Tenterhooks Part 2

After long argument and great indecision the matter was settled by a cordial letter from Mrs Mitch.e.l.l, asking them to dinner on the following Thursday, and saying she feared there had been some mistake.

So that was all right.

Bruce was in good spirits again; he was pleased too, because he was going to the theatre that evening with Edith and Vincy, to see a play that he thought wouldn't be very good. He had almost beforehand settled what he thought of it, and practically what he intended to say.

But when he came in that evening he was overheard to have a strenuous and increasingly violent argument with Archie in the hall.

Edith opened the door and wanted to know what the row was about.

'Will you tell me, Edith, where your son learns such language? He keeps on worrying me to take him to the Zoological Gardens to see the--well--you'll hear what he says. The child's a perfect nuisance.

Who put it into his head to want to go and see this animal? I was obliged to speak quite firmly to him about it.'

Edith was not alarmed that Bruce had been severe. She thought it much more likely that Archie had spoken very firmly to him. He was always strict with his father, and when he was good Bruce found fault with him. As soon as he grew really tiresome his father became abjectly apologetic.

Archie was called and came in, dragging his feet, and pouting, in tears that he was making a strenuous effort to encourage.

'You must be firm with him,' continued Bruce. 'Hang it! Good heavens!

Am I master in my own house or am I not?'

There was no reply to this rhetorical question.

He turned to Archie and said in a gentle, conciliating voice:

'Archie, old chap, tell your mother what it is you want to see. Don't cry, dear.'

'Want to see the d.a.m.ned chameleon,' said Archie, with his hands in his eyes. 'Want father to take me to the Zoo.'

'You can't go to the Zoo this time of the evening. What do you mean?'

'I want to see the d.a.m.ned chameleon.'

'You hear!' exclaimed Bruce to Edith.

'Who taught you this language?'

'Miss Townsend taught it me.'

'There! It's dreadful, Edith; he's becoming a reckless liar. Fancy her dreaming of teaching him such things! If she did, of course she must be mad, and you must send her away at once. But I'm quite sure she didn't.'

'Come, Archie, you know Miss Townsend never taught you to say that.

What have you got into your head?'

'Well, she didn't exactly teach me to say it--she didn't give me lessons in it--but she says it herself. She said the d.a.m.ned chameleon was lovely; and I want to see it. She didn't say I ought to see it. But I want to. I've been wanting to ever since. She said it at lunch today, and I do want to. Lots of other boys go to the Zoo, and why shouldn't I? I want to see it so much.'

'Edith, I must speak to Miss Townsend about this very seriously. In the first place, people have got no right to talk about queer animals to the boy at all--we all know what he is--and in such language! I should have thought a girl like Miss Townsend, who has pa.s.sed examinations in Germany, and so forth, would have had more sense of her responsibility--more tact. It shows a dreadful want of--I hardly know what to think of it--the daughter of a clergyman, too!'

'It's all right, Bruce,' Edith laughed. 'Miss Townsend told me she had been to see the _Dame aux Camelias_ some time ago. She was enthusiastic about it. Archie dear, I'll take you to the Zoological Gardens and we'll see lots of other animals. And don't use that expression.'

'What! Can't I see the da--'

'Mr Vincy,' announced the servant.

'I must go and dress,' said Bruce.

Vincy Wenham Vincy was always called by everyone simply Vincy. Applied to him it seemed like a pet name. He had arrived at the right moment, as he always did. He was very devoted to both Edith and Bruce, and he was a confidant of both. He sometimes said to Edith that he felt he was just what was wanted in the little home; an intimate stranger coming in occasionally with a fresh atmosphere was often of great value (as, for instance, now) in calming or averting storms.

Had anyone asked Vincy exactly what he was he would probably have said he was an Observer, and really he did very little else, though after he left Oxford he had taken to writing a little, and painting less. He was very fair, the fairest person one could imagine over five years old. He had pale silky hair, a minute fair moustache, very good features, a single eyegla.s.s, and the appearance, always, of having been very recently taken out of a bandbox.

But when people fancied from this look of his that he was an empty-headed fop they soon found themselves immensely mistaken.

He was thirty-eight, but looked a gilded youth of twenty; and _was_ sufficiently gilded (as he said), not perhaps exactly to be comfortable, but to enable him to get about comfortably, and see those who were.

He had a number of relatives in high places, who bored him, and were always trying to get him married. He had taken up various occupations and travelled a good deal. But his greatest pleasure was the study of people. There was nothing cold in his observation, nothing of the cynical a.n.a.lyst. He was impulsive, though very quiet, immensely and ardently sympathetic and almost too impressionable and enthusiastic. It was not surprising that he was immensely popular generally, as well as specially; he was so interested in everyone except himself.

No-one was ever a greater general favourite. There seemed to be no type of person on whom he jarred. People who disagreed on every other subject agreed in liking Vincy.

But he did not care in the least for acquaintances, and spent much ingenuity in trying to avoid them; he only liked intimate friends, and of all he had perhaps the Ottleys were his greatest favourites.

His affection for them dated from a summer they had spent in the same hotel in France. He had become extraordinarily interested in them. He delighted in Bruce, but had with Edith, of course, more mutual understanding and intellectual sympathy, and though they met constantly, his friends.h.i.+p with her had never been misunderstood.

Frivolous friends of his who did not know her might amuse themselves by being humorous and flippant about Vincy's little Ottleys, but no-one who had ever seen them together could possibly make a mistake. They were an example of the absurdity of a tradition--'the world's'

p.r.o.neness to calumny. Such friends.h.i.+ps, when genuine, are never misconstrued. Perhaps society is more often taken in the other way. But as a matter of fact the truth on this subject, as on most others, is always known in time. No-one had ever even tried to explain away the intimacy, though Bruce had all the air of being unable to do without Vincy's society sometimes cynically attributed to husbands in a different position.

Vincy was pleased with the story of the Mitch.e.l.ls that Edith told him, and she was glad to hear that he knew the Mitch.e.l.ls and had been to the house.

'How like you to know everyone. What did they do?'

'The night I was there they played games,' said Vincy. He spoke in a soft, even voice. 'It was just a little--well--perhaps just a _tiny_ bit ghastly, I thought; but don't tell Bruce. That evening I thought the people weren't quite young enough, and when they played 'Oranges and Lemons, and the Bells of St Clements,' and so on--their bones seemed to--well, sort of rattle, if you know what I mean. But still perhaps it was only my fancy. Mitch.e.l.l has such very high spirits, you see, and is determined to make everything go. He won't have conventional parties, and insists on plenty of verve; so, of course, one's forced to have it.' He sighed. 'They haven't any children, and they make a kind of hobby of entertaining in an unconventional way.'

'It sounds rather fun. Perhaps you will be asked next Thursday. Try.'

'I'll try. I'll call, and remind her of me. I daresay she'll ask me.

She's very good-natured. She believes in spiritualism, too.'

'I wonder who'll be there?'

'Anyone might be there, or anyone else. As they say of marriage, it's a lottery. They might have roulette, or a spiritual seance, or Kubelik, or fancy dress heads.'

'Fancy dress heads!'

'Yes. Or a cotillion, or just bridge. You never know. The house is rather like a country house, and they behave accordingly. Even hide-and-seek, I believe, sometimes. And Mitch.e.l.l adores unpractical jokes, too.'

'I see. It's rather exciting that I'm going to the Mitch.e.l.ls at last.'

'Yes, perhaps it will be the turning-point of your life,' said Vincy.

'Ah! here's Bruce.'

'I don't think much of that opera gla.s.s your mother gave you,' Bruce remarked to his wife, soon after the curtain rose.

'It's the fas.h.i.+on,' said Edith. 'It's jade--the latest thing.'