CHAPTER VII
Anne presented herself that evening in her husband"s study with a sheaf of visiting cards in her hand. She thought it possible that she might obtain further illumination by confronting him with them.
"Walter," said she "all these people have called on us. What do you think I"d better do?"
"I think you"ll have to call on them some day."
"All of them?"
He took the cards from her and glanced through them.
"Let me see. Charlie Gorst--we must be nice to him."
"Is _he_ nice?"
"I think so. Edie"s very fond of him."
"And Mrs. Lawson Hannay?"
"Oh, you must call on her."
"Shall I like her."
"Possibly. You needn"t see much of her if you don"t."
"Is it easy to drop people?"
"Perfectly."
"And what about Mrs. Ransome?"
He frowned. "Has _she_ called?"
"Yes."
"I"ll find out when she"s not at home and let you know. You can call then."
A fourth card he tore up and threw into the fire.
"Some people have confounded impudence."
Anne went away confirmed in her impression that Walter had a large acquaintance to whom he was by no means anxious to introduce his wife. He might, she reflected, have incurred the connection through the misfortune of his business. The life of a ship-owner in Scale was fruitful in these embarra.s.sments.
But if these disagreeable people indeed belonged to the period she mentally referred to as his "past," she was not going to tolerate them for an instant. He must give them up.
She judged that he was prepared for so much renunciation. She hoped that he would, in time, adopt her friends in place of them. He was inclined, after all, to respond amicably to Mrs. Eliott"s overtures.
Anne wondered how he would comport himself at the dinner on the fifteenth. She owned to a little uneasiness at the prospect. Would he indeed yield to the sobering influence of Thurston Square? Or would he try to impose his alien, his startling personality on it? She had begun to realise how alien he was, how startling he could be. Would he sit silent, uninspiring and uninspired? Or would unholy and untimely inspirations seize him? Would he scatter to the winds all conversational conventions, and riot in his own unintelligible frivolity? What would he say to Mrs. Eliott, that priestess of the pure intellect? Was there anything in him that could be touched by her uncoloured, immaterial charm? Would he see that Mr. Eliott"s density was only a mask? Would the Gardners bore him? And would he like Miss Proctor? And if he didn"t, would he show it, and how? His mere manners would, she knew, be irreproachable, but she had no security for his spiritual behaviour. He impressed her as a creature uncaught, undriven; graceful, but immeasurably capricious.
The event surprised her.
For the first five minutes or so, it seemed that Mrs. Eliott and her dinner were doomed to failure; so terrible a cloud had fallen on her, and on her husband, and on every guest. Never had the poor priestess appeared so abstract an essence, so dream-driven and so forlorn. Never had Mr.
Eliott worn his mask to so extinguishing a purpose. Never had Miss Proctor been so obtrusively superior, Mrs. Gardner so silent, Dr. Gardner so vague. They were all, she could see, possessed, crushed down by their consciousness of Majendie and his monstrous past.
Into this circle, thus stupefied by his presence, Majendie burst with the courage of unconsciousness.
Mr. Eliott had started a topic, the conduct of Sir Rigley Barker, the ex-member for Scale. A heavy ball of conversation began to roll slowly up and down the table, between Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. Majendie s.n.a.t.c.hed at it deftly as it pa.s.sed him, caught it, turned it in his hands till it grew golden under his touch. Mr. Eliott thought there wasn"t much in poor Sir Rigley.
"Not much in him?" said Majendie. "How about that immortal speech of his?"
"Immortal--" echoed Mr. Eliott dubiously.
"Indestructible! The poor fellow couldn"t end it. It simply coiled and uncoiled itself and went off, in great loops, into eternity. It began in all innocence--naturally, as it was his maiden speech--when he rose, don"t you know, to propose an amendment. I take it that speech was so maidenly that it shrank from anything in the nature of a proposal. It went on in a terrified manner, coyly considering and hesitating--till it cleared the House. And he was awfully pleased when we congratulated him on his "maidenly reserve.""
"How did he ever get elected?" said Miss Proctor.
"My dear lady, it was a glorious stroke of the Opposition. They withdrew their candidate when he contested the election. Of course, they felt that he"d only got to make a speech and there"d be a dissolution. You simply saw Parliament melting away before him. If he"d gone on he"d have worn out the British const.i.tution."
Dr. Gardner looked at Mrs. Gardner and their eyes brightened, as Majendie continued to unfold the amazing resources of Sir Rigley. He breathed on the ex-member like a G.o.d, and played with him like a juggler; he tossed him into the air and kept him there, a radiant, unsubstantial thing. The ex-member disported himself before Mrs. Eliott"s dinner-party as he had never disported himself in Parliament. Majendie had given him a career, endowed him with glorious attributes. The ex-member, as a topic, developed capacities unsuspected in him before. The others followed his flight breathless, afraid to touch him lest he should break and disappear under their hands.
By the time Majendie had done with him, the ex-member had entered on a joyous immortality in Scale.
And in the middle of it all Anne laughed.
Miss Proctor was the first to recover from the surprise of it. She leaned across the table with a liberal and vivid smile, opulent in appreciation.
"Well, Mr. Majendie, Sir Rigley ought to be grateful to you. If ever there was a dull subject dead and buried, it was he, poor man. And now the difficulty will be to forget him."
"I don"t think," said Majendie gravely, "I shall forget him myself in a hurry."
Oh no, he never would forget Sir Rigley. He didn"t want to forget him. He would be grateful to him as long as he lived. He had made Anne laugh. A girl"s laugh, young and deliciously uncontrollable, springing from the immortal heart of joy.
It was the first time he had heard her laugh so. He didn"t know she could do it. The hope of hearing her do it again would give him something to live for. He would win her yet if he could make her laugh.
Anne was more surprised than anybody, at him and at herself. It was a revelation to her, his cleverness, his brilliant social gift. She was only intimate with one kind of cleverness, the kind that feeds itself on lectures and on books. She had not thought of Walter as clever. She had only thought of him as good. That one quality of goodness had swallowed up the rest.
Miss Proctor took possession of her where she sat in the drawing-room, as it were amid the scattered fragments of the ex-member (he still, among the ladies, emitted a feeble radiance). Miss Proctor had always approved of Anne. If Anne had no metropolitan distinction to speak of, she was not in the least provincial. She was something by herself, superior and rare.
A little inclined to take herself too seriously, perhaps; but her husband"s admirable levity would, no doubt, improve her.
"My dear," said Miss Proctor, "I congratulate you. He"s brilliant, he"s charming, he"s unique. Why didn"t we know of him before? Where has he been hiding his talents all this time?"
(A talent that had not bloomed in Thurston Square was a talent pitiably wasted.)
Anne smiled a blanched, perfunctory smile. Ah, where had he been hiding himself, indeed?
Miss Proctor stood central, radiating the rich afterglow of her appreciation. Her gaze was a little critical of her friends" faces, as if she were measuring the effect, on a provincial audience, of Majendie"s conversational technique. She swept down to a seat beside her hostess.