by E. F. Benson
Lady Ashbridge recollected the almanac.
“That will be in September, then,” she said. “I do not think I was ever in London in September. I did not know that anybody was.”
“The point, my dear, is not how or where you have been accustomed to spend your Septembers,” said her husband. “What we are talking about is—”
“Yes, dear, I know quite well what we are talking about,” said she. “We are talking about Michael not studying music all September.”
Lord Ashbridge got up and began walking across the terrace opposite the tea-table with his elbows stuck out and his feet lifted rather high.
“Michael doesn’t seem to realise that he is not Tom or Dick or Harry,” said he. “Music, indeed! I’m musical myself; all we Combers are musical. But Michael is my only son, and it really distresses me to see how little sense he has of his responsibilities. Amusements are all very well; it is not that I want to cut him off his amusements, but when it comes to a career—”
Lady Ashbridge was surreptitiously engaged in pouring out a little more cream for Petsy, and her husband, turning rather sooner than she had expected, caught her in the act.
“Do not give Petsy any more cream,” he said, with some asperity; “I absolutely forbid it.”
Lady Ashbridge quite composedly replaced the cream-jug.
“Poor Petsy!” she observed.
“I ask you to attend to me, Marion,” he said.
“But I am attending to you very well, Robert,” said she, “and I understand you perfectly. You do not want Michael to be a musician in September and wear long hair and perhaps play at concerts. I am sure I quite agree with you, for such a thing would be as unheard of in my family as in yours. But how do you propose to stop it?”
“I shall use my authority,” he said, stepping a little higher.
“Yes, dear, I am sure you will. But what will happen if Michael doesn’t pay any attention to your authority? You will be worse off than ever. Poor Michael is very obedient when he is told to do anything he intends to do, but when he doesn’t agree it is difficult to do anything with him. And, you see, he is quite independent of you with my mother having left him so much money. Poor mamma!”
Lord Ashbridge felt strongly about this.
“It was a most extraordinary disposition of her property for your mother to make,” he observed. “It has given Michael an independence which I much deplore. And she did it in direct opposition to my wishes.”
This touched on one of the questions about which Lady Ashbridge had her convictions. She had a mild but unalterable opinion that when anybody died, all that they had previously done became absolutely flawless and laudable.
“Mamma did as she thought right with her property,” she said, “and it is not for us to question it. She was conscientiousness itself. You will have to excuse my listening to any criticism you may feel inclined to make about her, Robert.”
“Certainly, my dear. I only want you to listen to me about Michael. You agree with me on the impossibility of his adopting a musical career. I cannot, at present, think so ill of Michael as to suppose that he will defy our joint authority.”
“Michael has a great will of his own,” she remarked. “He gets that from you, Robert, though he gets his money from his grandmother.”
The futility of further discussion with his wife began to dawn on Lord Ashbridge, as it dawned on everybody who had the privilege of conversing with her. Her mind was a blind alley that led nowhere; it was clear that she had no idea to contribute to the subject except slightly pessimistic forebodings with which, unfortunately, he found himself secretly disposed to agree. He had always felt that Michael was an uncomfortable sort of boy; in other words, that he had the inconvenient habit of thinking things out for himself, instead of blindly accepting the conclusions of other people.
Much as Lord Ashbridge valued the sturdy independence of character which he himself enjoyed displaying, he appreciated it rather less highly when it was manifested by people who were not sensible enough to agree with him. He looked forward to Michael’s arrival that evening with the feeling that there was a rebellious standard hoisted against the calm blue of the evening sky, and remembering the advent of his sister he wondered whether she would not join the insurgent. Barbara Jerome, as has been remarked, often annoyed her brother; she also genially laughed at him; but Lord Ashbridge, partly from affection, partly from a loyal family sense of clanship, always expected his sister to spend a fortnight with him in August, and would have been much hurt had she refused to do so. Her husband, however, so far from spending a fortnight with his brother-in-law, never spent a minute in his presence if it could possibly be avoided, an arrangement which everybody concerned considered to be wise, and in the interests of cordiality.
“And Barbara comes this evening as well as Michael, does she not?” he said. “I hope she will not take Michael’s part in his absurd scheme.”
“I have given Barbara the blue room,” said Lady Ashbridge, after a little thought. “I am afraid she may bring her great dog with her. I hope he will not quarrel with Petsy. Petsy does not like other dogs.”
The day had been very hot, and Lord Ashbridge, not having taken any exercise, went off to have a round of golf with the professional of the links that lay not half a mile from the house. He considered exercise an essential part of the true Englishman’s daily curriculum, and as necessary a contribution to the traditional mode of life which made them all what they were — or should be — as a bath in the morning or attendance at church on Sunday. He did not care so much about playing golf with a casual friend, because the casual friend, as a rule, casually beat him — thus putting him in an un-English position — and preferred a game with this first-class professional whose duty it was — in complete violation of his capacities — to play just badly enough to be beaten towards the end of the round after an exciting match. It required a good deal of cleverness and self-control to accomplish this, for Lord Ashbridge was a notably puerile performer, but he generally managed it with tact and success, by dint of missing absurdly easy putts, and (here his skill came in) by pulling and slicing his ball into far-distant bunkers. Throughout the game it was his business to keep up a running fire of admiring ejaculations such as “Well driven, my lord,” or “A fine putt, my lord. Ah! dear me, I wish I could putt like that,” though occasionally his chorus of praise betrayed him into error, and from habit he found himself saying: “Good shot, my lord,” when my lord had just made an egregious mess of things. But on the whole he devised so pleasantly sycophantic an atmosphere as to procure a substantial tip for himself, and to make Lord Ashbridge conscious of being a very superior performer. Whether at the bottom of his heart he knew he could not play at all, he probably did not inquire; the result of his matches and his opponent’s skilfully-showered praise was sufficient for him. So now he left the discouraging companionship of his wife and Petsy and walked swingingly across the garden and the park to the links, there to seek in Macpherson’s applause the self-confidence that would enable him to encounter his republican sister and his musical son with an unyielding front.
His spirits mounted rapidly as he went. It pleased him to go jauntily across the lawn and reflect that all this smooth turf was his, to look at the wealth of well-tended flowers in his garden and know that all this polychromatic loveliness was bred in Lord Ashbridge’s borders (and was graciously thrown open to the gaze of the admiring public on Sunday afternoon, when they were begged to keep off the grass), and that Lord Ashbridge was himself. He liked reminding himself that the towering elms drew their leafy verdure from Lord Ashbridge’s soil; that the rows of hen-coops in the park, populous and cheeping with infant pheasants, belonged to the same fortunate gentleman who in November would so unerringly shoot them down as they rocketted swiftly over the highest of his tree-tops; that to him also appertained the long-fronted Jacobean house which stood so commandingly upon the hill-top, and glowed with all the mellowness of its three-hundred-years-old bricks.
And his satisfaction was not wholly fatuous nor entirely personal; all these spacious dignities were insignia (temporarily conferred on him, like some order, and permanently conferred on his family) of the splendid political constitution under which England had made herself mistress of an empire and the seas that guarded it. Probably he would have been proud of belonging to that even if he had not been “one of us”; as it was, the high position which he occupied in it caused that pride to be slightly mixed with the pride that was concerned with the notion of the Empire belonging to him and his peers.
But though he was the most profound of Tories, he would truthfully have professed (as indeed he practised in the management of his estates) the most Liberal opinions as to schemes for the amelioration of the lower classes. Only, just as the music he was good enough to listen to had to be played for him, so the tenants and farmers had to be his dependents. He looked after them very well indeed, conceiving this to be the prime duty of a great landlord, but his interest in them was really proprietary. It was of his bounty, and of his complete knowledge of what his duties as “one of us” were, that he did so, and any legislation which compelled him to part with one pennyworth of his property for the sake of others less fortunate he resisted to the best of his ability as a theft of what was his. The country, in fact, if it went to the dogs (and certain recent legislation distinctly seemed to point kennelwards), would go to the dogs because ignorant politicians, who were most emphatically not “of us,” forced him and others like him to recognise the rights of dependents instead of trusting to their instinctive fitness to dispense benefits not as rights but as acts of grace. If England trusted to her aristocracy (to put the matter in a nutshell) all would be well with her in the future even as it had been in the past, but any attempt to curtail their splendours must inevitably detract from the prestige and magnificence of the Empire. . . . And he responded suitably to the obsequious salute of the professional, and remembered that the entire golf links were his property, and that the Club paid a merely nominal rental to him, just the tribute money of a penny which was due to Caesar.
For the next hour or two after her husband had left her, Lady Ashbridge occupied herself in the thoroughly lady-like pursuit of doing nothing whatever; she just existed in her comfortable chair, since Barbara might come any moment, and she would have to entertain her, which she frequently did unawares. But as Barbara continued not to come, she took up her perennial piece of needlework, feeling rather busy and pressed, and had hardly done so when her sister-in-law arrived.
She was preceded by an enormous stag-hound, who, having been shut up in her motor all the way from London, bounded delightedly, with the sense of young limbs released, on to the terrace, and made wild leaps in a circle round the horrified Petsy, who had just received a second saucerful of cream. Once he dashed in close, and with a single lick of his tongue swept the saucer dry of nutriment, and with hoarse barkings proceeded again to dance corybantically about, while Lady Ashbridge with faint cries of dismay waved her embroidery at him. Then, seeing his mistress coming out of the French window from the drawing-room, he bounded calf-like towards her, and Petsy, nearly sick with cream and horror, was gathered to Lady Ashbridge’s bosom.
“My dear Barbara,” she said, “how upsetting your dog is! Poor Petsy’s heart is beating terribly; she does not like dogs. But I am very pleased to see you, and I have given you the blue room.”
It was clearly suitable that Barbara Jerome should have a large dog, for both in mind and body she was on the large scale herself. She had a pleasant, high-coloured face, was very tall, enormously stout, and moved with great briskness and vigour. She had something to say on any subject that came on the board; and, what was less usual in these days of universal knowledge, there was invariably some point in what she said. She had, in the ordinary sense of the word, no manners at all, but essentially made up for this lack by her sincere and humourous kindliness. She saw with acute vividness the ludicrous side of everybody, herself included, and to her mind the arch-humourist of all was her brother, whom she was quite unable to take seriously. She dressed as if she had looted a milliner’s shop and had put on in a great hurry anything that came to hand. She towered over her sister-in-law as she kissed her, and Petsy, safe in her citadel, barked shrilly.
“My dear, which is the blue room?” she said. “I hope it is big enough for Og and me. Yes, that is Og, which is short for dog. He takes two mutton-chops for dinner, and a little something during the night if he feels disposed, because he is still growing. Tony drove down with me, and is in the car now. He would not come in for fear of seeing Robert, so I ventured to tell them to take him a cup of tea there, which he will drink with the blinds down, and then drive back to town again. He has been made American ambassador, by the way, and will go in to dinner before Robert. My dear, I can think of few things which Robert is less fitted to bear than that. However, we all have our crosses, even those of us who have our coronets also.”
Lady Ashbridge’s hospitable instincts asserted themselves. “But your husband must come in,” she said. “I will go and tell him. And Robert has gone to play golf.”
Barbara laughed.
“I am quite sure Tony won’t come in,” she said. “I promised him he shouldn’t, and he only drove down with me on the express stipulation that no risks were to be run about his seeing Robert. We must take no chances, so let him have his tea quietly in the motor and then drive away again. And who else is there? Anybody? Michael?”
“Michael comes this evening.”
“I am glad; I am particularly fond of Michael. Also he will play to us after dinner, and though I don’t know one note from another, it will relieve me of sitting in a stately circle watching Robert cheat at patience. I always find the evenings here rather trying; they remind me of being in church. I feel as if I were part of a corporate body, which leads to misplaced decorum. Ah! there is the sound of Tony’s retreating motor; his strategic movement has come off. And now give me some news, if you can get in a word. Dear me, there is Robert coming back across the lawn. What a mercy that Tony did not leave the motor. Robert always walks as if he was dancing a minuet. Look, there is Og imitating him! Or is he stalking him, thinking he is an enemy. Og, come here!”
She whistled shrilly on her fingers, and rose to greet her brother, whom Og was still menacing, as he advanced towards her with staccato steps. Barbara, however, got between Og and his prey, and threw her parasol at him.
“My dear, how are you?” she said. “And how did the golf go? And did you beat the professional?”
He suspected flippancy here, and became markedly dignified.
“An excellent match,” he said, “and Macpherson tells me I played a very sound game. I am delighted to see you, Barbara. And did Michael come down with you?”
“No. I drove from town. It saves time, but not expense, with your awful trains.”
“And you are well, and Mr. Jerome?” he asked. He always called his brother-in-law Mr. Jerome, to indicate the gulf between them. Barbara gave a little spurt of laughter.
“Yes, his excellency is quite well,” she said. “You must call him excellency now, my dear.”
“Indeed! That is a great step.”
“Considering that Tony began as an office-boy. How richly rewarding you are, my dear. And shan’t I make an odd ambassadress! I haven’t been to a Court since the dark ages, when I went to those beloved States. We will practise after dinner, dear, and you and Marion shall be the King and Queen, and I will try to walk backwards without tumbling on my head. You will like being the King, Robert. And then we will be ourselves again, all except Og, who shall be Tony and shall go out of the room before you.”
He gave his treble little giggle, for on the whole it answered better not to be dignified with Barbara, whenever he could remember not to be; and Lady Ashbridge, still nursing Petsy, threw a bombshell of the obvious to explode the conversation.
“Og has two mutton-chops for his dinner,” she said, “and he is growing s
till. Fancy!”
Lord Ashbridge took a refreshing glance at the broad stretch of country that all belonged to him.
“I am rather glad to have this opportunity of talking to you, my dear Barbara,” he said, “before Michael comes.”
“His train gets in half an hour before dinner” said Lady Ashbridge. “He has to change at Stoneborough.”
“Quite so. I heard from Michael this morning, saying that he has resigned his commission in the Guards, and is going to take up music seriously.”
Barbara gave a delighted exclamation.
“But how perfectly splendid!” she said. “Fancy a Comber doing anything original! Michael and I are the only Combers who ever have, since Combers ‘arose from out the azure main’ in the year one. I married an American; that’s something, though it’s not up to Michael!”
“That is not quite my view of it,” said he. “As for its being original, it would be original enough if Marion eloped with a Patagonian.”
Lady Ashbridge let fall her embroidery at this monstrous suggestion.
“You are talking very wildly, Robert,” she said, in a pained voice.
“My dear, get on with your sacred carpet,” said he. “I am talking to Barbara. I have already ascertained your — your lack of views on the subject. I was saying, Barbara, that mere originality is not a merit.”
“No, you never said that,” remarked Lady Ashbridge.
“I should have if you had allowed me to. And as for your saying that he has done it, Barbara, that is very wide of the mark, and I intend shall continue to be so.”
“Dear great Bashaw, that is just what you said to me when I told you I was going to marry his Excellency. But I did. And I think it is a glorious move on Michael’s part. It requires brain to find out what you like, and character to go and do it. Combers haven’t got brains as a rule, you see. If they ever had any, they have degenerated into conservative instincts.”