“My dear Sophia,” he cried, indignantly.
But he met her calm eyes; and her dry smile of amusement called up on his own lips a smile of confession. He looked at the paragraph thoughtfully.
“I think it reads very well. It’s brief, pointed, I might almost say epigrammatic; and it will certainly prevent misconception.”
“Also it will remind those in power that there is no more excellent candidate than the Vicar of St. Gregory’s.”
“My dear Sophia, I honestly don’t think any one would call me a vain man, but I cannot think myself unsuitable for the position. I’m sure you will be the last to deny that my parentage gives me certain claims upon my country.”
“Which I suppose you took care to point out to Lord Stonehenge last night?”
“On the contrary, I flatter myself I was tactful enough to discuss the most indifferent matters with him. We talked of grapes and the Manager of the Army and Navy Stores. I merely remarked how sad it was that poor Andover was dead.”
“Ha!”
“He agreed with me that it was very sad. For his years I thought him pleasant and intelligent. And then he talked about the General Election. I ventured to explain how important it was that the bishops should be imbued with Conservative principles.”
“And d’you think he swallowed the bait?” asked Lady Sophia.
“My dear, I wish you would not express yourself quite so brutally.”
“I often wonder if you humbug yourself as much as you humbug other people,” she replied, with a meditative smile.
Canon Spratte stared at her with astonishment, and answered with dignity.
“Upon my soul, I don’t know what you mean. I have always done my duty in that state of life in which it has pleased Providence to place me. And if I may say so without vanity, I have done it with pleasure to myself and with profit to mankind.”
“Ah, yes, you’re one of those men for whom the path of duty is always strewn with roses.”
“It’s my strength of character that makes it so,” said the Canon, blandly.
“It never seems odd to you that when there are two courses open, the right one should invariably be that which redounds to your personal advantage.”
“Some men, Sophia, are born to greatness; some men achieve greatness; others have greatness thrust upon them. It would be immodest in me to say which of these three more particularly applies to myself.”
The answer perhaps was not very apt to the occasion, but the observation was a favourite with Canon Spratte; and he made it with such a triumphant assurance that it sounded like a very crushing retort.
“Do you remember our old nurse, Theodore?” asked Lady Sophia, smiling.
“Old Anne Ramsay?” cried Canon Spratte, in his hearty way. “To be sure I do! I shall never forget her. She was a dear old soul.”
It was characteristic of him that in after years, when the nurse lived in the country on a pension, the Canon visited her with the utmost regularity. He never allowed Christmas or her birthday to pass without sending her a present. When she was attacked by a fatal illness he took a long journey to see her, by his cheerful, breezy manner did all that was possible to comfort her, and saw that she wanted nothing to make her final days easy and untroubled.
“Her affection is one of the most charming recollections of my childhood,” he added.
“I always think she must have been an excellent judge of character,” murmured Lady Sophia, in the even, indifferent tones she assumed when she was most sarcastic; “I remember how frequently she used to say: ‘Master Theodore, self-praise is no recommendation.’”
“You certainly have the oddest memories, my dear,” cried the Canon, with a scornful smile. “Now I remember how frequently she used to say: ‘Miss Sophia, your nose wants blowing.’”
It was a very good hit, and Lady Sophia, bridling, answered coldly: “She was a woman of no education, Theodore.”
“That is precisely what your reminiscence led me to believe,” he replied, with an ironical bow.
“Humph!”
The Canon, elated by this verbal triumph, looked at her mockingly, but before Lady Sophia could find an adequate rejoinder Lord Spratte and Wroxham were shown in together. Somewhat irritated by her defeat she greeted them with relief.
To the unfortunate Wroxham, ill-at-ease and full of misgiving, luncheon seemed endless. He cursed the ingenuity of Theodore’s cook, who prolonged his torture by the diversity and number of her courses. Considering with anxiety the ordeal that was before him, he found it quite impossible to join intelligently in the conversation, and feared that Winnie must think him very stupid. But Canon Spratte, tactfully realizing his condition, was as good as a band; he spoke without pause, and carried on with his brother a very lively exchange of banter. It was rarely that his family was privileged to hear so many sallies of his wit. Later, when Lady Sophia and Winnie, leaving the men to smoke, went into the drawing-room, Wroxham’s nervousness became sheer agony. The affair grew intolerably grotesque when he was set at a pre-arranged hour solemnly to offer his hand and heart. Though his mind was very practical, he could not fail to see that the proceeding was excessively unromantic. He wished heartily that he had waited till he found himself by chance alone with Winnie, and could bring the conversation round by Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses to the hazardous topic of matrimony. But Canon Spratte, asking his brother and Lionel to go upstairs, led Wroxham to the study.
“I feel most awfully nervous,” said the young man, doing his best to smile.
“Nonsense, my dear boy,” cried the Canon, very cheerily. “There’s nothing whatever to be nervous about. You have my complete assurance that Winnie undoubtedly cares for you. Now sit down quietly like a good fellow, and I’ll send my little girl down to you. Bless my soul, it reminds me of the day when I asked my own dear wife to marry me.”
Wroxham began to walk up and down the room, turning over in his mind what he should say. The Canon, with deliberate steps, marched to the drawing-room.
“Has Harry gone?” asked Lady Sophia.
“No, he’s in my study,” answered the Canon, looking down gravely.
This was the moment for which he had waited, and he paused to consider the success of his worldly wisdom.
“Dear me, how stupid I am!” he cried. “I meant to bring the paper up with me. Winnie, my love, will you fetch it for me?”
Winnie got up, but caught her father’s pleased expression, and puzzled, stopped still, looking at him.
“Pray go, my dear,” he added, smiling. “I left it in the study.”
“But Harry is there,” she said.
“I’m under the impression, my love, that he would not be sorry to have a few moments alone with you. I think he has something to say to you.”
“To me, papa?” exclaimed Winnie, a little startled. “What on earth can he want?”
The Canon put his arm affectionately round her waist.
“He will tell you that himself, my love.”
Winnie understood now what her father meant, and a deep blush came over her face. Then a coldness rose in her heart and travelled through every limb of her body. She was afraid and confused.
“But I can’t see him, I don’t want to.”
She shrank away from her father; but he, somewhat amused at this resistance, led her towards the door.
“My dear, you must. I can quite understand that you should feel a certain bashfulness. But he has my full approval.”
“There’s something I must say to you at once, father. I want to explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain, my darling.”
She was growing almost distracted. Her father, good-humoured and affectionate, seemed to hold her in the hollow of his hand, taking from her all strength of will.
“Father, let me speak. You don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand, my dear. I know all about it, and you really need not be nervous. You go with my very best wishes.”
> “I can’t go. I must speak to you first,” she cried desperately.
“Come, come, my dear, you must pluck up courage. It’s nothing very terrible. Go downstairs like a good girl, and I daresay you’ll bring Harry up with you.”
He treated her as he would a child, frightened at some imaginary danger, who must be coaxed into boldness. He opened the door, and Winnie, all unwilling, yielded to his stronger mind. With a hearty laugh he came back, rubbing his hands.
“A little maidenly modesty! Very charming, very pretty! It’s a lovely sight, my dear Sophia, that of the typical creamy English girl suffused in the blushes of virginal innocence.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Lady Sophia.
“You’re a cynic, my dear,” laughed the Canon. “It’s a grave fault of which I recommend you to correct yourself.”
“I beg you not to preach to me, Theodore,” she answered, bridling.
“No man is a prophet in his own country,” said he, with a shrug of the shoulders. Then he turned to his brother: “But you will wonder why I sent you that urgent note, asking you to luncheon.”
“Not at all. I can quite understand that the pleasure of my company was worth a special messenger.”
But Canon Spratte interrupted: “I asked you to come in your official capacity, if I may so call it — as the head of the family.”
“My dear Theodore, merely by courtesy: I am unworthy.”
“The fact is sufficiently patent without your recalling it,” retorted the Canon, promptly. “But I should be obliged if at this moment, when the affairs of our house are at stake, you would adopt such sobriety and decorum as you are capable of.”
“I wish I’d got my coronation robes on now,” sighed Lord Spratte.
“Go on, Theodore,” suggested their sister.
“Well, you will all of you be gratified to hear that Lord Wroxham has asked my permission to pay his addresses to Winnie.”
“In my young days when a man wanted to marry he asked the girl before he asked her father,” said Lady Sophia.
“I think it was a very proper proceeding; I am so old-fashioned as to consider a father the best judge of his daughter’s welfare. And I think that in this case I am certainly the first person to be consulted. Wroxham is a young man of the very highest principles, and he naturally chose the correct course.”
“And you fell upon him and said: ‘What ho!’ “ cried Lord Spratte.
The Canon gave him a cold stare of surprise and of injured dignity.
“I informed him that I had no objection to him as a son-in-law, and I made the usual inquiries into his circumstances.”
“What bloomin’ cheek, when every one knows he has twenty thousand a year!”
“And finally I imparted to him my conviction that Winnie looked upon him with sincere regard.”
“You are a downy old bird, Theodore,” said Lord Spratte, laughing. “There’s many a London matron has set her net to catch that fish.”
“I did not expect that you would treat the matter with decorum, Thomas, and it was only from a strong sense of duty towards you as the head of my house, that I requested your presence.”
But his elder brother was completely unabashed.
“Shut it, Theodore. You know very well that Wroxham can just about wipe his boots with the likes of us.”
“I don’t in the least understand what you mean,” replied the Canon, frigidly. “We are his equals in the best sense; and if you wish to go into details, our rank in the peerage is — higher than his.”
“Rank in the peerage be hanged! There’s a deuce of a difference between the twenty-first Lord Wroxham with half a county to his back and the second Earl Spratte with a nasty pretentious stucco house and about ten acres of sooty land. Earls like us are as thick as flies.”
Lady Sophia’s mind, like her brother’s, turned to the house which the founder of their family, on acquiring wealth, had purchased to gain the standing of a country gentleman. The Chancellor loved to get full value for his money, and its small price as well as its grandeur attracted him. Beachcombe was built by a retired ironmonger in the first years of Queen Victoria, when romance and Gothic architecture were the fashion; and it had all the appearance of a mediæval castle. With parapets, ogival windows, pointed arches, machicolations, a draw-bridge, and the other playthings of that amusing era, the grey stucco of its walls made it seem more artificial than the canvas palace of a drop-scene. The imposing hall was panelled with deal stained to resemble oak; and the walls, emblazoned with armorial bearings, gave it the gaudiness of a German beer cellar. The ceilings were coloured alternately blue and red, and decorated in gold with fleurs-de-lis and with heraldic lions. The furniture was elaborately carved, and there were settles, oak chests, and huge cabinets, on every available space of which might be seen the arms of the family of Spratte. With the best will in the world it was impossible to accept the inferior pictures, bought wholesale at an auction, as family portraits. After sixty years all this magnificence was become somewhat tawdry, and the rooms, little inhabited by their present owner, had the dismal look of a stage-set seen by daylight. The classic statues, the terraces and steps, which strove to give importance to the garden, had withstood the weather so ill that their plaster in spots was worn off and exhibited in shameful nakedness the yellow brick of which they were manufactured. The romantic grottoes were so dilapidated that they resembled kitchens burnt out and abandoned. The whole place put visibly the healthy paradox that the idealism of one age is but the vulgarity of the next.
The Canon was outraged but still dignified.
“I should like you to understand once for all, Thomas, that I very much object to the sneering manner which you are pleased to affect with regard to our family. I, for one, am proud of its origin. I am proud to be the son of the late Lord Chancellor and the grandson of a distinguished banker.”
“Fiddlesticks, Theodore!” answered Lady Sophia, scornfully. “You know very well that our grandfather was a bill-broker, and rather a seedy one at that.”
“He was nothing of the sort, my dear; I recollect Josiah Spratte, the elder, very well. He was a most polished and accomplished gentleman.”
“My dear Theodore, you were only seven when he died. I remember only a little shabby old man who used to call my mother mam. He was always invited to dinner the day after a party to eat up the scraps, and I’m sure it never occurred to any one that he was a distinguished banker till he was safely dead and buried.”
“Remember that he was my grandfather, so I should presumably know what profession he followed.”
To Lady Sophia it was one of her brother’s most irritating habits to assume an exclusive right to their common progenitors. Even though she was not overwhelmed by the contemplation of their greatness, she felt it hard to be altogether cut off from them.
“It’s carried for bill-broking,” said Lord Spratte, with a contented air. “And my belief is that the old chap did a bit of usury as well. It’s no good stuffin’ people, Theodore, they don’t believe us.”
“And what about the bill-broker’s papa?” asked Lady Sophia.
“I don’t believe the bill-broker had a parent at all,” put in Lord Spratte. “That’s where the Montmorencys come in.”
“I confess I don’t know what my great-grandfather was,” answered Theodore, hesitating a little, “but I know he was a gentleman.”
“I very much doubt it,” said Lady Sophia, shaking her head. “I can’t help thinking he was a green-grocer.”
“Ah, that beats the Montmorencys, by Jove,” cried Lord Spratte. “The ancestral green-grocer — goin’ out to wait at dinner-parties in Bedford Square, and havin’ a sly drink at the old sherry when no one was lookin’!”
Lady Sophia began to laugh, but the Canon looked his brother up and down, with a contemptuous twirl of his lips.
“Is this your idea of humour, Thomas?” he asked gravely, as though demanding information.
“Oh, you don’t know what a load it is of
f my mind! Here have I been goin’ about all these years with that ghastly string of Montmorencys hangin’ round my neck just like the albatross and the ancient mariner, tryin’ to hide from the world that I knew the family tree was bogus just as well as they did, tryin’ to pretend I didn’t feel ashamed of sneakin’ somebody else’s coat of arms. Why, I can’t look at Burke without getting as red as the binding. But, by Jove, Theodore, I can live up to the ancestral green-grocer.”
“I hope you will have the good sense to keep these observations from Wroxham,” returned the Canon, shrugging his shoulders. “Remember that he is about to enter into an alliance with our family, and he’s extremely sensitive in these matters.”
“You mean he’s a bit of a prig. Oh, well, he’s only just come down from Oxford. He’ll get over that.”
“I mean nothing of the sort. I look upon him as a very excellent young man, and with his opportunities I’m convinced that he’ll end up as Prime Minister.”
“And suppose Winnie refuses him?” said Lord Spratte.
“What!” cried the Canon, with a jump, for such a possibility had never occurred to him. But he put it aside quickly as beyond the bounds of reason. “Nonsense! Why should she? He’s a very eligible young man, and he has my full approval.”
Lord Spratte shrugged his shoulders.
“Supposin’ she should take it into her head to marry that Socialist Johnny? D’you know, she told me he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen in her life.”
The Canon burst into a shout of laughter.
“Young Railing? Absurd! My daughter knows what is due to herself and to her family. She may be young, but she has a sense of dignity which I should be pleased to see in you, Thomas. Remember our motto: Malo mori quam fœdari, I would sooner die than be disgraced.”
“I always think we were overcharged for that,” murmured Lord Spratte.
“Of course a fine sentiment merely excites your ribaldry!”
“My dear Theodore, I have the receipt among the family papers.”
At that moment Winnie, unhappy and pale, came quickly into the room. She gave her father a rapid look of apprehension, then, as if seeking protection, glanced appealingly at the others. But the Canon, full of complacent affection, went towards her and took her in his arms.
Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated) Page 95