Poor Relations Part 20

"Oh, not in that way, my dear fellow, not in that way. But she's not used to having so many visitors in the house."

"I'm going to take one of them away with me, if that'll be any consolation to her," James announced.

"Not Beatrice?" his brother stammered.

James nodded grimly.

"It's all very fine for you with a mob of servants to look after you: but I can't spare Beatrice any more easily than you could spare Mrs.

Worfolk. I've been confoundedly uncomfortable for nearly two days, and my wife must come back."

"Oh, but look here," John protested. "She's been managing the children magnificently. I've hardly known they were in the house. You can't take Beatrice away."

"Sorry, Johnnie, but my existence is not so richly endowed with comforts as yours. You'd better get a wife for yourself. You can afford one."

"But can't we arrive at a compromise?" John pleaded. "Why don't you come and camp out with me, too?"

"Camp out, you hypocrite!" the critic jeered. "No, no, you can't bribe me with your luxuries. Do you think that I could work with two children careering all over the place? I dare say they don't disturb your plays.

I dare say you can't hear them above the clash of swords and the rolling of thunder, but for critical work I want absolute quiet. Sorry, but I'm afraid I must carry off Beatrice."

"Well, of course, if you must...." John murmured, despondently. And it was very little consolation to think, while Viola practised the _fandango_ in the library preparatory to dislocating the household by removing Maud from her work to escort her to the dancing-cla.s.s, that Beatrice herself would have liked to stay.

"However," John sternly resolved, "the next time that James tries to scoff at married life I shall tell him pretty plainly what I think of his affectation."

He decided ultimately to keep the children at Church Row for a week, to give them some kind of treat on Sat.u.r.day, and on Sat.u.r.day evening, before dinner, to take them back to their father and insist upon his being responsible for them. If by chance George proved to be really ill, which he did not suppose for a moment that he would, he should take matters firmly into his hands and export the children to Ambles until their mother came home: Viola could practise every known variety of Spanish dance over Laurence's head, or even in Laurence's room; and as for Bertram he could corrupt Harold to his heart's content.

On the whole, the week pa.s.sed off well. Although Viola had fallen like Lucifer from being an angel in Maud's mind, she won back her esteem by behaving like a human little girl when they went to the dancing-cla.s.s together and did not try to a.s.sume diabolic attributes in exchange for the angelic position she had forfeited. John was allowed to gather that Viola's chief claim to Maud's forgiveness was founded upon her encouragement of the advances made to her escort by a handsome young sergeant of the Line whom they had encountered in the tube.

"Miss Viola behaved herself like a little lady," Maud had informed John when they came home.

"You enjoyed taking her?"

"Yes, indeed, sir, it's a pleasure to go about with anyone so lady-like.

Several very nice people turned round to admire her."

"Did they, Maud, did they?"

Later, when Viola's account of the afternoon reached him he wondered if the sergeant was one of those nice people.

Mrs. Worfolk, too, was reconciled to Bertram by the profound respect he accorded to her tales and by his appreciation of an alb.u.m of family photographs she brought out for him from the bottom of her trunk.

"The boy can be as quiet as a mouse," she a.s.sured John, "as long as he isn't encouraged to make a hullabaloo."

"You think I encourage him, Mrs. Worfolk?"

"Well, sir, it's not my place to offer an opinion about managing children, but giving them a calf's head is as good as telling them to misbehave theirselves. It's asking for trouble. There he is now, doing what he calls his home work with a little plate of toffee I made for him--as good as gold. But what I do ask is where's the use in filling up a child's head with Latin and Greece. Teach a child to be a heathen G.o.ddess and a heathen G.o.ddess he'll be. Teach him the story of the Infant Samuel and he'll behave like the Infant Samuel, though I must say that one child who I told about G.o.d's voice, in the family to which I was nursemaid, had a regular fit and woke up screaming in the middle of the night that he could hear G.o.d routing about for him under the bed.

But then he was a child with very old-fas.h.i.+oned notions and took the whole story for gospel, and his mother said after that no one wasn't to read him nothing except stories about animals."

"What happened to him when he grew up?" John asked.

"Well, sir, I lost sight of the whole family, but I dare say he became a clergyman, for he never lost this habit of thinking G.o.d was dodging him all the time. It was G.o.d here, and G.o.d there, till I fairly got the jumps myself and might have taken up with the Wesleans if I hadn't gone as third housemaid to a family where the master kept race-horses which gave me something else to think about, and I never had anything more to do with children until my poor sister's Herbert."

"That must have been a great change, Mrs. Worfolk."

"Yes, sir, so it was; but life's only one long changing about, though they do say there's nothing new under the sun. But good gracious me, fellows who make up mottoes always exaggerate a bit: they've got to, so as to keep up with one another."

When Friday evening arrived John nearly emphasized Mrs. Worfolk's agreement with Herac.l.i.tus by keeping the children at Church Row. But by the last post there came a letter from Janet Bond to beg an earlier production of _Joan of Arc_ if it was by any means possible, and John looking at the infinitesimal amount he had written during the week resolved that he must stick to his intention of taking the children back to their father on the following day.

"What would you like to do to-morrow?" he inquired. "I happen to have a free afternoon, and--er--I'm afraid your father wants you back in Earl's Court, so it will be your last opportunity of enjoying yourselves for some time--I mean of our enjoying ourselves for some time, in fact, until we all meet at Ambles for Christmas."

"Oh, I say," Bertram protested. "Have we got to go back to rotten old Earl's Court? What a sell!"

"I thought we were going to live here always," Viola exclaimed.

"But don't you want to go back to your father?" John demanded in what he hoped was a voice br.i.m.m.i.n.g with reproaches for their lack of filial piety, but which he could not help feeling was bubbling over with something very near elation.

"Oh, no," both children affirmed, "we like being with you much best."

John's gratification was suddenly darkened by the suspicion that perhaps Eleanor had told them to flatter him like this; he turned swiftly aside to hide the chagrin that such a thought gave him, and when he spoke again it was almost roughly, because in addition to being suspicious of their sincerity he was vexed with himself for displaying a spirit of compet.i.tive affection. It occurred to him that it was jealousy rather than love which made the world go round--a dangerous reflection for a romantic playwright.

"I'm afraid it can't be helped," he said. "To-morrow is definitely our last day. So choose your own method of celebrating it without dressing up."

"Oh, we only dress up on Sundays," Viola said, loftily.

"I vote we go to the Zoo," Bertram opinionated after a weighty pause.

Had his nephew Harold suggested a visit to the Zoo, John would have shunned the proposal with horror; but with Bertram and Viola the prospect of such an expedition was positively enticing.

"I must beware of favoritism," John warned himself. "Yes, and I must beware of being blarneyed." Then aloud he added:

"Very well, we will visit the Zoo immediately after lunch to-morrow."

"Oh, but we must go in the morning," Bertram cried. "There won't be nearly time to see everything in the afternoon."

"What about our food?"

"We can eat there."

"But, my dear boy," John said. "You are confusing us with the lions. I much doubt if a human being _can_ eat at the Zoo, unless he has a pa.s.sion for peanuts and stale buns, which I have not."

"I swear you can," Bertram maintained. "Anyhow, I know you can get ices there in the summer."

"We'll risk it," John declared, adventurously; and the children echoed his enthusiasm with joy.

"We must see the toucans this time," Bertram announced in a grave voice, "and last time we missed the zebu."

"I shouldn't have thought that possible," John demurred, "with all those stripes."

"Not the zebra," Bertram severely corrected him. "The zebu."