond I don’t know, but vagabond I am, and vagabond I’ll remain in spite of Oxford and the Bond Street tailor. But never you grieve, mother dear, I’ll promise to tell you everything—don’t you worry.”
“Yes. But what about settling?”
“Oh, settling!” he answered gravely. “Vagabonds oughtn’t to marry at all.”
“But you’re happy about everything? You’re satisfied with things as they are?”
“Of course!” he cried. “Just think what kind of a beast I’d be if I wasn’t. Of course, it’s splendid. And now, mother, the jaw’s over and I’m the very best of sons, and it’s a glorious night, and we’ll be as happy as the day is long.”
They knelt on the seat at the south end and looked down into the crooked streets; the moon had found its way there now, and they could almost read the names on the shops.
Suddenly Lady Gale put her hand against his cheek. “Tony, dear, I care for you more than anything in the world. You know it. And, Tony, always do what you feel is the straight thing and I shall know it is right for you, and I shall trust you; but, Tony, don’t marry anybody unless you are quite certain that it is the only person. Don’t let anything else influence you. Marriage with the wrong person is——” Her voice shook for a moment. “Promise me, Tony.”
“I promise,” he answered solemnly, and she took his arm and they walked back down the path.
Rupert and Alice were waiting for them and they all went in together. Lady Gale and Rupert said good night. Rupert was always tired very early in the evening unless there was bridge or a dance, but Alice and Tony sat in the sitting-room by the open window watching the moonlight on the sea and listening to the muffled thunder of the waves. Far out into the darkness flashed the Porth Allen Lighthouse.
For a little while they were silent, then Tony suddenly said:
“I say, am I awfully young?”
She looked up. “Young?”
“Yes. The mater has been talking to me to-night. She says that it is time that I grew up, that I haven’t grown a bit since I was eighteen, and that it must be very annoying for everybody. Have you felt it, too?”
“Well, of course I know what she means. It’s absurd, but I always feel years older than you, although by age I’m younger. But oh! it’s difficult to explain; one always wants to rag with you. I’m always at my silliest when you’re there, and I hate being at my silliest.”
“I know you do, that’s your worst fault. But really, this is rather dreadful. I must proceed to grow up. But tell me honestly, am I a fool?”
“No, of course you’re not, you’re awfully clever. But that’s what we all think about you—you could do so many things and you’re not doing anything.”
He sat on the window-sill, swinging his legs.
“There was once,” he began, “the King of Fools, and he had a most splendid and widely attended Court; and one day the Wisest Man in Christendom came to see and be seen, and he talked all the wisest things that he had ever learnt, and the fools listened with all their ears and thought that they had never heard such folly, and after a time they shouted derisively, not knowing that he was the Wisest Man, ‘Why, he is the biggest fool of them all!’”
“The moral being?”
“Behold, the Wisest Man!” cried Tony, pointing dramatically at his breast. “There, my dear Alice, you have the matter in a nutshell.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” said Alice, laughing, “only it is scarcely convincing. Seriously, Tony, Lady Gale is right. Don’t be one of the rotters like young Seins or Rocky Culler or Dick Staines, who spend their whole day in walking Bond Street and letting their heads wag. Not, of course, that you’d ever be that sort, but it would be rather decent if you did something.”
“Well, I do,” he cried.
“What?” she said.
“I can shoot a gun, I can ride a horse, I can serve corkers from the back line at tennis, and score thirty at moderate cricket; I can read French, German, Italian. I can play bridge—well, fairly—I can speak the truth, eat meringues all day with no evil consequences, stick to a pal, and walk for ever and ever, Amen. Oh, but you make me vain!”
She laughed. “None of those things are enough,” she said. “You know quite well what I mean. You must take a profession; why not Parliament, the Bar, writing?—you could write beautifully if you wanted to. Oh, Tony!”
“I have one,” he said.
“Now! What?”
“The finest profession in the world—Odysseus, Jason, C?ur-de-Lion, St. Francis of Assisi, Wilhelm Meister, Lavengro. By the beard of Ahasuerus I am a wanderer!”
He struck an attitude and laughed, but there was a light in his eyes and his cheeks were flushed.
Then he added:
“Oh! what rot! There’s nobody so boring as somebody on his hobby. I’m sorry, Alice, but you led me on; it’s your own fault.”
“Do you know,” she said, “that is the first time, Tony, that I’ve ever heard you speak seriously about anything, and really you don’t do it half badly. But, at the same time, are you quite sure that you’re right . . . now? What I mean is that things have changed so. I’ve heard people talk like that before, but it has generally meant that they were unemployed or something and ended up by asking for sixpence. It seems to me that there’s such a lot to be done now, and such a little time to do it in, that we haven’t time to go round looking for adventure; it isn’t quite right that we should if we’re able-bodied and can work.”
“Why, how serious we are all of a sudden,” he cried. “One would think you ran a girls club.”
“I do go down to Southwark a lot,” she answered. “And we’re badly in need of subscriptions. I’d meant to ask you before.”
“Who’s the unemployed now?” he said, laughing. “I thought it would end in that.”
“Well, I must go to bed,” she said, getting up from the window-sill. “It’s late and cold, and I’m sure we’ve had a most inspiring talk on both sides. Good night, old boy.”
“Ta-ta,” said Tony.
But after she had gone he sat by the window, thinking. Was it true that he was a bit of a loafer? Had he really been taking things too easily? Until these last two days he had never considered himself or his position at all. He had always been radiantly happy; self-questioning had been morbid and unnecessary. It was all very well for pessimists and people who wrote to the Times, but, with Pope, he hummed, “Whatever is, is best,” and thought no more about it.
But this place seemed to have changed all that. What was there about the place, he wondered? He had felt curiously excited from the first moment of his coming there, but he could give no reason for it. It was a sleepy little place, pretty and charming, of course, but that was all. But he had known no rest or peace; something must be going to happen. And then, too, there was Alice. He knew perfectly well why she had been asked to join them, and he knew that she knew. Before they had come down he had liked the idea. She was one of the best and true as steel. He had almost decided, after all, it was time that they settled down. And then, on coming here, everything had been different. Alice, his father, his mother, Rupert had changed; something was wrong. He did not, could not worry it out, only it was terribly hot, it was a beautiful night outside, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours.
He passed quietly down the stairs and out into the garden. He walked down to the south end. It was most wonderful—the moon, the stars, the whirling light at sea, and, quite plainly, the noise of the fair.
He leant over the wall and looked down. He was suddenly conscious that some one else was there; a big man, in evening dress, smoking a cigar. Something about him, the enormous arms or the close-cropped hair, was familiar.
“Good evening,” said Tony.
It was Maradick. He looked up, and Tony at once wished that he hadn’t said anything. It was the face of a man who had been deep in his own thoughts and had been brought back with a shock, but he smiled.
“Good evening. It’s wonderfully beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I’m Gale,” said Tony apologetically, “I’m sorry if I interrupted you.”
“Oh no,” Maradick answered. “One can think at any time, and I wanted company. I suppose the rest of the hotel is in bed—rather a crime on a night like this.” Then he suddenly held up a warning finger. “Listen!” he said.
Quite distinctly, and high above the noise of the fair, came the voice of a man singing in the streets below. He sang two verses, and then it died away.
“It was a tune I heard last year,” Maradick said apologetically. “I liked it and had connected it with this place. I——” Then suddenly they heard it again.
They were both silent and listened together.