Mammon and Co Part 20

"That's better. Well, Toby, I want you--I really want you--to have a real profession. What is the use of your being secretary to your cousin?

I don't believe you could say the names of the men in the Cabinet, and, as you once told me yourself, all you ever do there is to play stump-cricket in the secretary's room."

"You should have warned me that whatever I said would be used against me," said the injured Toby. "But I saw after the flowers in Hyde Park last year."

"The work of a life-time," said Lily. "I wonder they don't offer you a peerage."

"You see, I'm not a brewer," said Toby.

"Beer, beerage--a very poor joke, Toby."

"Very poor, and who made it? Besides, I think you are being sarcastic about the flowers in Hyde Park. If there's one thing I hate," said Toby violently, "it is cheap sarcasm."

"Who wouldn't be sarcastic when a great tousle-headed, able-bodied, freckle-faced scion of the aristocracy tells one that he is employed--employed, mark you--in looking after the flowers in Hyde Park?" asked Lily, with some warmth. "Why, you didn't even water them!"

"I did the organization, the head work of the thing," said Toby. "That's the rub."

"Bos.h.!.+"

"Lily, you are really very vulgar and common in your language sometimes," said Toby. "I have often meant to speak to you about it; it makes me very unhappy."

"Indeed! Try and cheer up. But really, Toby, and quite seriously, I wish you would settle to do something; I don't care what. Go into the Foreign Office."

"Languages," said Toby; "I don't know any."

"Or some other office, or buy a farm, and work it properly, and try to make it pay. Give your mind seriously to something. I hate a loafer.

Besides, a profession seems to me the greatest luxury in the world."

"Plain folk like me don't care for luxuries," said Toby. "I'm not like Kit. Kit is perfectly happy without the necessaries of life, provided she has the luxuries."

This diversion was more successful. Lily was silent a moment.

"Toby, I'm afraid I don't like your sister-in-law," she said at length.

Toby plunged with fervour into the new topic.

"Oh, there you make a great mistake," he said. "I allow Kit is not exactly a copy-book-virtue person, but--well, she's clever and amusing, and she is never a bore."

"I don't trust her."

"There, again, you make a mistake. I don't say that everybody should trust her, but I am sure she would never do a shabby thing to you or me, or----"

"Or?" said Lily, with the straightforwardness which Kit labelled "uncomfortable."

"Or anybody she really liked," said Toby. "Besides, Lily, I owe her something; she brought us together. As I have told you, she simply insisted on introducing me, though I didn't want to be introduced at all."

Lily made the sound which is usually written "pshaw!"

"As if we shouldn't have met!" she said. "Toby, our meeting was in better hands than hers."

"Well, she hurried the better hands up," said Toby, "and I am grateful for that. If it had not been for her, we should not have been introduced at that dance at the Hungarians, and I shouldn't probably have dined at Park Lane the night after; I should have gone to the Palace instead, so there would have been one, perhaps two, evenings wasted."

"Well, I'll make an effort to like her more," said Lily.

"Oh, but that's no manner of use," said Toby. "You may hold your breath, and shut your eyes, and try with both hands, and never get a yard nearer liking anybody for all your trying. And it's the same with disliking."

"Do you dislike anyone, Toby?" asked Lily, with a touch of wistfulness, for Toby's habit of universal friendliness always seemed to her extremely enviable.

Toby considered a moment.

"Yes," he said.

"Who is that?"

"Ted Comber," said Toby.

Lily drew her brows together. Toby's promptness in singling out this one person seemed hard to reconcile with his wide forbearance.

"Now why?" she asked. "Tell me exactly why."

"He ain't a man," said Toby gruffly. "Surely, Lily, we can talk about something pleasanter."

"Yes, I'm sure we can," she replied fervently. "I quite share your view.

Oh, Toby, promise me something!"

"All right," said Toby, taken off his guard.

"Hurrah! that you will instantly get a profession of some sort. Dear Toby, how nice of you! There's the gong, and I'm simply ravenous."

Toby got up rather stiffly.

"If you consider that fair," he remarked, "I wonder at you. At least, I don't wonder, for it's extraordinary how little sense of honour women have."

"I know. Isn't it terrible?" said Lily. "Toby, it was nice of you to order that crab. I adore crab. Oh, there's mamma! I suppose she must have crossed last night. I didn't expect her till this evening."

Mrs. Murchison had been to the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth, and was very communicative and astounding about it. She began by saying how delicious it had been at Beyrout, and Lily, whose real and tender affection for her mother did not blunt her sense of humour, began to giggle helplessly.

"Bayreuth, I should say," continued Mrs. Murchison without a pause.

"Lily dearest, if you laugh like that you'll get a piece of crab in your windgall. Well, as I was saying, Lady Conybeare, it was all just too beautiful. You may be sure I studied the music a good deal before each opera; it is impossible to grasp it otherwise--the life-motive and all that. Siegfried Wagner conducted; they gave him quite an ovarium. But some people go just in order to say they have been, without thinking about the music. Garibaldi to the general, I call it."

Lady Conybeare, a fresh-faced, dark-eyed woman of not more than fifty, healthy as a sea-wind, and in her wholesome way as tyrannical, cast an appealing look at Toby. Toby was one of the few people who did not in the least fear her, and she was proportionately grateful. She had tried to spoil him as a child, and now depended on him. He had warned her what calls would be made on her gravity during Mrs. Murchison's visit, and she had promised to do her best.

"So few people appreciate Garibaldi," she said with emphatic sympathy.

"Yes it is so," said Mrs. Murchison, flying off at a tangent. "When I was a girl I used to adore him, and wore a photograph of him in a locket. But that is all gone out; it went out with plain living and high thinking;" and she helped herself for the second time to Toby's crab and drank a little excellent Moselle.

"But Bayreuth was very fatiguing," she went on; "or is it Beyrout? Until one has heard the operas once, it is a terrible effort of attention.

_C'est le premier fois qui cote._ Really, I felt quite exhausted at the end of the circle, and I was so glad to get back to dear, delightful, foggy old London again, where one never has to attend to anything. And it looked so beautiful this morning as I drove down the Embankment. I see they have put up a new statue at the corner of Westminster Bridge--Queen Casabianca, or some such person."

Toby choked suddenly and violently.