Poor Relations Part 12

John indicated a chair and looked out of the window longingly at the birds, as patients in the hands of a dentist regard longingly the sparrows in the dingy evergreens of the dentist's back garden.

"When we had our little talk the other day," Laurence began, "you will remember that I spoke of a drama I had already written, of which the disciple Thomas was the protagonist. This drama notwithstanding the probably obstructive att.i.tude of the Lord Chamberlain I have rewritten, or rather I have rewritten the first act. I call the play--ah--_Thomas_."

"It sounds a little trivial for such a serious subject, don't you think?" John suggested. "I mean, Thomas has come to be a.s.sociated in so many people's minds with footmen. Wouldn't _Saint Thomas_ be better, and really rather more respectful? Many people still have a great feeling of reverence for apostles."

"No, no, _Thomas_ it is: _Thomas_ it must remain. You have forgotten perhaps that I told you he was the prototype of the man in the street.

It is the simplicity, the unpretentiousness of the t.i.tle that for me gives it a value. Well, to resume. _Thomas. A play in four acts. By Laurence Armytage._ By the way, I'm going to spell my name with a y in future. Poetic license. Ha-ha! I shall not advertise the change in the _Times_. But I think it looks more literary with a y. _Act the First.

Scene the First. The sh.o.r.e of the Sea of Galilee._ I say nothing else. I don't attempt to describe it. That is what I have learnt from Shakespeare. This modern pa.s.sion for description can only injure the greatness of the theme. _Enter from the left the Virgin Mary._"

"Enter who?" asked John in amazement.

"The Virgin Mary. The mother ..."

"Yes, I know who she is, but ... well, I'm not a religious man, Laurence, in fact I've not been to church since I was a boy ... but ...

no, no, you can't do that."

"Why not?"

"It will offend people."

"I want to offend people," Laurence intoned. "If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out."

"Well, you did," said John. "You put in a _y_ instead."

"I'm not jesting, my dear fellow."

"Nor am I," said John. "What I want you to understand is that you can't bring the Virgin Mary on the stage. Why, I'm even doubtful about Joan of Arc's vision of the Archangel Michael. Some people may object, though I'm counting on his being generally taken for St. George."

"I know that you are writing a play about Joan of Arc, but--and I hope you'll not take unkindly what I'm going to say--but Joan of Arc can never be more than a pretty piece of medievalism, whereas Thomas ..."

John gave up, and the next morning he told the household that he was called back to London on business.

"Perhaps I shall have some peace here," he sighed, looking round at his dignified Church Row library.

"Mrs. James called earlier this morning, sir, and said not to disturb you, but she hoped you'd had a comfortable journey and left these flowers, and Mrs. George has telephoned from the theater to say she'll be here almost directly."

"Thank you, Mrs. Worfolk," John said. "Perhaps Mrs. George will be taking lunch."

"Yes, sir, I expect she will," said his housekeeper.

CHAPTER V

Mrs. George Touchwood--or as she was known on the stage, Miss Eleanor Cartright--was big-boned, handsome, and hawklike, with the hungry look of the ambitious actress who is drawing near to forty--she was in fact thirty-seven--and realizes that the disappointed adventuresses of what are called strong plays are as near as she will ever get to the tragedy queens of youthful aspiration. Such an one accustomed to flash her dark eyes in defiance of a morally but not esthetically hostile gallery and to have the whole of a stage for the display of what well-disposed critics hailed as vitality and cavaliers condemned as lack of repose, such an one in John's tranquil library was, as Mrs. Worfolk put it, "rather too much of a good thing and no mistake"; and when Eleanor was there, John experienced as much malaise as he would have experienced from being shut up in a housemaid's closet with a large gramophone and the housemaid. This claustrophobia, however, was the smallest strain that his sister-in-law inflicted upon him; she affected his heart and his conscience more acutely, because he could never meet her without a sensation of guilt on account of his not yet having found a part for her in any of his plays, to which was added the fear he always felt in her presence that soon or late he should from sheer inability to hold out longer award her the leading part in his play. George had often seriously annoyed him by his unwillingness to help himself; but at the thought of being married for thirteen years to Eleanor he had always excused his brother's flaccid dependence.

"George is a bit of a sponge," James had once said, "but Eleanor!

Eleanor is the roughest and toughest loofah that was ever known. She is irritant and absorbent at the same time, and by gad, she has the appearance of a loofah."

The prospect of Eleanor's company at lunch on the morning after his return to town gave John a sensation of having escaped the devil to fall into the deep sea, of having jumped from the frying-pan into the fire, in fact of ill.u.s.trating every known proverbial attempt to express the distinction without the difference.

"It's a great pity that Eleanor didn't marry Laurence," he thought.

"Each would have kept the other well under, and she could have played Mary Magdalene in that insane play of his. And, by Jove, if they _had_ married, neither of them would have been a relation! Moreover, if Laurence had been caught by Eleanor, Edith might never have married at all and could have kept house for me. And if Edith hadn't married, Hilda mightn't have married, and then Harold would never have been born."

John's hard pruning of his family-tree was interrupted by a sense of the house's having been attacked by an angry mob--an illusion that he had learnt to connect with his sister-in-law's arrival. To make sure, however, he went out on the landing and called down to know if anything was the matter.

"Mrs. George is having some trouble with the taxi-man, sir," explained Maud, who was holding the front-door open and looking apprehensively at the pictures that were clattering on the walls in the wind.

"Why does she take taxis?" John muttered, irritably. "She can't afford them, and there's no excuse for such extravagance when the tube is so handy."

At this moment Eleanor reached the door, on the threshold of which she turned like Medea upon Jason to have the last word with the taxi-driver before the curtain fell.

"Did Mr. Touchwood get my message?" she was asking.

"Yes, yes," John called down. "I'm expecting you to lunch."

When he watched Eleanor all befurred coming upstairs, he felt not much less nervous than a hunter of big game face to face with his first tiger; the landing seemed to wobble like a howdah; now he had fired and missed, and she was embracing him as usual. How many times at how many meetings with Eleanor had he tried unsuccessfully to dodge that kiss--which always seemed improper whether because her lips were too red, or too full, he could never decide, though he always felt when he was released that he ought to beg her husband's pardon.

"You were an old beast not to come and see us when you got back from America; but never mind, I'm awfully glad to see you, all the same."

"Thank you very much, Eleanor. Why are you glad?"

"Oh, you sarcastic old bear!"

This perpetual suggestion of his senility was another trick of Eleanor's that he deplored; dash it, he was two years younger than George, whom she called Georgieboy.

"No, seriously," Eleanor went on. "I was just going to wire and ask if I could send the kiddies down to the country. Lambton wants me for a six weeks' tour before Xmas, and I can't leave them with Georgie. You see, if this piece catches on, it means a good shop for me in the new year."

"Yes, I quite understand your point of view," John said. "But what I don't understand is why Bertram and Viola can't stay with their father."

"But George is ill. Surely you got my letter?"

"I didn't realize that the presence of his children might prove fatal.

However, send them down to Ambles by all means."

"Oh, but I'd much rather not after the way Hilda wrote to me, and now that you've come back there's no need."

"I don't quite understand."

"Well, you won't mind having them here for a short visit? Then they can go down to Ambles for the Christmas holidays."

"But the Christmas holidays won't begin for at least six weeks."

"I know."

"But you don't propose that Bertram and Viola should spend six weeks here?"