A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus Part 32

'You are a dear good boy. You did splendidly.'

'That's the way to handle 'em. He saw that I was a real fizzer and full of blood. One business man can tell another at a glance.'

Maude laughed, for Jack, with his cavalry swagger and a white weal all round his sunburned face to show where his chin-strap hung, looked the most unbusiness-like of mortals.

'Why did you offer forty pounds?' she asked.

'Well, you have to begin somewhere.'

'But why forty?'

'Because it is what we offer when we are buying the hairies-- trooper's chargers, you know. It's a great thing to have a fixed rule in business. I never go higher than forty--rule one, section one, and no exceptions in the margin.'

They lunched together at the Holborn, and Jack took Maude afterwards to what he called 'a real instructive show,' which proved to be a horse-sale at Tattersall's. They then drove back to the lawyer's, and there they found a letter waiting addressed to Mrs. Crosse.

Maude tore it open.

'Dear Mrs. Crosse,' said this delightful note, 'I am happy to be able to inform you that the directors have decided to stop the legal proceedings, and to accept your offer of forty pounds in full satisfaction of all claims due against your husband.'

Maude, Jack, and the good Owen performed a triumphant pas de trois.

'You have done splendidly, Mrs. Crosse, splendidly!' cried Owen. 'I never heard a better day's work in my life. Now, if you will give me your cheque and wait here, I will go over and settle everything.'

'And please bring the bond back with you,' said Maude.

So it was that Frank, coming down upon the morning of his birthday, perceived a pretty silver cigarette-box laid in front of his plate.

'Is this for me, my darling?'

'Yes, Frank, a wee present from your wife.'

'How sweet of you! I never saw such a lovely case. Why, there's something inside it.'

'Cigarettes, I suppose.

'No, it is a paper of some kind. "Hotspur Insurance Company." Good Lord, I never seem for one instant to be able to shake that infernal thing off! How on earth did it get in there? What's this?--"I hereby guarantee to you--" What's this? Maude, Maude, what have you been doing?'

'Dear old boy,' she cried, as she put her arms round him. 'Dear old boy! Oh, I DO feel so happy!'

CHAPTER XVI--THE BROWNING SOCIETY

It all began by Mrs. Hunt Mortimer, the smart little up-to-date wife of the solicitor, saying to Mrs. Beecher, the young bride of the banker, that in a place like Woking it was very hard to get any mental friction, or to escape from the same eternal grooves of thought and conversation. The same idea, it seemed, had occurred to Mrs. Beecher, fortified by a remark from the Lady's Journal that an internal intellectual life was the surest method by which a woman could preserve her youth. She turned up the article--for the conversation occurred in her drawing-room--and she read extracts from it. 'Shakespeare as a Cosmetic' was the t.i.tle. Maude was very much struck, and before they separated they had formed themselves into a Literary Society which should meet and discuss cla.s.sical authors every Wednesday afternoon at each other's houses. That one hour of concentrated thought and lofty impulse should give a dignity and a tone to the whole dull provincial week.

What should they read? It was well that they should decide it before they separated, so as to start fair upon the next Wednesday. Maude suggested Shakespeare, but Mrs. Hunt Mortimer thought that a good deal of it was improper.

'Does it matter?' said Mrs. Beecher. 'We are all married.'

'Still I don't think it would be quite nice,' said Mrs. Hunt Mortimer. She belonged to the extreme right on matters of propriety.

'But surely Mr. Bowdler made Shakespeare quite respectable,' Mrs.

Beecher argued.

'He did his work very carelessly. He left in much that might be dispensed with, and he omitted a good deal which was quite innocent.'

'How do you know?'

'Because I once got two copies and read all the omissions.'

'Why did you do that?' asked Maude mischievously.

'Because I wanted to make sure that they HAD been omitted,' said Mrs.

Hunt Mortimer severely.

Mrs. Beecher stooped and picked an invisible hairpin out of the rug.

Mrs. Hunt Mortimer continued.

'There is Byron, of course. But he is so very suggestive. There are pa.s.sages in his works--'

'I could never see any harm in them,' said Mrs. Beecher.

'That is because you did not know where to look,' said Mrs. Hunt Mortimer. 'If you have a copy in the house, Mrs. Beecher, I will undertake to make it abundantly clear to you that he is to be eschewed by those who wish to keep their thoughts unsullied. Not? I fancy that even quoting from memory I could convince you that it is better to avoid him.'

'Pa.s.s Byron,' said Mrs. Beecher, who was a very pretty little kittenish person, with no apparent need of any cosmetics, literary or otherwise. 'How about Sh.e.l.ley?'

'Frank raves about Sh.e.l.ley,' observed Maude.

Mrs. Hunt Mortimer shook her head.

'His work has some dreadful tendencies. He was, I am informed, either a theist or an atheist, I cannot for the moment recall which-- I think that we should make our little course as improving as possible.'

'Tennyson,' Maude suggested.

'I have been told that his meaning is too clear to ent.i.tle him to rank among the great thinkers of our race. The lofty thought is necessarily obscure. There is no merit in following a poem which is perfectly intelligible. Which leads us to--'

'Browning!' cried the other ladies.

'Exactly. We might form a little Browning Society of our own.'

'Charming! Charming!'

And so it was agreed.

There was only one other point to be settled at this their inaugural meeting, which was, to choose the other ladies who should be admitted into their literary circle. There were to be no men.