CHAPTER XVI
My dear Louise,—I have nearly finished Mr. Merchant’s portrait. I showed it to him yesterday for the first time, and it apparently “proves satisfactory,” so I shall very likely be here for weeks. He gives me two hours sitting every day, which, I am beginning to realize, is a remarkable thing for a business man to do. It is almost the first time in his life, except during the inevitable August, that he has not left his house at a quarter to nine every morning. But he has been ill, and I think that he intends, sooner or later, to retire from business and live away from town, as this is what they all aspire to. In the meantime he is only allowed to work for a few hours at a time, so he has taken the opportunity to have his portrait painted and so fill up the leisure which might otherwise hang heavy on his hands.
He went off this morning at eleven, and I worked on without him until luncheon. Then I was shown some more of the social machinery of Millport; that part of it which decides in what mood the fighting apparatus shall begin its day’s work—a very important matter, if you come to think of it. Mrs. Merchant had a party of women representing different sections of society, and, so far as I could judge, they did not seem to be working quite in unison. The only one whom I knew was Miss Darling, who is a great friend of Mrs. Merchant’s and comes to everything. There was also a fat, elderly thing, in a satin coat and skirt, plumed hat and boa, besides a prettier edition of Mrs. Merchant, dressed in tweeds, which are the uniform of the more distant suburbs and indicate the magic word “county”; and last of all, like a French squirrel in a hurry, murmuring some domestic apology, the wife of a professor at the University.
You know how, in any town which is given up to a University, even the bald-faced old women with hair like charwomen’s, who stamp through their social duties with the corsetless aplomb of the born moralizer, are recognized as forming a sort of aristocracy in keeping with the spirit of the place. But here all the academic flowers, good and bad alike, are looked upon as interlopers. I have heard many of the vieillesse dorée of Millport lump them together indiscriminately as “peculiar” and “too clever for us.” If I had my way I would make it criminal libel to apply the word “clever” to any persons but those who have been found guilty of attempted intelligence. The Romans are spoken of in history books as having brought the blessing of education to the untutored savages of ancient Britain. But I can imagine the snuffy look on the faces of the female aristocracy in woad when the high-browed matrons of Rome landed among them, armed with copy-books. You may see the same look spread over a party of Millport Druids and their wives when the University is mentioned.
I don’t think that everybody by nature likes being educated. Improvement is forced on some by others who have an inherent morbid craving for it, and when the victims have been compelled to accept it, they behave as the fox who was accidentally deprived of his tail behaved to his friends who had escaped the misfortune. The foxes of Millport are, one by one, losing their tails. The old-fashioned appendages of fat and fur no longer command general respect among the neighbours; yet the fashion dies hard. All the same, how pleasant a few little feathery tails, sewn with sequins, would be in Oxford or Cambridge, would they not? It is so tiresome when people insist on all trying to be one particular thing.
But to go on with the luncheon-party. The fat elderly fox was invited to lead the way to the dining-room, and she gave the impression that if she had not been asked to lead the way she would have led it of her own accord. She has such an expressive back; it seems to be waiting impatiently for other people to do right, yet almost hoping they won’t, so that she may have the pleasure of correcting them. Mrs. County followed next, with the good-natured politeness of a Prime Minister sent in to dinner behind a knight; the French squirrel smiled at us and went after them, and Miss Darling and I scuffled amiably in the doorway over Mrs. Merchant’s toes.
The hostess’s task was a difficult one, but she showed wonderful tact. She was conscious of having at her table two persons who represented the established authority of commerce and landed property (even if it is only a couple of fields and a carriage sweep for flies to drive up). Opposed to these were two others, one of whom (myself) belonged to a community whose wildness and eccentricity, it was rumoured, knew no bounds, while the other (from the University) was associated with certain unintelligible heathens who were said to “poke fun” at the idols of Mrs. Bushytail, Mrs. County and herself. Miss Darling, she knew, could be relied upon to interpose her soft form as a cushion if anybody took to throwing anything: still it was anxious work.
“The trees are quite losing their leaves, are they not?” began Miss Darling, unfolding her napkin. It was like the tuning up of the violins before the rise of the curtain. I tried to tune up too, but no words would come. Do you remember how Dick told us that he sometimes could think of nothing to say but, “Do you wear drawers in autumn?” The trees reminded me of it.
“Yes, aren’t they, dreadfully?” said Mrs. Merchant. “It is quite sad.” We had some more tuning up, Mrs. Bushytail (I still refuse to give you their real names because you and Bessie are too unreliable) taking the part of the drum.
“Ahem! B-r-r-r-r-r-um!” she coughed. “It is quite impossible to count on the seasons at all in these days. They are all at sixes and sevens. Such warm weather at this time of year cannot be healthy.”
Mrs. County gave us a few languid runs on the French horn, foreshadowing her leit motif, the West Cheddar pack, with whom she hunts now and then. She said that frosts were of no value to anyone except plumbers, and that now everybody found Christmas such a bore, it seemed hardly worth while having snow and all that sort of thing, except that it made an occupation for the poor wretches in town to shovel it away. It kept them in the fresh air instead of stewing at home all day.
Perhaps Mrs. Merchant thought that the tuning up was getting too discordant, for she collected us with her eye and gave out the hymn of Literature. You see, literature is such a good subject, because it can never get hackneyed (with so many books coming out each year), and everybody is sure to have read something. Sooner or later Mrs. Bushytail’s voice makes itself heard above any babel. She had the upper hand of us in a moment, and discussion lay dead beside her plate. One would suppose that the raison d’être of human speech was to further exchanges of opinion, but Mrs. Bushytail pursues this intention with relentless ferocity as if were moral vermin.
“No interesting books are written nowadays,” she said, giving a final throttle to our already extinct debate. “They seem all nonsense about heredity and character, and things of that sort. That doesn’t make evil any better. If people had larger families there would be bound to be some good children among the lot, and the others would soon find their level.”
Miss Darling interposed her velvet heart between further severity and us.
“You ought to read some of George Birmingham’s books,” she said bravely. “They are so amusing, and not a bit morbid.”
“I have read one,” flourished the old lady, “and I never met with greater nonsense in my life. Most impossible rubbish. I know numbers of Irish people, and they are indolent and dreamy, with an immense respect for England. I never heard of any of them poking fun at our Members of Parliament, and that sort of thing, and they were all far too idle to think of going on ridiculous adventures. What do you think, Mrs. Cambridge? Your husband is an authority on literature I am told.” This was no more an invitation to discussion than is the spider’s lure the bidding of a genial host, but Mrs. Cambridge is far from ingenuous.
“We both liked some of them,” she said quietly, “but then my husband is Irish, you know, so you must excuse him.”
Mrs. Bushytail scowled at her and remarked, “Humph! I suppose there are different grades of society in Ireland, just as there are here. Are any of you going to the Mayor’s reception?”
“I suppose I ought to go,” said Mrs. County wearily, “but I declined; they are such dreadful people!”
Mrs. Merchant said that she was going, and asked me if I would like to go with her. She added, poor dear, that she was “afraid I should not find it very lively—not like my Bohemian parties with all the great Academicians, and clever people....”
Dear Louise, why does not a merciful Providence, whose will it is to fashion us in such humorous variety, put directions for use on our backs, or send a bottle of medium with us by which we could communicate with one another? Ought I to have replied, “Dear Mrs. Merchant, I will make the best of your friends, and when you come to stay with me I will try to collect some people with double chins and dictatorial manners who know all about boiling soap and making beef-juice”? I should take it for granted that she would like my friends, or, at all events, that she would find something interesting in them, and perhaps enjoy a change from her own species. So why is it to be supposed that I cannot live without my own form of shop?
“Who is the present Mayor?” asked Mrs. Cambridge. “He came to the University the other day, and I thought he looked rather a strange person to have at the head of a big city like this.”
“Not a gentleman, of course,” pronounced our Dictator, helping herself to another lot of Pêches Melba (the vigorous old creature had cherry-brandy with it too), “but a very capable man. He is on our hospital committee and he puts his foot down on the younger men in a very admirable way; never wastes too much time on discussion. A splendid financier; doesn’t allow improvements to be carried beyond a reasonable distance.”
“He has dreadful manners, though,” sighed Mrs. County, who eats nothing but vegetables, and refuses sweets because she says they spoil her form at badminton. “The Duchess presided at the annual meeting of our Waifs and Strays at the Town Hall the other day, and she said that the Mayor made his speech with his foot on her muff.”
“Then she shouldn’t have left her muff on the floor,” replied Mrs. Bushytail. “The Duchess was an old friend of mine when you were in the schoolroom, my dear, and I shall tell her that she ought to take better care of her things.”
“Lady Seelby said the Town Hall smelt very strong of onions,” Mrs. County ventured again with her eyes half shut.
I was pleased at things going like this—maliciously pleased. Instead of the two suspected firebrands setting up a conflagration in the camp, there were the two representatives of law and order (the town and the county) sparring together over the personal habits of the chief magistrate; while the heathen and the anarchist sat with milk and honey on their lips, ready to pour balm on the wounds of the combatants!
All the same, I think that Mrs. Cambridge and I would have let them lose a little more blood before we actually interfered; but Miss Darling flew to the rescue and stopped a second round by saying that the dear Mayoress had been so sweet with the children on Empire Day, and that no one knew what a powerful force the Mayor was among the inebriates of the city. She hoped it was not going to rain: it was looking rather threatening. But what a lovely colour the leaves were at this time of year. It seemed so sad that they must all come off.
“We will drive you to the reception, dear,” said Mrs. Merchant gratefully; and then we all rose, and I escaped into the garden to have a cigarette behind the lobelias.
When Mrs. Bushytail had driven off in a robust brougham, her two obese horses guided by an apoplectic old man, and Mrs. County had departed on foot to whatever cross-bred residence her husband’s particular brand of ketchup provides for her, Miss Darling, Mrs. Cambridge (who was also going to the reception), Mrs. Merchant and I spread ourselves comfortably in the Rolls-Royce, and were driven to the Town Hall.
Numbers of people were in the great hall, waiting to meet their friends. There was a large sprinkling of Bushytails and Countys, but most of the crowd were of another type, which I have not met before. I took them to be honest tradesmen of the oblong and erratic shapes which seem inseparable from commerce. But several of them turned out to belong to the best society, and the dumpiest one of all, dressed in the most creased and stained frock-coat and the worst trousers, was Mrs. Cambridge’s husband. I have sometimes wondered why both commercial and professional men are often so incurably slovenly, and I begin to think it must be owing to some instinct of self-preservation which leads them to shun the sort of women who would look after their clothes by force. To make a busy man look tidy when he does not want to, it must be necessary to worry him all day, and no doubt women who have the firmness and pertinacity for the task are recognized by naturally baggy men in the same way as the presence of a cat is scented from afar by even the most absent-minded mouse.
At the top of a wide staircase decorated with palms we found the Mayor and Mayoress. Bessie would have called them “fairies,” but you know how inappropriate her descriptions are. Anything from a round of beef to a rainbow may be a fairy if it excites her imagination. But, indeed, they were wonderful! Have you ever seen a mayor? If not, take a stockbroker and stuff him quite tight until he creaks. Dress half of him for a wedding—not forgetting spats—and the other half for “standing at the plate” outside a Scotch kirk (he wears a white tie and a frock-coat). Dab bits of fur on his eyebrows, but not on his head—you leave that quite bare—and then hang a heavy locket and chain round his neck. For a mayoress, take a gentle, timid old lady out of a woolshop. Dress her regardless of expense, and frighten her to death. Then hang another locket and chain round her neck, and there you are!
They were both shaking hands with the rapidity of an experienced cook shelling peas. Each of us was emptied out of our identity and cast into the room beyond, pressed on by the growing mass of those who had fulfilled the object for which they came. By and by we reached the edge of the heap and looked about us. Mrs. Bushytail and Mrs. County, each the centre of a group, were dispensing the milk of their several words with reckless liberality. Presently Mrs. Merchant drew me to a small table covered with plates of bread-and-butter, mixed biscuits, and wedding cake. Then she artfully picked two or three of her friends out of the different groups, and formed them into a small private tea-party. A maid-servant brought us tea—so strong that it tasted like beef-juice and tobacco mixed—and while we were drinking it I saw for the first time that a really nice girl was making herself frightfully hot by singing at the top of her voice. None of us had realized what was happening, only it seemed to me that it was becoming more and more difficult to make oneself heard.
Mrs. Bushytail came to our table, and there were also a German and his wife, both of whom I liked very much. It was he who first noticed the poor girl singing.
“Ach, was!” he said, “der is music, and we knew not. Let us listen.” We all listened hard, but all I could hear was, “blows—part—rose—heart—” and Mrs. Merchant said, “That lovely thing! I always like it so much.”
“She has a goot voice,” said the German lady, “but not str-r-r-ong.”
“Absurd!” Mrs. Bushytail informed us. “They should have had a man to do it.”
The noise was fearful. You know what a party is always like—a yapping and drumming that never stops, and every one stuffing something down holes in their faces—you don’t notice this effect unless everybody is eating at once—and the room began to smell like an oven full of mice.
Mrs. Merchant asked whether I had noticed the portraits hung round the room. She added that they were considered very good.
“They are all Mayors, hein?” said the German, peering through his spectacles.
“Kings,” Mrs. Bushytail explained angrily, “all kings. We don’t keep the Mayors here; they are in the Council Chamber.”
“So we keep our Kaisers,” said the German’s kind wife. “You are patriotic too? That is good. They look very nice standing so.” She puffed out her chest, and thrust a gloved hand into the front of her mantle.
“Were the pictures presented to the Town Hall?” Mrs. Cambridge inquired.
“No,” said Mrs. Bushytail, with reasonable pride, “the city paid for them; immense sums. They are a great deal larger than any at the Guildhall. What do you think of them?” she asked me. “You ought to be a judge of art.”
“I think they are beautiful,” I said. “They make me feel, for the first time in my life, that I should like to be married to a king. I love splash and rolls of parchment and thunderstorms. I quite see what you like about them.”
I do not know whether I meant to tease her or not. The pictures are just what I said, but I think that if I had liked her better I might have said the same thing in a different way. Anyhow, it did not do at all. My German made it worse by saying critically, “Yes, that is so, you have it quite. Now in Germany we care for the skill, for the worthiness of the picture. We make, perhaps, too much of it. And you, you care more for the sentiment—the ‘splash’ you call it? What the common people shall understand. Very good. You are quaite r-raight.”
Mercifully the fact that he had not been introduced to Mrs. Bushytail prevented her from using other weapons of destruction than a look, which glanced off his spectacles as harmlessly as summer lightning. But Mrs. Merchant was clearly uneasy, scenting trouble, but uncertain in which direction it lay. She therefore slipped away, taking me with her. Heavens! the dressing gong! and I was just going to tell you something more amusing about the Cambridges. I will write again.