“I suppose I am old-fashioned,” said Miss Pottinger, “but I still do not see why sacrilege and assaults on people’s good names should be passed over without a thing being done. You have a phlegmatic temperament, Louisa, and are perhaps too ill to care what goes on, but I would have thought that Solly would have had something to say for himself by this time.”
“My son has faith in my judgement,” said Mrs Bridgetower.
“Of course, but a man with any real gimp in him would have done something before he had had time to talk to you.”
This was insufferable! Mrs Bridgetower moved into action, which, in her case meant that she relaxed in her chair, allowed her heavy lids to drop a little farther over her eyes, and smiled.
“And what would he have done, Puss, pray? Would he have rushed to Mr Cobbler, and struck him in the face? To have suspected Mr Cobbler in this matter he would have had to take guidance from you, for you seem to be the one who wants to hang Mr Cobbler’s hide on the fence, as the boys used to say when we were young. And I do not think that it has ever occurred to Solomon to consult you in any matter, particularly. And a certain gallantry which you, dear, might not appreciate, forbids a man to deny in the open market-place that he is engaged to a girl after such a report, without knowing precisely what he is doing. There are still gentlemen in the world, Puss, whatever our experience may have been.”
This was dirty fighting indeed, and referred to the sudden disappearance, many years before, of a man who, without being actually engaged to Auntie Puss, had put that lady into a mood to accept him if asked. Pouring salt into wounds was a specialty of Mrs Bridgetower’s, and the older the wound was the better she liked it.
Auntie Puss took refuge in hurt feelings. Her chin quivered and she spoke in a tremulous voice. “If you don’t take care, Louisa, that is all there is to be said about it. My concern was for you, and for the good name of the Cathedral. A soldier’s daughter probably sees these things differently from most people.”
“I think that even a soldier’s daughter should know who the enemy is before she fires,” said Mrs Bridgetower who, as a woman herself, set little store by wobbling chins and tearful voices in others. She might have gone on to demolish Auntie Puss completely if, at this moment, reinforcements had not arrived in the person of Mrs Roger Warboys. Because of her connection with The Bellman it was impossible to say at once if she were friend or foe, and all the time which was occupied by bringing in the tea, and pouring it out, and passing thin bread and butter, was needed before it became perfectly clear that Mrs Warboys had come expressly to talk about the great scandal, and that she was on the side of those whose privacy and inmost feelings had been so grossly violated.
Mrs Warboys’ position was a peculiar one, distinguished by many interesting shades of feeling, and she enjoyed it very much in a solemn, stricken way. She felt a family loyalty to The Bellman, of course. She thought a newspaper a powerful influence in a community and a great trust; she yearned to see The Bellman conducted according to the highest standards of journalism, as she conceived them. She had repeatedly impressed these views of hers upon her father-in-law, Mr Clerebold Warboys, who—although she was the last one to say a word against the late Roger’s father—paid no attention to them. If she could, only for a month, have a free hand at The Bellman, it would be a very different paper thereafter. Some heads would roll, and although she named no names, certain powerful editorial influences would be removed. She was humiliated by the incident of the false engagement notice, and had come to Mrs Bridgetower’s First Thursday most unsure of her welcome. She appreciated perfectly how she would feel herself, if she were in Mrs Bridgetower’s position, but she did not wish to lose friends over a matter which she had been powerless to prevent, but which she might be able to amend.
She permitted all of these admissions to be wormed out of her, as it were unwillingly, with Auntie Puss as chief inquisitor, and gained immense moral prestige by fouling her own nest, which was a situation especially congenial to her temperament. She might have been some noble-minded Russian who had, at immense personal risk, escaped to give aid to the democracies.
As Mrs Warboys was basking in her glory, the doorbell rang, and the elderly maid admitted Mrs Swithin Shillito, who was accompanied by Mr Bevill Higgin.
“Dear Louisa,” said the old lady, “I hoped that I might introduce Mr Higgin to you, for I know you have so much in common, and as he is still a stranger in Salterton—”
“But of course,” said Mrs Bridgetower. “It is rarely nowadays that I see gentlemen at my Thursdays, and so Mr Higgins is doubly welcome.”
“I am honoured,” said Mr Higgin, bowing, “to meet a lady of whom I have heard so much. The name is Higgin, without the ‘s’. Yes.” And Mr Higgin was introduced to everyone and was very much at ease, rather like an indifferent but experienced actor in a comedy by Pinero. At last he seated himself on a low pouffe next to his hostess, and looked rather like a pixie on a toadstool.
“And where are you living in Salterton, Mr Higgin?” said Mrs Bridgetower, after some general conversation.
“For the time being I have taken rooms, rather in the north of town,” said he.
“With some people called Morphew,” said Mrs Shillito.
“I don’t know anyone called Morphew,” said Mrs Bridgetower.
“I’m sure you don’t,” said Mr Higgin. “They are a very good sort of people in their way, and I am very comfortable there, but it is not the sort of place in which one would wish to stay indefinitely. But until I have acquired some pupils, and have had an opportunity to look round for a bachelor flat, with a studio, it will do very nicely.”
And then, without much prompting, he told the company that he taught singing and elocution, and Mrs Shillito said all the complimentary things about his abilities which he wanted said, but which he could not suitably say himself.
“Connection is every thing, of course, for an artist like Mr Higgin,” said that lady, “but it takes time to meet the right people.”
“Less so, perhaps, in a university town than elsewhere,” said Mr Higgin, with a bow which included all the ladies. “And in a young country, so avid for culture as Canada, I hope that it will not take me too long to make my way.”
“I have been urging Mr Higgin to seek some connection with the Cathedral,” said Mrs Shillito. “Perhaps, Mrs Knapp, you can tell us if there is any part of the musical service in which Mr Higgin’s talents could be of use?”
Mrs Knapp said that Mr Cobbler looked after everything of that kind.
“Oh, my dear, you are too modest,” said Mrs Shillito, who was a rosy, round little old lady, got up in grey and purple and, like her husband, English with the peculiar intensity of English people abroad. “We all know how musical Mr Dean is, and I am sure that Mr Cobbler does nothing except on his advice.”
“I have been trying to see Mr Cobbler,” said Higgin, “but he is a very elusive man.”
“He may soon be downright missing, if I am any judge,” said Miss Pottinger, who had been seething for some time. Mrs Bridgetower’s opposition to her conviction that Cobbler was at the root of the great scandal had served only to intensify her certainty of his guilt.
This pregnant remark brought the conversation back to the great theme again, and as Mr Higgin was acquainted with it, having heard much about it from the Shillitos, he was able to enter into it with some spirit, though modestly, as befitted a newcomer. He listened with wide-open blue eyes, and said “Oh!” and “Ah!” with the right amount of horror at the right places.
“If I may venture to say so,” said he, smiling at all the ladies in turn, “I think that it will not be at all easy to get satisfaction from Mr Ridley. I have only met him once, of course, but he seemed to me to be a very saturnine kind of man.” And he told the tale of his visit to Ridley, under the wing of Mr Shillito; and, as he told it, it appeared that Ridley had shown a strongly Philistine attitude toward the cultural advancement of Canada, and the improvement of The
Bellman. He told his story so well, and imitated Ridley so drolry, that it made the ladies laugh very much, and gave particular satisfaction to Mrs Warboys.
“When I think of him sitting there, without a word to say for himself, and snapping at the air with those scissors,” said Higgin, “I really can’t help smiling, though I assure you it was rather embarrassing at the time.”
This led to further discussion of Ridley, whose eccentricities, habits of cooking, and single state were all thoroughly rehearsed.
“Perhaps it is as well that he never married, if he is so disagreeable,” said gentle little Mrs Knapp.
“Is it widely believed that he is unmarried?” said Higgin, with a very knowing look.
“Why, whatever do you mean by that, Mr Higgin?” said Mrs Knapp.
“Perhaps I’d better say no more—at present,” said Higgin, leaving Mrs Knapp most unsatisfied, and the other ladies even more incensed against Ridley for daring to have a secret, though they admired Mr Higgin for his discretion in not explaining it, to the only one of their number who did not know it.
“And that is the man,” said Auntie Puss, “to whom Waverley thinks of giving an honorary degree! Strange days we live in.”
“Because of Swithin’s association with him—his strictly professional association, I should say—it would ill become me to comment on that matter,” said Mrs Shillito. “But I would have thought that the University would have wanted its new course in journalism to be formed by those with a—shall I say?—more literary approach to the matter? Writing—the light touch—the formation of a style—you know the sort of thing I mean.”
They all knew. It meant Mr Shillito, and whimsical little essays about birdseed and toothpicks.
“The degree has not been conferred yet, or even formally approved,” said Mrs Warboys, in a marked manner. And as everyone present knew, or thought they knew, that she had several members of the University Board of Governors in her pocket, this was a great stroke, and brought forth a good deal of murmuring and head nodding.
The tea, and the thin bread and butter, and the little cakes, and the big cake, having been pretty well disposed of by this time, it was a pleasant diversion when Mrs Shillito begged Mrs Bridgetower, as a personal favour to herself, to permit Mr Higgin to try her piano. This instrument, which was an aged Chickering, was a great ornament of the drawing-room, for its case was beautifully polished, and its top was covered with photographs in silver frames, and the late Professor Bridgetower’s military medals, exhibited on a piece of blue velvet. Mrs Bridgetower graciously gave her consent.
“I hope that an artist like yourself will not be too critical, Mr Higgin,” said she. “I do not play so much now as once I did, and it may not be completely in tune.”
With appropriate demurral, Mr Higgin sat down at the piano and struck a chord. It was not so much out of tune as out of voice. The sound board had split under the rigours of winter heating, and the old wires gave forth that nasal, twangling sound peculiar to senile pianos and Siamese cats. Some of the photographs jingled as well. But Mr Higgin dashed off a few brilliant arpeggio passages, and smiled delight at his hostess.
“May I give myself the pleasure?” said he. “Oh, do say that I may.” And without waiting for further permission he began to play and sing.
It might be said of Mr Higgin that he brought a great deal to the music he performed—so much, indeed, that some composers would have had trouble in recognizing their works as he performed them. He had a surprisingly large voice for a small man, and he phrased with immense grandeur and feeling, beginning each musical statement loudly, and tailing off at the end of it as though ecstasy had robbed him of consciousness. He enriched the English language with vowels of an Italian fruitiness, so that “hand” became “hond”, and “God” “Goad”. It was plain that he had had a lot of training, for nobody ever sang so by the light of Nature.
His first song, which was Because by Guy d’Hardelot, he sang with his eyes opening and closing rapturously in the direction of Mrs Bridgetower, in acknowledgement of her ownership of the piano. But when he was bidden to sing again he directed his beams at Auntie Puss.
“I should like to sing a little thing of Roger Quilter’s,” said he, “some lines of Tennyson.” And he launched into Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal. It is doubtful if, at any time in her life, anyone had sung directly at Miss Porringer, and she was flustered in a region of her being from which she had had no messages for many years.
So fold thyself, my dearest one, and slip—
Slip into my bosom, and be lost in me.
Thus sang Mr Higgin, and in that instant Miss Pottinger knew that here was the man who must succeed Humphrey Cobbler on the organ bench at St Nicholas’.
“Sorry to be late, Mother,” said Solly, coming into the room. He caught sight of Mr Higgin, who was still at the piano, and frowned.
“My son, Mr Higgin, my great, grown-up boy,” said Mrs Bridgetower fondly.
“We have had the pleasure before,” said Mr Higgin, with what Solly thought an impudent grin.
Solly was always late for his mother’s First Thursdays, and they kept up the pretence between them that it was pressure of university work which made him so. Very soon after his arrival the guests went home, well pleased with their afternoon’s work. For they all thought that Mrs Warboys would see that the insufferable Gloster Ridley lost his job, and received no doctorate from Waverley. Miss Pottinger thought that she had done much to undermine Cobbler with Mrs Knapp and thus with the Dean. Mrs Knapp thought she had made it clear that the Dean exonerated Cobbler, and that this would divert the wrath of Miss Pottinger. Mrs Shillito thought that she had further ingratiated herself with Mrs Warboys, thus securing her husband’s position. And they all felt that the matter of the great scandal had been brought somewhat nearer to the boil.
When her guests had gone a dramatic change came over Mrs Bridgetower. Solly had seen them to the door, and he returned to the drawing-room to find his mother, as he knew she would be, slumped from her splendidly relaxed but commanding position in her armchair, with her eyes closed, and her face sagging with fatigue.
“Do you want to go upstairs at once, Mother?”
“No, dearie, give me a moment. Perhaps I’d better have one of my white tablets.”
As he climbed the stairs her voice reached him again faintly. “Bring me one of my little yellow pills too, from the table by my bed.”
“Don’t you think it would be better to leave that until you are in bed? What about a dose of your medicine instead?”
“If you think so, dearie.”
In time Solly returned, and when the tablet and then the dose of medicine were taken with much histrionic disrelish, he took off his mother’s shoes and put on her slippers, and covered her knees with a small tartan rug. She opened her eyes and smiled fondly upon him.
“Bad, bad little boy! Late again!”
“I had a lot of papers to mark, Mother, and I simply had to get them done. Anyway, I knew you’d want to talk to your friends alone.”
“Friends, dear? What are friends compared with you? And I so much need someone to help me now, passing things and so forth. I wonder how much longer I shall be able to keep up my First Thursdays. They take so much out of me now.”
“No, no; you mustn’t give them up. You must see people, you know. The doctor said you must keep up your interests.”
“You are my only real interest now, dear. If your father had lived—but it is useless to talk of what might have been. But I need you to help me. There was a gentleman here today. You should have been here to help entertain him.”
“It looked to me as though he were doing the entertaining.”
“Yes, dear, but suppose he had wanted to wash his hands? Who would have taken him?”
“If he needs to wash his hands in the course of an hour’s visit he ought to stay at home. Or wear one of those things.”
“What things do you mean, dearie?”
“Those thin
gs soldiers wear when they’re on sentry duty.”
“Don’t be coarse, dear. I can’t bear it.”
“Sorry, Mother.”
“So nice to have someone sing at one’s Afternoon. It’s been years since it happened. Such nice songs, too. Your father loved Because—
Because God made thee mine
I’ll cherish thee—
I was terribly moved. Lovey—”
“Yes, Mother?”
“I think I could take a glass of sherry. Perhaps with a little something in it.”
Solly obediently brought a tray and gave his mother a glass of dry sherry, in which he had put a generous dollop of gin.
“Thank you, dear. It takes away the taste of that horrid medicine.”
“mother, how did that fellow Higgins get here?”
“Higgin, dear. No ‘s’. Maude Shillito brought him.”
“Do you think he is the sort of person you ought to have in the house?”
“Whatever do you mean, dearie? Maude Shillito brought him.”
“I know, but the Shillitos know all kinds of terrible people. I’ve met Higgin before, and I thought he was an awful little squirt.”
“Please, lovey; you know how I dislike rough talk. Where did you meet him?”
“He hunted me up at the University. Wanted me to let him talk to my classes about how to speak English.”
“Well, lovey, from what you tell me about them, I think your classes might well have some instruction in how to speak.”
“That’s not what the classes are for. And I can’t bring in odd visitors just as I please. Anyway, he was terribly patronizing about it, and obviously thought I’d jump at the chance. I was a bit short with him.”
“Really, dear? Was that wise?”
“He rubbed me the wrong way. Talked as if we were a lot of barbarians out here.”
“We must learn all that we can from Older Civilizations, lovey.”
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