Barely twelve hours earlier he had been mincing among the elect and the select and the intellectual and the poetic and the aristocratic; among the lah-di-dah and Kensingtonian accents; among rouged lips and blue hose and fixed simperings; in the centre of the universe. And he had conducted himself with considerable skill accordingly. n.o.body, on the previous night, could have guessed from the cut of his fancy waistcoat, or the judiciousness of his responses to remarks about verse, that his wife often wore a white ap.r.o.n, or that his mother was--the woman she was! He had not unskillfully caught many of the tricks of that metropolitan environment. But now they all fell away from him, and he was just Edward Henry--nay, he was almost the old Denry again.
"Who chose this mutton?" he asked as he bent over the juicy and rich joint and cut therefrom exquisite thick slices with a carving-knife like a razor.
"_I_ did, if ye want to know," said his mother. "Anything amiss with it?" she challenged.
"No. It"s fine."
"Yes," said she, "I"m wondering whether you get aught as good as that in these grand hotels, as you call "em."
"We don"t," said Edward Henry. First, it was true, and secondly he was anxious to be propitiatory, for he had a plan to further.
He looked at his wife. She was not talkative, but she had received him in the hall with every detail of affection, if a little absent-mindedly, owing to the state of the house. She had not been caustic, like his mother, about this male incursion into spring-cleaning. She had not informed the surrounding air that she failed to understand why them as were in London couldn"t stop in London for a bit, as his mother had.
Moreover, though the spring-cleaning fully ent.i.tled her to wear a white ap.r.o.n at meals, she was not wearing a white ap.r.o.n, which was a sign to him that she still loved him enough to want to please him. On the whole, he was fairly optimistic about his plan of salvation.
Nevertheless, it was not until nearly the end of the meal, when one of his mother"s ample pies was being consumed, that he began to try to broach it.
"Nell," he said, "I suppose you wouldn"t care to come to London with me?"
"Oh!" she answered smiling, a smile of a peculiar quality. It was astonishing how that simple woman could put just one-tenth of one per cent. of irony into a good-natured smile. "What"s the meaning of this?"
Then she flushed. The flush touched Edward Henry in an extraordinary manner.
("To think," he reflected, incredulously, "that only last night I was talking in the dark to Elsie April--and here I am now!" And he remembered the glory of Elsie"s frock, and her thrilling voice in the gloom, and that pose of hers as she leaned dimly forward.)
"Well," he said aloud, as naturally as he could. "That theatre"s beginning to get up on its hind legs now, and I should like you to see it."
A difficult pa.s.s for him, as regards his mother! This was the first time he had ever overtly spoken of the theatre in his mother"s presence. In the best bedroom he had talked of it, but even there with a certain self-consciousness and false casualness. Now his mother stared straight in front of her with an expression of which she alone among human beings had the monopoly.
"I should like to," said Nellie generously.
"Well," said he, "I"ve got to go back to town to-morrow. Wilt come with me, la.s.s?"
"Don"t be silly, Edward Henry," said she. "How can I leave Mother in the middle of all this spring-cleaning?"
"You needn"t leave Mother. We"ll take her too," said Edward Henry lightly.
"You won"t!" observed Mrs. Machin.
"I _have_ to go to-morrow, Nell," said Edward Henry. "And I was thinking you might as well come with me. It will be a change for you."
(He said to himself: "And not only have I to go to-morrow, but you absolutely must come with me, my girl. That"s the one thing to do.")
"It would be a change for me," Nellie agreed. She was beyond doubt flattered and calmly pleased. "But I can"t possibly come to-morrow. You can see that for yourself, dear."
"No, I can"t!" he cried impatiently. "What does it matter? Mother"ll be here. The kids"ll be all right. After all, spring cleaning isn"t the day of judgment."
"Edward Henry," said his mother, cutting in between them like a thin blade, "I wish you wouldn"t be blasphemous. London"s London, and Bursley"s Bursley." She had finished.
"It"s quite out of the question for me to come to-morrow, dear. I must have notice. I really must."
And Edward Henry saw with alarm that Nellie had made up her mind, and that the flattered calm pleasure in his suggestion had faded from her face.
"Oh, dash these domesticated women!" he thought, and shortly afterwards departed, brooding, to the offices of the Thrift Club.
VIII.
He timed his return with exact.i.tude, and, going straight up-stairs to the chamber known indifferently as "Maisie"s room" or "nurse"s room,"
sure enough he found the three children there alone! They were fed, washed, night-gowned, and even dressing-gowned; and this was the hour when, while Nurse repaired the consequences of their revolutionary conduct in the bathroom and other places, they were left to themselves.
Robert lay on the hearth-rug, the insteps of his soft, pink feet rubbing idly against the pile of the rug, his elbows digging into the pile, his chin on his fists, and a book perpendicularly beneath his eyes. Ralph, careless adventurer rather than student, had climbed to the glittering bra.s.s rail of Maisie"s new bedstead, and was thereon imitating a recently seen circus performance. Maisie, in the bed according to regulation, and lying on the flat of her back, was singing nonchalantly to the ceiling. Carlo, unaware that at that moment he might have been a buried corpse but for the benignancy of Providence in his behalf, was feeling sympathetic towards himself because he was slightly bored.
"h.e.l.lo, kids!" Edward Henry greeted them. As he had seen them before midday dinner, the more formal ceremonies of salutation after absence, so hateful to the Five Towns temperament, were happily over and done with.
Robert turned his head slightly, inspected his father with a judicial detachment that hardly escaped the inimical, and then resumed his book.
("No one would think," said Edward Henry to himself, "that the person who has just entered this room is the most enterprising and enlightened of West End theatrical managers.")
""Ello, Father!" shrilled Ralph. "Come and help me to stand on this wire rope."
"It isn"t a wire rope," said Robert from the hearth-rug, without stirring. "It"s a bra.s.s rail."
"Yes, it is a wire rope, because I can make it bend," Ralph retorted, b.u.mping down on the thing. "Anyhow, it"s going to be a wire rope."
Maisie simply stuck several fingers into her mouth, shifted to one side, and smiled at her father in a style of heavenly and mischievous flirtatiousness.
"Well, Robert, what are you reading?" Edward Henry inquired in his best fatherly manner, half authoritative and half humorous, while he formed part of the staff of Ralph"s circus.
"I"m not reading, I"m learning my spellings," replied Robert.
Edward Henry, knowing that the discipline of filial politeness must be maintained, said: ""Learning my spellings"--what?"
"Learning my spellings, Father," Robert consented to say, but with a savage air of giving way to the unreasonable demands of affected fools.
Why indeed should it be necessary in conversation always to end one"s sentence with the name or t.i.tle of the person addressed?
"Well, would you like to go to London with me?"
"When?" the boy demanded cautiously. He still did not move, but his ears seemed to p.r.i.c.k up.
"To-morrow?"
"No thanks ... Father." His ears ceased their activity.
"No? Why not?"
"Because there"s a spellings examination on Friday, and I"m going to be top boy."
It was a fact that the infant (whose programmes were always somehow arranged in advance, and were in his mind absolutely unalterable) could spell the most obstreperous words. Quite conceivably he could spell better than his father, who still showed an occasional tendency to write "separate" with three e"s and only one a.