"_No_ b.u.t.ter costs them three shillings a pound," said she.
"Not in London," said he. "They have it from Paris."
"And do you believe that?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Well, I don"t. Any one that pays more than one-and-nine a pound for b.u.t.ter, _at the most_, is a fool, if you"ll excuse me saying the word.
Not but what this is good b.u.t.ter. I couldn"t get as good in Putney for less than eighteen pence."
She made him feel like a child who has a great deal to pick up from a kindly but firm sister.
"No, thank you," she said, a little dryly, to the waiter who proffered a further supply of chip potatoes.
"Now don"t say they"re cold," Priam laughed.
And she laughed also. "Shall I tell you one thing that puts me against these restaurants?" she went on. "It"s the feeling you have that you don"t know where the food"s _been_. When you"ve got your kitchen close to your dining-room and you can keep an eye on the stuff from the moment the cart brings it, well, then, you do know a bit where you are. And you can have your dishes served hot. It stands to reason," she said. "Where is the kitchen here?"
"Somewhere down below," he replied apologetically.
"A cellar kitchen!" she exclaimed. "Why, in Putney they simply can"t let houses with cellar kitchens. No! No restaurants and hotels for me--not for _choice_--that is, regularly."
"Still," he said, with a judicial air, "hotels are very convenient."
"Are they?" she said, meaning, "Prove it."
"For instance, here, there"s a telephone in every room."
"You don"t mean in the bedrooms?"
"Yes, in every bedroom."
"Well," she said, "you wouldn"t catch me having a telephone in my bedroom. I should never sleep if I knew there was a telephone in the room! Fancy being forced to telephone every time you want--well! I And how is one to know who there is at the other end of the telephone? No, I don"t like that. All that"s all very well for gentlemen that haven"t been used to what I call _com_fort in a way of speaking. But----"
He saw that if he persisted, nothing soon would be left of that n.o.ble pile, the Grand Babylon Hotel, save a heap of ruins. And, further, she genuinely did cause him to feel that throughout his career he had always missed the very best things of life, through being an uncherished, ingenuous, easily satisfied man. A new sensation for him! For if any male in Europe believed in his own capacity to make others make him comfortable Priam Farll was that male.
"I"ve never been in Putney," he ventured, on a new track.
_Difficulty of Truth-telling_
As she informed him, with an ungrudging particularity, about Putney, and her life at Putney, there gradually arose in his brain a vision of a kind of existence such as he had never encountered. Putney had clearly the advantages of a residential town in a magnificent situation. It lay on the slope of a hill whose foot was washed by a glorious stream ent.i.tled the Thames, its breast covered with picturesque barges and ornamental rowing boats; an arched bridge spanned this stream, and you went over the bridge in milk-white omnibuses to London. Putney had a street of handsome shops, a purely business street; no one slept there now because of the noise of motors; at eventide the street glittered in its own splendours. There were theatre, music-hall, a.s.sembly-rooms, concert hall, market, brewery, library, and an afternoon tea shop exactly like Regent Street (not that Mrs. Challice cared for their alleged China tea); also churches and chapels; and Barnes Common if you walked one way, and Wimbledon Common if you walked another. Mrs.
Challice lived in Werter Road, Werter Road starting conveniently at the corner of the High Street where the fish-shop was--an establishment where authentic sole was always obtainable, though it was advisable not to buy it on Monday mornings, of course. Putney was a place where you lived unvexed, untroubled. You had your little house, and your furniture, and your ability to look after yourself at all ends, and your knowledge of the prices of everything, and your deep knowledge of human nature, and your experienced forgivingness towards human frailties. You did not keep a servant, because servants were so complicated, and because they could do nothing whatever as well as you could do it yourself. You had a charwoman when you felt idle or when you chose to put the house into the back-yard for an airing. With the charwoman, a pair of gloves for coa.r.s.er work, and gas stoves, you "made naught" of domestic labour. You were never worried by ambitions, or by envy, or by the desire to know precisely what the wealthy did and to do likewise.
You read when you were not more amusingly occupied, preferring ill.u.s.trated papers and magazines. You did not traffic with art to any appreciable extent, and you never dreamed of letting it keep you awake at night. You were rich, for the reason that you spent less than you received. You never speculated about the ultimate causes of things, or puzzled yourself concerning the possible developments of society in the next hundred years. When you saw a poor old creature in the street you bought a box of matches off the poor old creature. The social phenomenon which chiefly roused you to just anger was the spectacle of wealthy people making money and so taking the bread out of the mouths of people who needed It. The only apparent blots on existence at Putney were the noise and danger of the High Street, the dearth of reliable laundries, the manners of a middle-aged lady engaged at the post office (Mrs.
Challice liked the other ladies in the post office), and the absence of a suitable man in the house.
Existence at Putney seemed to Priam Farll to approach the Utopian. It seemed to breathe of romance--the romance of common sense and kindliness and simplicity. It made his own existence to that day appear a futile and unhappy striving after the impossible. Art? What was it? What did it lead to? He was sick of art, and sick of all the forms of activity to which he had hitherto been accustomed and which he had mistaken for life itself.
One little home, fixed and stable, rendered foolish the whole concourse of European hotels.
"I suppose you won"t be staying here long," demanded Mrs. Challice.
"Oh no!" he said. "I shall decide something."
"Shall you take another place?" she inquired.
"Another place?"
"Yes." Her smile was excessively persuasive and inviting.
"I don"t know," he said diffidently.
"You must have put a good bit by," she said, still with the same smile.
"Or perhaps you haven"t. Saving"s a matter of chance. That"s what I always do say. It just depends how you begin. It"s a habit. I"d never really blame anybody for not saving. And men----!" She seemed to wish to indicate that men were specially to be excused if they did not save.
She had a large mind: that was sure. She understood--things, and human nature in particular. She was not one of those creatures that a man meets with sometimes--creatures who are for ever on the watch to pounce, and who are incapable of making allowances for any male frailty--smooth, smiling creatures, with thin lips, hair a little scanty at the front, and a quietly omniscient "don"t-tell-_me_" tone. Mrs. Alice Challice had a mouth as wide as her ideas, and a full underlip. She was a woman who, as it were, ran out to meet you when you started to cross the dangerous roadway which separates the two s.e.xes. She comprehended because she wanted to comprehend. And when she could not comprehend she would deceive herself that she did: which amounts to the equivalent.
She was a living proof that in her s.e.x social distinctions do not effectively count. Nothing counted where she was concerned, except a distinction far more profound than any social distinction--the historic distinction between Adam and Eve. She was balm to Priam Farll. She might have been equally balm to King David, Uriah the Hitt.i.te, Socrates, Rousseau, Lord Byron, Heine, or Charlie Peace. She would have understood them all. They would all have been ready to cushion themselves on her comfortableness. Was she a lady? Pish! She was a woman.
Her temperament drew Priam Farll like an electrified magnet. To wander about freely in that roomy sympathy of hers seemed to him to be the supreme reward of experience. It seemed like the good inn after the bleak high-road, the oasis after the sandstorm, shade after glare, the dressing after the wound, sleep after insomnia, surcease from unspeakable torture. He wanted, in a word, to tell her everything, because she would not demand any difficult explanations. She had given him an opening, in her mention of savings. In reply to her suggestion, "You must have put a good bit by," he could casually answer:
"Yes, a hundred and forty thousand pounds."
And that would lead by natural stages to a complete revealing of the fix in which he was. In five minutes he would have confided to her the princ.i.p.al details, and she would have understood, and then he could describe his agonizing and humiliating half-hour in the Abbey, and she would pour her magic oil on that dreadful abrasion of his sensitiveness.
And he would be healed of his hurts, and they would settle between them what he ought to do.
He regarded her as his refuge, as fate"s generous compensation to him for the loss of Henry Leek (whose remains now rested in the National Valhalla).
Only, it would be necessary to begin the explanation, so that one thing might by natural stages lead to another. On reflection, it appeared rather abrupt to say:
"Yes, a hundred and forty thousand pounds."
The sum was too absurdly high (though correct). The mischief was that, unless the sum did strike her as absurdly high, it could not possibly lead by a natural stage to the remainder of the explanation.
He must contrive another path. For instance--
"There"s been a mistake about the so-called death of Priam Farll."
"A mistake!" she would exclaim, all ears and eyes.
Then he would say--
"Yes. Priam Farll isn"t really dead. It"s his valet that"s dead."
Whereupon she would burst out--
"But _you_ were his valet!"