Leonard accepted the invitation to tea next Saturday. But
he was right; the visit proved a conspicuous failure.
"Sugar?" said Margaret.
"Cake?" said Helen. "The big cake or the little
deadlies? I'm afraid you thought my letter rather odd, but
we'll explain--we aren't odd, really--not affected, really.
We're over-expressive: that's all. "
As a lady's lap-dog Leonard did not excel. He was not
an Italian, still less a Frenchman, in whose blood there
runs the very spirit of persiflage and of gracious
repartee. His wit was the Cockney's; it opened no doors
into imagination, and Helen was drawn up short by "The more
a lady has to say, the better," administered waggishly.
"Oh, yes," she said.
"Ladies brighten--"
"Yes, I know. The darlings are regular sunbeams. Let
me give you a plate."
"How do you like your work?" interposed Margaret.
He, too, was drawn up short. He would not have these
women prying into his work. They were Romance, and so was
the room to which he had at last penetrated, with the queer
sketches of people bathing upon its walls, and so were the
very tea-cups, with their delicate borders of wild
strawberries. But he would not let Romance interfere with
his life. There is the devil to pay then.
"Oh, well enough," he answered.
"Your company is the Porphyrion, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's so"--becoming rather offended. "It's funny
how things get round."
"Why funny?" asked Helen, who did not follow the
workings of his mind. "It was written as large as life on
your card, and considering we wrote to you there, and that
you replied on the stamped paper--"
"Would you call the Porphyrion one of the big Insurance
Companies?" pursued Margaret.
"It depends what you call big."
"I mean by big, a solid, well-established concern, that
offers a reasonably good career to its employes."
"I couldn't say--some would tell you one thing and
others another," said the employe uneasily. "For my own
part"--he shook his head--"I only believe half I hear. Not
that even; it's safer. Those clever ones come to the worse
grief, I've often noticed. Ah, you can't be too careful."
He drank, and wiped his moustache, which was going to be
one of those moustaches that always droop into
tea-cups--more bother than they're worth, surely, and not
fashionable either.
"I quite agree, and that's why I was curious to know: is
it a solid, well-established concern?"
Leonard had no idea. He understood his own corner of
the machine, but nothing beyond it. He desired to confess
neither knowledge nor ignorance, and under these
circumstances, another motion of the head seemed safest. To
him, as to the British public, the Porphyrion was the
Porphyrion of the advertisement--a giant, in the classical
style, but draped sufficiently, who held in one hand a
burning torch, and pointed with the other to St. Paul's and
Windsor Castle. A large sum of money was inscribed below,
and you drew your own conclusions. This giant caused
Leonard to do arithmetic and write letters, to explain the
regulations to new clients, and re-explain them to old
ones. A giant was of an impulsive morality--one knew that
much. He would pay for Mrs. Munt's hearth-rug with
ostentatious haste, a large claim he would repudiate
quietly, and fight court by court. But his true fighting
weight, his antecedents, his amours with other members of
the commercial Pantheon--all these were as uncertain to
ordinary mortals as were the escapades of Zeus. While the
gods are powerful, we learn little about them. It is only
in the days of their decadence that a strong light beats
into heaven.
"We were told the Porphyrion's no go," blurted Helen.
"We wanted to tell you; that's why we wrote."
"A friend of ours did think that it is unsufficiently
reinsured," said Margaret.
Now Leonard had his clue. He must praise the
Porphyrion. "You can tell your friend," he said, "that he's
quite wrong."
"Oh, good!"
The young man coloured a little. In his circle to be
wrong was fatal. The Miss Schlegels did not mind being
wrong. They were genuinely glad that they had been
misinformed. To them nothing was fatal but evil.
"Wrong, so to speak," he added.
"How 'so to speak'?"
"I mean I wouldn't say he's right altogether."
But this was a blunder. "Then he is right partly," said
the elder woman, quick as lightning.
Leonard replied that every one was right partly, if it
came to that.
"Mr. Bast, I don't understand business, and I dare say
my questions are stupid, but can you tell me what makes a
concern 'right' or 'wrong'?"
Leonard sat back with a sigh.
"Our friend, who is also a business man, was so
positive. He said before Christmas--"
"And advised you to clear out of it," concluded Helen.
"But I don't see why he should know better than you do."
Leonard rubbed his hands. He was tempted to say that he
knew nothing about the thing at all. But a commercial
training was too strong for him. Nor could he say it was a
bad thing, for this would be giving it away; nor yet that it
was good, for this would be giving it away equally. He
attempted to suggest that it was something between the two,
with vast possibilities in either direction, but broke down
under the gaze of four sincere eyes. As yet he scarcely
distinguished between the two sisters. One was more
beautiful and more lively, but "the Miss Schlegels" still
remained a composite Indian god, whose waving arms and
contradictory speeches were the product of a single mind.
"One can but see," he remarked, adding, "as Ibsen says,
'things happen.'" He was itching to talk about books and
make the most of his romantic hour. Minute after minute
slipped away, while the ladies, with imperfect skill,
discussed the subject of reinsurance or praised their
anonymous friend. Leonard grew annoyed--perhaps rightly.
He made vague remarks about not being one of those who
minded their affairs being talked over by others, but they
did not take the hint. Men might have shown more tact.
Women, however tactful elsewhere, are heavy-handed here.
They cannot see why we should shroud our incomes and our
prospects in a veil. "How much exactly have you, and how
much do you expect to have next June?" And these were women
with a theory, who held that reticence about money matters
is absurd, and that life would be truer if each would state
the exact size of the golden island upon which he stands,
the exact stretch of warp over which he throws the woof that
is not money. How can we do justice to the pattern
otherwise?
And the precious minutes slipped away, and Jacky and
squalor came nearer. At last he could bear it no longer,
and broke in, reciting the names of books feverishly. There
was a moment of piercing joy when Margaret said, "So YOU
like Carlyle," and then the door opened, and "Mr. Wilcox,
Miss Wilcox" entered, preceded by two prancing puppies.
"Oh, the dears! Oh, Evie, how too impossibly sweet!"
screamed Helen, falling on her hands and knees.
"We brought the little fellows round," said Mr. Wilcox.
"I bred 'em myself."
"Oh, really! Mr. Bast, come and play with puppies."
"I've got to be going now," said Leonard sourly.
"But play with puppies a little first."
"This is Ahab, that's Jezebel," said Evie, who was one
of those who name animals after the less successful
characters of Old Testament history.
"I've got to be going."
Helen was too much occupied with puppies to notice him.
"Mr. Wilcox, Mr. Ba--Must you be really? Good-bye!"
"Come again," said Helen from the floor.
Then Leonard's gorge arose. Why should he come again?
What was the good of it? He said roundly: "No, I shan't; I
knew it would be a failure."
Most people would have let him go. "A little mistake.
We tried knowing another class--impossible." But the
Schlegels had never played with life. They had attempted
friendship, and they would take the consequences. Helen
retorted, "I call that a very rude remark. What do you want
to turn on me like that for?" and suddenly the drawing-room
re-echoed to a vulgar row.
"You ask me why I turn on you?"
"Yes."
"What do you want to have me here for?"
"To help you, you silly boy!" cried Helen. "And don't shout."
"I don't want your patronage. I don't want your tea. I
was quite happy. What do you want to unsettle me for?" He
turned to Mr. Wilcox. "I put it to this gentleman. I ask
you, sir, am to have my brain picked?"
Mr. Wilcox turned to Margaret with the air of humorous
strength that he could so well command. "Are we intruding,
Miss Schlegel? Can we be of any use or shall we go?"
But Margaret ignored him.
"I'm connected with a leading insurance company, sir. I
receive what I take to be an invitation from these--ladies"
(he drawled the word). "I come, and it's to have my brain
picked. I ask you, is it fair?"
"Highly unfair," said Mr. Wilcox, drawing a gasp from
Evie, who knew that her father was becoming dangerous.
"There, you hear that? Most unfair, the gentleman
says. There! Not content with"--pointing at Margaret--"you
can't deny it." His voice rose: he was falling into the
rhythm of a scene with Jacky. "But as soon as I'm useful
it's a very different thing. 'Oh yes, send for him.
Cross-question him. Pick his brains.' Oh yes. Now, take me
on the whole, I'm a quiet fellow: I'm law-abiding, I don't
wish any unpleasantness; but I--I--"
"You," said Margaret--"you--you--"
Laughter from Evie, as at a repartee.
"You are the man who tried to walk by the Pole Star."
More laughter.
"You saw the sunrise."
Laughter.
"You tried to get away from the fogs that are stifling
us all--away past books and houses to the truth. You were
looking for a real home. "
"I fail to see the connection," said Leonard, hot with
stupid anger.
"So do I." There was a pause. "You were that last
Sunday--you are this today. Mr. Bast! I and my sister have
talked you over. We wanted to help you; we also supposed
you might help us. We did not have you here out of
charity--which bores us--but because we hoped there would be
a connection between last Sunday and other days. What is
the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind,
if they do not enter into our daily lives? They have never
entered into mine, but into yours, we thought--Haven't we
all to struggle against life's daily greyness, against
pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against
suspicion? I struggle by remembering my friends; others I
have known by remembering some place--some beloved place or
tree--we thought you one of these."
"Of course, if there's been any misunderstanding,"
mumbled Leonard, "all I can do is to go. But I beg to
state--" He paused. Ahab and Jezebel danced at his boots
and made him look ridiculous. "You were picking my brain
for official information--I can prove it--I--He blew his
nose and left them.
"Can I help you now?" said Mr. Wilcox, turning to
Margaret. "May I have one quiet word with him in the hall?"
"Helen, go after him--do anything--ANYTHING--to make the
noodle understand."
Helen hesitated.
"But really--" said their visitor. "Ought she to?"
At once she went.
He resumed. "I would have chimed in, but I felt that
you could polish him off for yourselves--I didn't
interfere. You were splendid, Miss Schlegel--absolutely
splendid. You can take my word for it, but there are very
few women who could have managed him."
"Oh yes," said Margaret distractedly.
"Bowling him over with those long sentences was what
fetched me," cried Evie.
"Yes, indeed," chuckled her father; "all that part about
'mechanical cheerfulness'--oh, fine!"
"I'm very sorry," said Margaret, collecting herself.
"He's a nice creature really. I cannot think what set him
off. It has been most unpleasant for you."
"Oh, _I_ didn't mind." Then he changed his mood. He
asked if he might speak as an old friend, and, permission
given, said: "Oughtn't you really to be more careful?"
Margaret laughed, though her thoughts still strayed
after Helen. "Do you realize that it's all your fault?" she
said. "You're responsible."
"I?"
"This is the young man whom we were to warn against the
Porphyrion. We warn him, and--look!"
Mr. Wilcox was annoyed. "I hardly consider that a fair
deduction," he said.
"Obviously unfair," said Margaret. "I was only thinking
how tangled things are. It's our fault mostly--neither
yours nor his."
"Not his?"
"No."
"Miss Schlegel, you are too kind."
"Yes, indeed," nodded Evie, a little contemptuously.
"You behave much too well to people, and then they
impose on you. I know the world and that type of man, and
as soon as I entered the room I saw you had not been
treating him properly. You must keep that type at a
distance. Otherwise they forget themselves. Sad, but
true. They aren't our sort, and one must face the fact."
"Ye-es."
"Do admit that we should never have had the outburst if
he was a gentleman."
"I admit it willingly," said Margaret, who was pacing up
and down the room. "A gentleman would have kept his
suspicions to himself."
Mr. Wilcox watched her with a vague uneasiness.
"What did he suspect you of?"
"Of wanting to make money out of him."
"Intolerable brute! But how were you to benefit?"
"Exactly. How indeed! Just horrible, corroding
suspicion. One touch of thought or of goodwill would have
brushed it away. Just the senseless fear that does make men
intolerable brutes."
"I come back to my original point. You ought to be more
careful, Miss Schlegel. Your servants ought to have orders
not to let such people in."
She turned to him frankly. "Let me explain exactly why
we like this man, and want to see him again."
"That's your clever way of thinking. I shall never
believe you like him."
"I do. Firstly, because he cares for physical
adventure, just as you do. Yes, you go motoring and
shooting; he would like to go camping out. Secondly, he
cares for something special IN adventure. It is quickest to
call that special something poetry--"
"Oh, he's one of that writer sort."
"No--oh no! I mean he may be, but it would be loathsome
stiff. His brain is filled with the husks of books,
culture--horrible; we want him to wash out his brain and go
to the real thing. We want to show him how he may get
upsides with life. As I said, either friends or the
country, some"--she hesitated--"either some very dear person
or some very dear place seems necessary to relieve life's
daily grey, and to show that it is grey. If possible, one
should have both."
Some of her words ran past Mr. Wilcox. He let them run
past. Others he caught and criticized with admirable lucidity.
"Your mistake is this, and it is a very common mistake.
This young bounder has a life of his own. What right have
you to conclude it is an unsuccessful life, or, as you call
it, 'grey'?"
"Because--"
"One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably
has his own joys and interests--wife, children, snug little
home. That's where we practical fellows"--he smiled--"are
more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live,
and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere,
and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after
his own affairs. I quite grant--I look at the faces of the
clerks in my own office, and observe them to be dull, but I
don't know what's going on beneath. So, by the way, with
London. I have heard you rail against London, Miss
Schlegel, and it seems a funny thing to say but I was very
angry with you. What do you know about London? You only
see civilization from the outside. I don't say in your
case, but in too many cases that attitude leads to
morbidity, discontent, and Socialism."
She admitted the strength of his position, though it
undermined imagination. As he spoke, some outposts of
poetry and perhaps of sympathy fell ruining, and she
retreated to what she called her "second line"--to the
special facts of the case.
"His wife is an old bore," she said simply. "He never
came home last Saturday night because he wanted to be alone,
and she thought he was with us."
"With YOU?"
"Yes." Evie tittered. "He hasn't got the cosy home that
you assumed. He needs outside interests."
"Naughty young man!" cried the girl.
"Naughty?" said Margaret, who hated naughtiness more
than sin. "When you're married, Miss Wilcox, won't you want
outside interests?"
"He has apparently got them," put in Mr. Wilcox slyly.
"Yes, indeed, Father."
"He was tramping in Surrey, if you mean that," said
Margaret, pacing away rather crossly.
"Oh, I dare say!"
"Miss Wilcox, he was!"
"M-m-m-m!" from Mr. Wilcox, who thought the episode
amusing, if risque. With most ladies he would not have
discussed it, but he was trading on Margaret's reputation as
an emanicipated woman.
"He said so, and about such a thing he wouldn't lie."
They both began to laugh.
"That's where I differ from you. Men lie about their
positions and prospects, but not about a thing of that sort."
He shook his head. "Miss Schlegel, excuse me, but I
know the type."
"I said before--he isn't a type. He cares about
adventures rightly. He's certain that our smug existence
isn't all. He's vulgar and hysterical and bookish, but I
don't think that sums him up. There's manhood in him as
well. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. He's a real man."
As she spoke their eyes met, and it was as if Mr.
Wilcox's defences fell. She saw back to the real man in
him. Unwittingly she had touched his emotions. A woman and
two men--they had formed the magic triangle of sex, and the
male was thrilled to jealousy, in case the female was
attracted by another male. Love, say the ascetics, reveals
our shameful kinship with the beasts. Be it so: one can
bear that; jealousy is the real shame. It is jealousy, not
love, that connects us with the farmyard intolerably, and
calls up visions of two angry cocks and a complacent hen.
Margaret crushed complacency down because she was
civilized. Mr. Wilcox, uncivilized, continued to feel anger
long after he had rebuilt his defences, and was again
presenting a bastion to the world.
"Miss Schlegel, you're a pair of dear creatures, but you
really MUST be careful in this uncharitable world. What
does your brother say?"
"I forget."
"Surely he has some opinion?"
"He laughs, if I remember correctly."
"He's very clever, isn't he?" said Evie, who had met and
detested Tibby at Oxford.
"Yes, pretty well--but I wonder what Helen's doing."
"She is very young to undertake this sort of thing,"
said Mr. Wilcox.
Margaret went out into the landing. She heard no sound,
and Mr. Bast's topper was missing from the hall.
"Helen!" she called.
"Yes!" replied a voice from the library.
"You in there?"
"Yes--he's gone some time."
Margaret went to her. "Why, you're all alone," she said.
"Yes--it's all right, Meg--Poor, poor creature--"
"Come back to the Wilcoxes and tell me later--Mr. W.
much concerned, and slightly titillated."
"Oh, I've no patience with him. I hate him. Poor dear
Mr. Bast! he wanted to talk literature, and we would talk
business. Such a muddle of a man, and yet so worth pulling
through. I like him extraordinarily. "
"Well done," said Margaret, kissing her, "but come into
the drawing-room now, and don't talk about him to the
Wilcoxes. Make light of the whole thing."
Helen came and behaved with a cheerfulness that
reassured their visitor--this hen at all events was fancy-free.
"He's gone with my blessing," she cried, "and now for puppies."
As they drove away, Mr. Wilcox said to his daughter:
"I am really concerned at the way those girls go on.
They are as clever as you make 'em, but unpractical--God
bless me! One of these days they'll go too far. Girls like
that oughtn't to live alone in London. Until they marry,
they ought to have someone to look after them. We must look
in more often--we're better than no one. You like them,
don't you, Evie?"
Evie replied: "Helen's right enough, but I can't stand
the toothy one. And I shouldn't have called either of them girls."
Evie had grown up handsome. Dark-eyed, with the glow of
youth under sunburn, built firmly and firm-lipped, she was
the best the Wilcoxes could do in the way of feminine
beauty. For the present, puppies and her father were the
only things she loved, but the net of matrimony was being
prepared for her, and a few days later she was attracted to
a Mr. Percy Cahill, an uncle of Mrs. Charles, and he was
attracted to her.
