Poor Relations Part 46

"Well, why should more people read your paper? No, you can have the money, but it must be regarded as a personal loan, and I must have the portraits and the silver."

"I don't see why you should have them."

"I don't see why you should start a new critical weekly."

John could not help enjoying the power that his brother's ambition had put in his hands and he insisted firmly upon the surrender of the heritage.

"All right, Jacob, I suppose I must sell my birthright for a mess of pottage."

"A printer's pie would describe it better," said John.

"Though why you want a few bad pictures and a dozen or so forks and spoons, I can't conceive."

"Why do you want them?" John countered.

"Because they're mine."

"And the money is mine."

James went away with a check for a thousand pounds in his pocket; but he went away less cheerful than he arrived. John, on the other hand, was much impressed by the manner in which he had dealt with his eldest brother; it was worth while losing a thousand pounds to have been able to demonstrate clearly to James once for all that his taste in literature was at the mercy of the romanticism he so utterly despised.

And while he felt that he had displayed a nice dignity in forcing James to surrender the portraits and the silver, he was also pleasantly aware of an equally nice magnanimity in being willing to overlook that insulting article. But Miss Hamilton was at his elbow to correct the slightest tendency to be too well pleased with himself.

"After all I couldn't disappoint poor old James," he said, fis.h.i.+ng for an encomium and dangling his own good heart as the bait. His secretary, however, ignored the tempting morsel and swam away into the deeps of romantic drama where his munificence seemed less showy somehow.

"You know best what you _want_ to do," she said, curtly. "And now, have you decided upon this soliloquy for Joan in her dungeon?"

"What do you feel about it?"

She held forth upon the advantages of a quiet front scene before the trial, and the author took her advice. He wished that she were as willing to discant upon his treatment of James, but he consoled himself for her lack of interest by supposing that she was diffident about giving the least color to any suggestion that she might be influencing him to her own advantage.

Hugh came up to town in order to go more fully into the question of his future, and John regarding Miss Hamilton's att.i.tude towards him tried to feel perfectly sure that she was going out of her way to be pleasant to Hugh solely with an idea of accentuating the strictly professional side of her a.s.sociation with himself. If this were not the case, he should be justified in thinking that she did really like Hugh very much, which would be an uncomfortable state of affairs. Still, explain it away as he might, John did feel a little uneasy, and once when he heard of a visit to the theater preceded by dinner he was upon the verge of pointing out to Hugh that until he was definitely established in mahogany and logwood he must be extremely careful about raising false hopes. He managed to refrain from approaching Hugh on the subject, because he knew that if he betrayed the least anxiety in that direction Hugh was capable of making it a matter of public jest. He decided instead to sound Miss Hamilton upon her views.

"You've never had any longing for the tropics?" he asked, as casually as he was able.

"Not particularly, though of course I should enjoy any fresh experience."

"I was noticing the other day that you seemed to dislike spiders; and, of course, the spiders in hot countries are terrible. I remember reading of some that snare birds, and I'm not sure that in parts of South America they don't even attack human beings. Many people of course do not mind them. For instance, my brother-in-law Daniel Curtis wrote a very moving account of a spider as large as a bat, with whom he fraternized on the banks of the Orinoco. It's quite a little cla.s.sic in its way."

John noted with the warmest satisfaction that Miss Hamilton shuddered.

"Your poor brother," she murmured.

"Oh, he'll be all right," said John, hurriedly. "I'm equipping him with every kind of protection against insects. Only yesterday I discovered a most ingenious box which is guaranteed to keep one's tobacco from being devoured by c.o.c.kroaches, and I thought Hugh looked very well in his pith helmet, didn't you?"

"I'm afraid I really didn't notice," Miss Hamilton replied, indifferently.

Soon after this conversation James' birthright was formally surrendered and John gave up contemplating himself upon a peak in Darien in order to contemplate himself as the head of an ancient and distinguished family.

While the portraits were being hung in the library he discoursed upon the romance of lineage so volubly that he had a sudden dread of Miss Hamilton taking him for a sn.o.b, which he tried to counteract by putting into the mouth of Joan of Arc sentiments of the purest demophilism.

"I shall aim at getting all the material for the play complete by April 1st--my birthday, by the way. Yes, I shall be forty-three. And then I thought we might go into retreat and aim at finis.h.i.+ng entirely by the end of June. That would enable Miss Bond to produce in September without hurrying the rehearsals. _Lucretia_ will be produced over here in April.

I think it would be rather jolly to finish off the play in France.

Domremy, Bourges, Chinon, Orleans, Compiegne, Rouen--a delightful tour.

You could have an aluminum typewriter...."

John's dreams of literature and life in France were interrupted by Mrs.

Worfolk, who entered the room with a mystery upon her lips.

"There's the Reverend Armitage waiting to see you in the hall, sir. But he was looking so queer that I was in two minds if I ought to admit him or not. It was Elsa who happened to open the door. Well, I mean to say, Maud's upstairs doing her rooms, and Elsa was a bit frightened when she saw him, through her being engaged to a policeman and so her mind running on murders and such like. Of course as soon as I saw it was the Reverend Armitage I quieted her down. But he really does look most peculiar, if you'll pardon the obsivation on Mrs. Armitage's husband. I don't think he's actually barmy _yet_; but you know, he gives any one the idea he will be soon, and I thought you ought to be told before he started to rave up and down the house. He's got a funny look in his eye, the same as what a man once had who sat opposite me in a bus and five minutes afterwards jumped off on Hammersmith Bridge and threw himself into the river. Quite a sensation it created, I remember, and we all had to alight, so as the conductor could give what information he had to a policeman who'd only heard the splash."

Mrs. Worfolk had been too garrulous; before she had time to ascertain her master's views on the subject of admitting Laurence there was a tap at the door, and Laurence himself stalked into the room. Unquestionably, even to one who had not known him as a clergyman, he did present an odd appearance with his fur-lined cloak of voluminous black, his long hair, his bundle of ma.n.u.script and theatrical newspapers, and his tragic eye; the only article of attire that had survived his loss of faith was the clergyman's hat; but even that had lost its former meekness and now gave the effect of a farouche sombrero.

"Well met," he intoned, advancing solemnly into the room and gripping his brother-in-law's hand with dramatic effect. "I would converse with you, John."

"That's a blank verse line," said John. There really was not much else that he could have said to such an affected greeting.

"Probably, probably," Laurence muttered, shaking his head. "It's difficult for me to talk in prose nowadays. But I have news for you, John, good news. _Thomas_ is finished."

"You needn't wait, Mrs. Worfolk," said John.

His housekeeper was standing by the door with a face wreathed in notes of interrogation and seemed unwilling to retire.

"You needn't wait, Mrs. Worfolk," he repeated, irritably.

"I thought you might have been wanting somebody fetched, sir."

John made an impatient gesture and Mrs. Worfolk vanished.

"You know Miss Hamilton, Laurence," said John, severely.

"Ah, Miss Hamilton! Forgive my abstraction. How d'ye do? But--ah--I was anxious to have a few words in private."

"Miss Hamilton is my confidential secretary."

"I bow to your domestic arrangements," said Laurence. "But--ah--my business is of an extremely private nature. It bears in fact directly upon my future."

John was determined to keep his secretary in the room. He had a feeling that money was going to be asked for, and he hoped that her presence would encourage him to hold out against agreeing to lend it.

"If you have anything to say to me, Laurence, you must say it in front of my secretary. I cannot be continually shooing her from the room like a troublesome cat."

The ex-vicar looked awkward for a moment; but his natural conceit rea.s.serted itself and flinging back his cloak he laid upon the table a ma.n.u.script.

"Fresh from Miss Quirk's typewriting office here is _Thomas_," he announced. "And now, my dear fellow, I require a little good advice."

There was flowing into his voice the professional unction of the clergyman with a north transept to restore. "Who was it that first said 'Charity begins at home'? Yes, a little good advice about my play. In deference to the Lord Chamberlain while reserving to my conscience the right to execrate his despotism I have expunged from my scenes the _central_ figures of the gospel story, and I venture to think that there is now no reason why _Thomas_ should not be--ah--produced."

"I'm afraid I can't invite you to read it to me just at present, Laurence," said John, hurriedly. "No, not just at present, I'm afraid.

When I'm working myself I'm always chary of being exposed to outside influences. _You_ wouldn't like and _I_ shouldn't like to find in _Joan of Arc_ echoes of _Thomas_. Miss Hamilton, however, who is thoroughly conversant with my point of view, would perhaps...."

"I confess," Laurence interrupted, loftily, "that I do not set much store by its being read. No, no. You will acquit me of undue self-esteem, my dear fellow, if I say at once in all modesty that I am satisfied with my labors, though you may be a little alarmed when I confide in you my opinion that it is probably a cla.s.sic. Still, such is my deliberate conviction. Moreover, I have already allowed our little party at Ambles to hear it. Yes, we spent a memorable evening before the ma.n.u.script was dispatched to Miss Quirk. Some of the scenes, indeed, proved almost too dramatic. Edith was quite exhausted by her emotion and scarcely slept all night. As for Hilda, I've never seen her so overcome by anything. She couldn't say anything when I finished. No, no, I sha'n't read it to you. In fact, to be--ah--blunt, I could scarcely endure the strain a second time. No, what I want you to do, my dear fellow, is to--ah--back it. The phrase is Hugh's. We have all been thrilled down at Ambles by rumors of your generosity, and I know you'll be glad of another medium for exercising it. Am I unduly proud of my work if I say that it seems to me a more worthy medium than British Honduras or weekly papers?"