Poor Relations

by Compton MacKenzie

  CHAPTER IV

  Early next morning John dreamed that he was buying calico in an immenseshop and that in a dreamlike inconsequence the people there, customersand shopmen alike, were abruptly seized with a frenzy of destruction soviolent that they began to tear up all the material upon which theycould lay their hands; indeed, so loud was the noise of rent cloth thatJohn woke up with the sound of it still in his ears. Gradually it wasborne in upon a brain wrestling with actuality that the noise might haveemanated from the direction of a small casement in his bedroom lookingeastward into the garden across a steep penthouse which ran down towithin two feet of the ground. Although the noise had stopped some timebefore John had precisely located its whereabouts and really before hewas perfectly convinced that he was awake, he jumped out of bed andhurried across the chilly boards to ascertain if after all it had onlybeen a relic of his dream. No active cause was visible; but the moss,the stonecrop and the tiles upon the penthouse had been clawed from topto bottom as if by some mighty tropical cat, and John for a briefinstant savored that elated perplexity which generally occurs to heroesin the opening paragraphs of a sensational novel.

  "It's a very old house," he thought, hopefully, and began to grade hisreason to a condition of sycophantic credulity. "And, of course,anything like a ghost at seven o'clock in the morning is rare--veryrare. The evidence would be unassailable...."

  After toadying to the marvelous for a while, he sought a naturalexplanation of the phenomenon and honestly tried not to want it to proveinexplicable. The noise began again overhead; a fleeting object darkenedthe casement like the swift passage of a bird and struck the penthousebelow; there was a slow grinding shriek, a clatter of broken tiles andleaden piping; a small figure stuck all over with feathers emerged fromthe herbaceous border and smiled up at him.

  "Good heavens, my boy, what in creation are you trying to do?" Johnshouted, sternly.

  "I'm learning to toboggan, Uncle John."

  "But didn't I explain to you that tobogganing can only be carried outafter a heavy snowfall?"

  "Well, it hasn't snowed yet," Harold pointed out in an offended voice.

  "Listen to me. If it snows for a month without stopping, you're never totoboggan down a roof. What's the good of having all those jolly hills atthe back of the house if you don't use them?"

  John spoke as if he had brought back the hills from America at the sametime as he was supposed to have brought back the toboggan.

  "There's a river, too," Harold observed.

  "You can't toboggan down a river--unless, of course, it gets frozenover."

  "I don't want to toboggan down the river, but if I had a Canadian canoefor the river I could wait for the snow quite easily."

  John, after a brief vision of a canoe being towed across the Atlantic bythe _Murmania_, felt that he was being subjected to the lawlessexactions of a brigand, but could think of nothing more novel in the wayof defiance than:

  "Go away now and be a good boy."

  "Can't I ..." Harold began.

  "No, you can't. If those chickens' feathers...."

  "They're pigeons' feathers," his nephew corrected him.

  "If those feathers stuck in your hair are intended to convey animpression that you're a Red Indian chief, go and sit in your wigwamtill breakfast and smoke the pipe of peace."

  "Mother said I wasn't to smoke till I was twenty-one."

  "Not literally, you young ass. Why, good heavens, in my young days suchan allusion to Mayne Reid would have been eagerly taken up by any boy."

  Something was going wrong with this conversation, John felt, and headded, lamely:

  "Anyway, go away now."

  "But, Uncle John, I...."

  "Don't Uncle John me. I don't feel like an uncle this morning. SupposeI'd been shaving when you started that fool's game. I might have cut myhead off."

  "But, Uncle John, I've left my spectacles on one of the chimneys. Mothersaid that whenever I was playing a rough game I was to take off myspectacles first."

  "You'll have to do without your spectacles, that's all. The gardenerwill get them for you after breakfast. Anyway, a Red Indian chief inspectacles is unnatural."

  "Well, I'm not a Red Indian any longer."

  "You can't chop and change like that. You'll have to be a Red Indian nowtill after breakfast. Don't argue any more, because I'm standing here inbare feet. Go and do some weeding in the garden. You've pulled up allthe plants on the roof."

  "I can't read without my spectacles."

  "Weed, not read!"

  "Well, I can't weed, either. I can't do anything without my spectacles."

  "Then go away and do nothing."

  Harold shuffled off disconsolately, and John rang for his shaving water.

  At breakfast Hilda asked anxiously after her son's whereabouts; andJohn, the last vestige of whose irritation had vanished in the smell offried bacon and eggs, related the story of the morning's escapade as agood joke.

  "But he can't see anything without his spectacles," Hilda exclaimed.

  "Oh, he'll find his way to the breakfast table all right," Johnprophesied.

  "These bachelors," murmured Hilda, turning to her mother with a wrylittle laugh. "Hark! isn't that Harold calling?"

  "No, no, no, it's the pigeons," John laughed. "They're probably frettingfor their feathers."

  "It's to be hoped," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that he's not fallen intothe well by leaving off his spectacles like this. I never could abidewells. And I hate to think of people leaving things off suddenly. It'salways a mistake. I remember little Hughie once left off his woollenvests in May and caught a most terrible cold that wouldn't go away--itsimply wouldn't go."

  "How is Hugh, by the way?" John asked.

  "The same as ever," Hilda put in with cold disapproval. She was able toforget Harold's myopic wanderings in the pleasure of crabbing heryoungest brother.

  "Ah, you're all very hard on poor Hughie," sighed the old lady. "Buthe's always been very fond of his poor mother."

  "He's very fond of what he can get out of you," Hilda sneered.

  "And it's little enough he can, poor boy. Goodness knows I've littleenough to spare for him. I wish you could have seen your way to dosomething for Hughie, Johnnie," the old lady went on.

  "John has done quite enough for him," Hilda snapped, which was perfectlytrue.

  "He's had to leave his rooms in Earl's Court," Mrs. Touchwood lamented.

  "What for? Getting drunk, I suppose?" John inquired, sternly.

  "No, it was the drains. He's staying with his friend, Aubrey Fenton,whom I cannot pretend to like. He seems to me a sad scapegrace. Poorlittle Hughie. I wish everything wasn't against him. It's to be hoped hewon't go and get married, poor boy, for I'm sure his wife wouldn'tunderstand him."

  "Surely he's not thinking of getting married," exclaimed John indismay.

  "Why no, of course not," said the old lady. "How you do take anybody up,Johnnie. I said it's to be hoped he won't get married."

  At this moment Emily came in to announce that Master Harold was up onthe roof shouting for dear life. "Such a turn as it give Cook and I,mum," she said, "to hear that garshly voice coming down the chimney.Cook was nearly took with the convolsions, and if it had of been afterdark, mum, she says she's shaw she doesn't know what she wouldn't ofdone, she wouldn't, she's that frightened of howls. That's the one thingshe can't ever be really comfortable for in the country, she says, thehowls and the hearwigs."

  "I'm under the impression," John declared, solemnly, "that I forbadeHarold to go near the roof. If he has disobeyed my express commands hemust suffer for it by the loss of his breakfast. He has chosen to goback on the roof: on the roof he shall stay."

  "But his breakfast?" Hilda almost whispered. She was so much awed by herbrother's unusually pompous phraseology that he began to be impressed byit himself and to feel the first faint intimations of the pleasures oftyranny: he began to visualize himself as the unbending ruler of all hisrelations.

  "His break
fast can be sent up to him, and I hope it will attract everywasp in the neighborhood."

  This to John seemed the most savage aspiration he could have uttered:autumnal wasps disturbed him as much as dragons used to disturbprincesses.

  "Harold likes wasps," said Hilda. "He observes their habits."

  This revelation of his nephew's tastes took away John's last belief inhis humanity, and the only retort he could think of was a suggestionthat he should go at once to a boarding-school.

  "Likes wasps?" he repeated. "The child must be mad. You'll tell me nextthat he likes black beetles."

  "He trained a black beetle once to eat something. I forget what it wasnow. But the poor boy was so happy about his little triumph. You oughtto remember, John, that he takes after his father."

  John made up his mind at this moment that Daniel Curtis must havemarried Hilda in a spirit of the purest empirical science.

  "Well, he's not to go training insects in my house," John said, firmly."And if I see any insects anywhere about Ambles that show the slightestsign of having been encouraged to suppose themselves on an equal withmankind I shall tread on them."

  "I'm afraid the crossing must have upset you, Johnnie," said old Mrs.Touchwood, sympathetically. "You seem quite out of sorts this morning.And I don't like the idea of poor little Harold's balancing himself allalone on a chimney. It was never any pleasure to me to watch tight-ropedancers or acrobats. Indeed, except for the clowns, I never could abidecircuses."

  Hilda quickly took up the appeal and begged John to let the gardenerrescue her son.

  "Oh, very well," he assented. "But, once for all, it must be clearlyunderstood that I've come down to Ambles to write a new play and thatsome arrangement must be concluded by which I have my morningscompletely undisturbed."

  "Of course," said Hilda, brightening at the prospect of Harold'srelease.

  "Of course," John echoed, sardonically, within himself. He did not feelthat the sight of Harold's ravening after his breakfast would induce inhim the right mood for Joan of Arc. So he left the breakfast table andwent upstairs to his library. Here he found that some "illiterate oaf,"as he characterized the person responsible, had put in upside down uponthe shelves the standard works he had hastily amassed. Instead ofsetting his ideas in order, he had to set his books in order: and aftera hot and dusty morning with the rows of unreadable classics he camedownstairs to find that the vicarage party had arrived just in time forlunch, bringing with them as the advance guard of their occupation alarge clothes basket filled with what Laurence described as "necessaryodds and ends that might be overlooked later."

  "It's my theory of moving," he added. "The small things first."

  He enunciated this theory so reverently that his action acquired fromhis tone a momentous gravity like the captain of a ship's when he ordersthe women and children into the boats first.

  The moving of the vicarage party lasted over a fortnight, during whichJohn found it impossible to settle down to Joan of Arc. No sooner wouldhe have worked himself up to a suitable frame of mind in which he mightexpress dramatically and poetically the maid's reception of her heavenlyvisitants than a very hot man wearing a green baize apron would appearin the doorway of the library and announce that a chest of drawers hadhopelessly involved some vital knot in the domestic communications. Itwas no good for John to ask Hilda to do anything: his sister had takenup the attitude that it was all John's fault, that she had done her bestto preserve his peace, that her advice had been ignored, and that forthe rest of her life she intended to efface herself.

  "I'm a mere cipher," she kept repeating.

  On one occasion when a bureau of sham ebony that looked like a blindman's dream of Cologne Cathedral had managed to wedge all its pinnaclesinto the lintel of the front door, John observed to Laurence he hadunderstood that only such furniture from the vicarage as was required tosupplement the Ambles furniture would be brought there.

  "I thought this bureau would appeal to you," Laurence replied. "Itseemed to me in keeping with much of your work."

  John looked up sharply to see if he was being chaffed; but hisbrother-in-law's expression was earnest, and the intended complimentstruck more hardly at John's self-confidence than the most maliciousreview.

  "Does my work really seem like gimcrack gothic?" he asked himself.

  In a fit of exasperation he threw himself so vigorously into thebusiness of forcing the bureau into the house that when it was inside itlooked like a ruined abbey on the afternoon of a Bank Holiday.

  "It had better be taken up into the garrets for the present," he said,grimly. "It can be mended later on."

  The comparison of his work to that bureau haunted John at his ownwriting-table for the rest of the morning; thinking of the Bishop ofSilchester's objection to Laurence, he found it hard to make the variousbishops in his play as unsympathetic as they ought to be for dramaticcontrast; then he remembered that after all it had been due to theBishop of Silchester's strong action that Laurence had come to Ambles:the stream of insulting epithets for bishops flowed as strongly as ever,and he worked in a justifiable pun upon the name of Pierre Cauchon, hischief episcopal villain.

  "I wonder, if I were allowed to, whether I would condemn Laurence to beburnt alive. Wasn't there a Saint Laurence who was grilled? I reallybelieve I would almost grill him, I really do. There's somethingexceptionally irritating to me about that man's whole personality. AndI'm not at all sure I approve of a clergyman's giving up his beliefs.One might get a line out of that, by the way--something about aweathercock and a church steeple. I don't think a clergyman ought tosurrender so easily. It's his business not to be influenced by modernthought. This passion for realism is everywhere.... Thank goodness, I'vebeen through it and got over it and put it behind me forever. It's amost unprofitable creed. What was my circulation as a realist? I oncereached four thousand. What's four thousand? Why, it isn't half thepopulation of Galton. And now Laurence Armitage takes up with it afterbeing a vicar for ten years. Idiot! Religion isn't realistic: it neverwas realistic. Religion is the entertainment of man's spirituality justas the romantic drama is the entertainment of his mentality. I don'tread Anatole France for my representation of Joan of Arc. What businesshas Laurence to muddle his head with--what's his name--ColonelIngoldsby--Ingersoll--when he ought to be thinking about his HarvestFestival? And then he has the effrontery to compare my work with thatbureau! If that's all his religion meant to him--that ridiculous pieceof gimcrack gothic, no wonder it wouldn't hold together. Why, the greenfumed oak of a sentimental rationalism would be better than that.Confound Laurence! I knew this would happen when he came. He's taken mymind completely off my own work. I can't write a word this morning."

  John rushed away from his manuscript and weeded furiously down asecluded border until the gardener told him he had weeded away theautumn-sown sweet-peas that were coming along nicely and standing theearly frosts a treat.

  "I'm not even allowed to weed my own garden now," John thought, burkingthe point at issue; and his disillusionment became so profound that heactually invited Harold to go for a walk with him.

  "Can I bring my blow-pipe?" asked the young naturalist, gleefully.

  "You don't want to load yourself up with soap and water," said John."Keep that till you come in."

  "My South American blow-pipe, Uncle John. It's a real one which fathersent home. It belonged to a little Indian boy, but the darts aren'tpoisoned, father told mother."

  "Don't you be too sure," John advised him. "Explorers will sayanything."

  "Well, can I bring it?"

  "No, we'll take a non-murderous walk for a change. I'm tired of beingshunned by the common objects of the countryside."

  "Well, shall I bring _Ants_, _Bees_, and _Wasps_?"

  "Certainly not. We don't want to go trailing about Hampshire like twojam sandwiches."

  "I mean the book."

  "No, if you want to carry something, you can carry my cleek and six golfballs."

  "Oh, yes, and then I'll practice
bringing eggs down in my mouth fromvery high trees."

  John liked this form of exercise, because at the trifling cost of makingone ball intolerably sticky it kept Harold from asking questions; forabout two hundred yards he enjoyed this walk more than any he had evertaken with his nephew.

  "But birds' nesting time won't come till the spring," Harold sighed.

  "No," said John, regretfully: there were many lofty trees round Ambles,and with his mouth full of eggs anything might happen to Harold.

  The transference of the vicarage family was at last complete, and Johnwas penitently astonished to find that Laurence really did intend to payfor their board; in fact, the ex-vicar presented him with a check fortwo months on account calculated at a guinea a week each. John was somuch moved by this event--the manner in which Laurence offered the checkgave it the character of a testimonial and thereby added to John's senseof obligation--that he was even embarrassed by the notion of acceptingit. At the same time a faint echo of his own realistic beginningstinkled in his ear a warning not to refuse it, both for his own sake andfor the sake of his brother-in-law. He therefore escaped from theimputation of avarice by suggesting that the check should be handed toHilda, who, as housekeeper, would know how to employ it best. Johnsecretly hoped that Hilda, through being able to extract what he thoughtof as "a little pin money for herself" out of it, might discard themartyr's halo that was at present pinching her brains tightly enough, ifone might judge by her constricted expression.

  "There will undoubtedly be a small profit," he told himself, "for ifLaurence has a rather monkish appetite, Edith and Frida eat verylittle."

  Perhaps Hilda did manage to make a small profit; at any rate, she seemedreconciled to the presence of the Armitages and gave up declaring thatshe was a cipher. The fatigue of moving in had made Laurence's company,while he was suffering from the reaction, almost bearable. Frida, apartfrom a habit she had of whispering at great length in her mother's ear,was a nice uninquisitive child, and Edith, when she was not whisperingback to Frida or echoing Laurence, was still able to rouse in herbrother's heart feelings of warm affection. Old Mrs. Touchwood hadacquired from some caller a new game of Patience, which kept her gentlysimmering in the lamplight every evening; Harold had discovered amongthe odds and ends of salvage from the move a sixpenny encyclopedia that,though it made him unpleasantly informative, at any rate kept him frombeing interrogative, which John found, on the whole, a slight advantage.Janet Bond had written again most seriously about Joan of Arc, and thefilm company had given excellent terms for _The Fall of Babylon_.Really, except for two huffy letters from his sisters-in-law in London,John was able to contemplate with much less misgivings a prospect ofspending all the winter at Ambles. Beside, he had secured his dog-cartwith a dashing chestnut mare, and was negotiating for the twenty-acrefield.

  Yes, everything was very jolly, and he might even aim at finishing thefirst draft of the second act before Christmas. It would be jolly to dothat and jolly to invite James and Beatrice and George and Eleanor, butnot Hugh--no, in no circumstances should Hugh be included in theyuletide armistice--down to Ambles for an uproarious jolly week. ThenJanuary should be devoted to the first draft of the third act--really itshould be possible to write to Janet Bond presently and assure her of aproduction next autumn. John was feeling particularly optimistic. Forthree days in succession the feet of the first act had been moving asrhythmically and regularly toward the curtain as the feet of guardsmenmove along the Buckingham Palace Road. It was a fine frosty morning, andeven so early in the day John was tapping his second egg to the metricalapostrophes of Uncle Laxart's speech offering to take his niece, Joan,to interview Robert de Baudricourt. Suddenly he noticed that Laurencehad not yet put in his appearance. This was strange behavior for one whostill preserved from the habit of many early services an excitedpunctuality for his breakfast, and lightly he asked Edith what hadbecome of her husband.

  "He hopes to begin working again at his play this morning. Seeing youworking so hard makes him feel lazy." Edith laughed faintly andfearfully, as if she would deprecate her own profanity in referring toso gross a quality as laziness in connection with Laurence, and perhapsfor the first time in her life she proclaimed that her opinion was onlyan echo of Laurence's own by adding, "_he_ says that it makes him feellazy. So he's going to begin at once."

  John, whose mind kept reverting iambically and trochaically to thecurtain of his first act, merely replied, without any trace of awe, thathe was glad Laurence felt in the vein.

  "But he hasn't decided yet," Edith continued, "which room he's going towork in."

  For the first time a puff of apprehension twitched the little straw thatmight be going to break the camel's back.

  "I'm afraid I can't offer him the library," John said quickly. "_And youshall see the King of France to-day_," he went on composing in his head."No--_And you shall see King Charles_--no--_and you shall see the Kingof France at once--no--and you shall see the King of France forthwith.Sensation among the villagers standing round. Forthwith is weak at theend of a line. I swear that you shall see the King of France.Sensation._ Yes, that's it."

  The top of John's egg was by this time so completely cracked by hismetronomic spoon that a good deal of the shell was driven down into theegg: it did not matter, however, because appetite and inspiration wereboth disposed of by the arrival of Laurence.

  "I wish you could have managed to help me with some of these things," hewas muttering reproachfully to his wife.

  The things consisted of six or seven books, a quantity of foolscap, aninkpot dangerously brimming, a paper-knife made of olive wood fromGethsemane, several pens and pencils, and a roll of blotting paper aswhite as the snow upon the summit of Mont Blanc, and so fat that Johnthought at first it was a tablecloth and wondered what hisbrother-in-law meant to do with it. He was even chilled by a brief andhorrible suspicion that he was going to hold a communion service. Edithrose hastily from the table to help her husband unload himself.

  "I'm so sorry, dear, why didn't you ring?"

  "My dear, how could I ring without letting my materials drop?" Laurenceasked, patiently.

  "Or call?"

  "My chin was too much occupied for calling. But it doesn't matter,Edith. As you see, I've managed to bring everything down quite safely."

  "I'm so sorry," Edith went on. "I'd no idea...."

  "I told you that I was going to begin work this morning."

  "Yes, how stupid of me ... I'm so sorry...."

  "Going to work, are you?" interrupted John, who was anxious to stopEdith's conjugal amenity. "That's capital."

  "Yes, I'm really only waiting now to choose my room."

  "I'm sorry I can't offer you mine ... but I must be alone. I find...."

  "Of course," Laurence agreed with a nod of sympathetic knowingness. "Ofcourse, my dear fellow, I shouldn't dream of trespassing. I, thoughindeed I've no right to compare myself with you, also like to workalone. In fact I consider that a secure solitude provides the idealsetting for dramatic composition. I have a habit--perhaps it comes frompreparing my sermons with my eye always upon the spoken rather than uponthe written word--I have a habit of declaiming many of my pages aloud tomyself. That necessitates my being alone--absolutely alone."

  "Yes, you see," Edith said, "if you're alone you're not disturbed."

  John who was still sensitive to Edith's truisms tried to cover her lastby incorporating Hilda in the conversation with a "What room do youadvise?"

  "Why not the dining-room? I'll tell Emily to clear away the breakfastthings at once."

  "Clear away?" Laurence repeated.

  "And they won't be laying for lunch till a quarter-to-one."

  "Laying for lunch?" Laurence gasped. "My dear Hilda! I don't wish toattribute to my--ah--work an importance which perhaps as a hithertounacted playwright I have no right to attribute, but I think John at anyrate will appreciate my objection to working with--ah--the bread-knifesuspended over my head like the proverbial sword of Damocles. No, I'mafraid
I must rule out the dining-room as a practicable environment."

  "And Mama likes to sit in the drawing-room," said Hilda.

  "In any case," Laurence said, indulgently, "I shouldn't feel at ease inthe drawing-room. So I shall not disturb Mama. I had thought ofsuggesting that the children should be given another room in which toplay, but to tell the truth I'm tired of moving furniture about. Thefact is I miss my vicarage study: it was my own."

  "Yes, nobody at the vicarage ever thought of interrupting him, you see,"Edith explained.

  "Well," said John, roused by the necessity of getting Joan started uponher journey to interview Robert de Baudricourt, "there are several emptybedrooms upstairs. One of them could be transformed into a study forLaurence."

  "That means more arranging of furniture," Laurence objected.

  "Then there's the garret," said John. "You'd find your bureau up there."

  Laurence smiled in order to show how well he understood that thesuggestion was only playfulness on John's side and how little he mindedthe good-natured joke.

  "There is one room which might be made--ah--conducive to good work,though at present it is occupied by a quantity of apples; they, however,could easily be moved."

  "But I moved them in there from what is now your room," Hilda protested.

  "It is good for apples to be frequently moved," said Laurence, kindly."In fact, the oftener they are moved, the better. And this holds goodequally for pippins, codlins, and russets. On the other hand it means Ishall lose half a day's work, because even if I _could_ make a temporarybeginning anywhere else, I should have to superintend the arrangement ofthe furniture."

  "But I thought you didn't want to have any more furniture arranging todo," Hilda contested, acrimoniously. "There are two quite empty rooms atthe other end of the passage."

  "Yes, but I like the room in which the apples are. John will appreciatemy desire for a sympathetic milieu."

  "Come, come, we will move the apples," John promised, hurriedly.

  Better that the apples should roll from room to room eternally than thathe should be driven into offering Laurence a corner of the library, forhe suspected that notwithstanding the disclaimer this was hisbrother-in-law's real objective.

  "It doesn't say anything about apples in the encyclopedia," mutteredHarold in an aggrieved voice. _"Apoplexy treatment of, Apothecariesmeasure, Appetite loss of. This may be due to general debility,irregularity in meals, overwork, want of exercise, constipation, andmany other...."_

  "Goodness gracious me, whatever has the boy got hold of?" exclaimed hisgrandmother.

  "Grandmama, if you mix Lanoline with an equal quantity of Sulphur youcan cure Itch," Harold went on with his spectacles glued to the page."And, oh, Grandmama, you know you told me not to make a noise the otherday because your heart was weak. Well, you're suffering fromflatulence. The encyclopedia says that many people who are sufferingfrom flatulence think they have heart disease."

  "Will no one stop the child?" Grandmama pleaded.

  Laurence snatched away the book from his nephew and put it in hispocket.

  "That book is mine, I believe, Harold," he said, firmly, and not evenHilda dared protest, so majestic was Laurence and so much fluttered waspoor Grandmama.

  John seized the opportunity to make his escape; but when he was at lastseated before his table the feet of the first act limped pitiably;Laurence had trodden with all his might upon their toes; his work thatmorning was chiropody, not composition, and bungling chiropody at that.After lunch Laurence was solemnly inducted to his new study, and he mayhave been conscious of an ecclesiastical parallel in the manner of histaking possession, for he made a grave joke about it.

  "Let us hope that I shall not be driven out of my new living by beingtoo--ah--broad."

  His wife did not realize that he was being droll and had drawn down herlips to an expression of pained sympathy, when she saw the others alllaughing and Laurence smiling his acknowledgments; her desperate effortto change the contours of her face before Laurence noticed her failureto respond sensibly gave the impression that she had nearly swallowed aloose tooth.

  "Perhaps you'd like me to bring up your tea, dear, so that you won't bedisturbed?" she suggested.

  "Ah, tea ..." murmured Laurence. "Let me see. It's now a quarter-pasttwo. Tea is at half-past four. I will come down for half an hour. Thatwill give me a clear two hours before dinner. If I allow a quarter of anhour for arranging my table, that will give me four hours in all.Perhaps considering my strenuous morning four hours will be enough forthe first day. I don't like the notion of working after dinner," headded to John.

  "No?" queried John, doubtfully. He had hoped that his brother-in-lawwould feel inspired by the port: it was easy enough to avoid him in theafternoon, especially since on the first occasion that he had been takenfor a drive in the new dogcart he had evidently been imbued with adetestation of driving that would probably last for the remainder of hislife; in fact he was talking already of wanting to sell Primrose and thevicarage chaise.

  "Though of course on some evenings I may not be able to help it," addedLaurence. "I may _have_ to work."

  "Of course you may," John assented, encouragingly. "I dare say there'llbe evenings when the mere idea of waiting even for coffee will make youfidgety. You mustn't lose the mood, you know."

  "No, of course, I appreciate that."

  "There's nothing so easily lost as the creative gift, Balzac said."

  "Did he?" Laurence murmured, anxiously. "But I promise you I shall letnothing interfere with me _if_--" the conjunction fizzed from his mouthlike soda from a syphon, "_if_ I'm in the--ah--mood. Themood--yes--ah--precisely." His brow began to lower; the mood was uponhim; and everybody stole quietly from the room. They had scarcelyreached the head of the stairs when the door opened again and Laurencecalled after Edith: "I should prefer that whoever brings me news of teamerely knocks without coming in. I shall assume that a knock upon mydoor means tea. But I don't wish anybody to come in."

  Laurence disappeared. He seemed under the influence of a strong mentalaphrodisiac and was evidently guaranteeing himself against beingdiscovered in an embarrassing situation with his Muse.

  "This is very good for me," thought John. "It has taught me how easily aman may make a confounded ass of himself without anybody's raising afinger to warn him. I hope I didn't give that sort of impression tothose two women on board. I shall have to watch myself very carefully infuture."

  At this moment Emily announced that Lawyer Deacle was waiting to see Mr.Touchwood, which meant that the twenty-acre field was at last his. Thelegal formalities were complete; that very afternoon John had thepleasure of watching the fierce little Kerry cows munch the last grassthey would ever munch in his field. But it was nearly dusk when theywere driven home, and John lost five balls in celebrating his triumphwith a brassy.

  Laurence appeared at tea in a velveteen coat, which probably providedthe topic for the longest whisper that even Frida had ever been known toutter.

  "Come, come, Frida," said her father. "You won't disturb us by sayingaloud what you want to say." He had leaned over majestically toemphasize his rebuke and in doing so brushed with his sleeve Grandmama'swrist.

  "Goodness, it's a cat," the old lady cried, with a shudder. "I shallhave to go away from here, Johnnie, if you have a cat in the house. I'drather have mice all over me than one of those horrid cats. Ugh! thenasty thing!"

  She was not at all convinced of her mistake even when persuaded tostroke her son-in-law's coat.

  "I hope it's been properly shooed out. Harold, please look well underall the chairs, there's a good boy."

  During the next few days John felt that he was being in some indefinableway ousted by Laurence from the spiritual mastery of his own house. Johnwas averse from according to his brother-in-law a greater forcefulnessof character than he could ascribe to himself; if he had to admit thathe really was being supplanted somehow, he preferred to search for theexplanation in the years of theocratic prestige that ga
ve a backgroundto the all-pervasiveness of that sacerdotal personality. Yet ultimatelythe impression of his own relegation to a secondary place remainedelusive and incommunicable. He could not for instance grumble that thetimes of the meals were being altered nor complain that in the smallestdetail the domestic mechanism was being geared up or down to suitLaurence; the whole sensation was essentially of a spiritual eviction,and the nearest he could get to formulating his resentment (thoughperhaps resentment was too definite a word for this vague uneasiness)was his own gradually growing opinion that of all those at present underthe Ambles roof Laurence was the most important. This loss of importancewas bad for John's work, upon which it soon began to exert adiscouraging influence, because he became doubtful of his own position,hypercritical of his talent, and timid about his social ability. Hebegan to meditate the long line of failures to dramatize the immortaltale of Joan of Arc immortally, to see himself dangling at the end ofthis long line of ineptitudes and to ask himself whether bearing in mindthe vastness of even our own solar system it was really worth whilewriting at all. It could not be due to anything or anybody but Laurence,this sense of his own futility; not even when a few years ago he hadreached the conclusion that as a realistic novelist he was a failure hadhe been so profoundly conscious of his own insignificance in time andspace.

  "I shall have to go away if I'm ever to get on with this play," he toldhimself.

  Yet still so indefinite was his sense of subordinacy at Ambles that heaccused his liver (an honest one that did not deserve the reproach) andbent over his table again with all the determination he could muster.The concrete fact was still missing; his capacity for self-deception wasstill robust enough to persuade him that it was all a passing fancy, andhe might have gone plodding on at Ambles for the rest of the winter ifone morning about a week after Laurence had begun to write, the door ofhis own library had not opened to the usurper, manuscript in hand.

  "I don't like to interrupt you, my dear fellow.... I know you have yourown work to consider ... but I'm anxious for your opinion--in fact Ishould like to read you my first act."

  It was useless to resist: if it were not now, it would be later.

  "With pleasure," said John. Then he made one effort. "Though I preferreading to myself."

  "That would involve waiting for the typewriter. Yes, my screedis--ah--difficult to make out. And I've indulged in a good many erasuresand insertions. No, I think you'd better let me read it to you."

  John indicated a chair and looked out of the window longingly at thebirds, as patients in the hands of a dentist regard longingly thesparrows in the dingy evergreens of the dentist's back garden.

  "When we had our little talk the other day," Laurence began, "you willremember that I spoke of a drama I had already written, of which thedisciple Thomas was the protagonist. This drama notwithstanding theprobably obstructive attitude of the Lord Chamberlain I have rewritten,or rather I have rewritten the first act. I call the play--ah--_Thomas_."

  "It sounds a little trivial for such a serious subject, don't youthink?" John suggested. "I mean, Thomas has come to be associated in somany people's minds with footmen. Wouldn't _Saint Thomas_ be better, andreally rather more respectful? Many people still have a great feeling ofreverence for apostles."

  "No, no, _Thomas_ it is: _Thomas_ it must remain. You have forgottenperhaps that I told you he was the prototype of the man in the street.It is the simplicity, the unpretentiousness of the title that for megives it a value. Well, to resume. _Thomas. A play in four acts. ByLaurence Armytage._ By the way, I'm going to spell my name with a y infuture. Poetic license. Ha-ha! I shall not advertise the change in the_Times_. But I think it looks more literary with a y. _Act the First.Scene the First. The shore of the Sea of Galilee._ I say nothing else. Idon't attempt to describe it. That is what I have learnt fromShakespeare. This modern passion for description can only injure thegreatness of the theme. _Enter from the left the Virgin Mary._"

  "Enter who?" asked John in amazement.

  "The Virgin Mary. The mother ..."

  "Yes, I know who she is, but ... well, I'm not a religious man,Laurence, in fact I've not been to church since I was a boy ... but ...no, no, you can't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "It will offend people."

  "I want to offend people," Laurence intoned. "If thy eye offend thee,pluck it out."

  "Well, you did," said John. "You put in a _y_ instead."

  "I'm not jesting, my dear fellow."

  "Nor am I," said John. "What I want you to understand is that you can'tbring the Virgin Mary on the stage. Why, I'm even doubtful about Joan ofArc's vision of the Archangel Michael. Some people may object, thoughI'm counting on his being generally taken for St. George."

  "I know that you are writing a play about Joan of Arc, but--and I hopeyou'll not take unkindly what I'm going to say--but Joan of Arc cannever be more than a pretty piece of medievalism, whereas Thomas ..."

  John gave up, and the next morning he told the household that he wascalled back to London on business.

  "Perhaps I shall have some peace here," he sighed, looking round at hisdignified Church Row library.

  "Mrs. James called earlier this morning, sir, and said not to disturbyou, but she hoped you'd had a comfortable journey and left theseflowers, and Mrs. George has telephoned from the theater to say she'llbe here almost directly."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Worfolk," John said. "Perhaps Mrs. George will betaking lunch."

  "Yes, sir, I expect she will," said his housekeeper.