§9
Dinner had something of the stiffness of court ceremonial.
Mrs. Sawbridge, perhaps erring on the side of discretion, had consumed a little soup and a wing of chicken in her own room. Sir Isaac was down first and his wife found him grimly astride before the great dining-room fire awaiting her. She had had her dark hair dressed with extreme simplicity and had slipped on a blue velvet tea-gown, but she had been delayed by a visit to the nursery, where the children were now flushed and uneasily asleep.
Husband and wife took their places at the genuine Sheraton dining-table—one of the very best pieces Sir Isaac had ever picked up—and were waited on with a hushed, scared dexterity by Snagsby and the footman.
Lady Harman and her husband exchanged no remarks during the meal; Sir Isaac was a little noisy with his soup as became a man who controls honest indignation, and once he complained briefly in a slightly hoarse voice to Snagsby about the state of one of the rolls. Between the courses he leant back in his chair and made faint sounds with his teeth. These were the only breach of the velvety quiet. Lady Harman was surprised to discover herself hungry, but she ate with thoughtful dignity and gave her mind to the attempted digestion of the confusing interview she had just been through.
It was a very indigestible interview.
On the whole her heart hardened again. With nourishment and silence her spirit recovered a little from its abasement, and her resolution to assert her freedom to go hither and thither and think as she chose renewed itself. She tried to plan some way of making her declaration so that she would not again be overwhelmed by a torrent of response. Should she speak to him at the end of dinner? Should she speak to him while Snagsby was in the room? But he might behave badly even with Snagsby in the room and she could not bear to think of him behaving badly to her in the presence of Snagsby. She glanced at him over the genuine old silver bowl of roses in the middle of the table—all the roses were good new sorts—and tried to estimate how he might behave under various methods of declaration.
The dinner followed its appointed ritual to the dessert. Came the wine and Snagsby placed the cigars and a little silver lamp beside his master.
She rose slowly with a speech upon her lips. Sir Isaac remained seated looking up at her with a mitigated fury in his little red-brown eyes.
The speech receded from her lips again.
“I think,” she said after a strained pause, “I will go and see how mother is now.”
“She’s only shamming,” said Sir Isaac belatedly to her back as she went out of the room.
She found her mother in a wrap before her fire and made her dutiful enquiries.
“It’s only quite a slight headache,” Mrs. Sawbridge confessed. “But Isaac was so upset about Georgina and about”—she flinched—“about—everything, that I thought it better to be out of the way.”
“What exactly has Georgina done?”
“It’s in the paper, dear. On the table there.”
Ellen studied the Times.
“Georgina got them the tickets,” Mrs. Sawbridge explained. “I wish she hadn’t. It was so—so unnecessary of her.”
There was a little pause as Lady Harman read. She put down the paper and asked her mother if she could do anything for her.
“I—I suppose it’s all Right, dear, now?” Mrs. Sawbridge asked.
“Quite,” said her daughter. “You’re sure I can do nothing for you, mummy?”
“I’m kept so in the dark about things.”
“It’s quite all right now, mummy.”
“He went on—dreadfully.”
“It was annoying—of Georgina.”
“It makes my position so difficult. I do wish he wouldn’t want to speak to me—about all these things.... Georgina treats me like a Perfect Nonentity and then he comes——It’s so inconsiderate. Starting Disputes. Do you know, dear, I really think—if I were to go for a little time to Bournemouth——?”
Her daughter seemed to find something attractive in the idea. She came to the hearthrug and regarded her mother with maternal eyes.
“Don’t you worry about things, mummy,” she said.
“Mrs. Bleckhorn told me of such a nice quiet boarding-house, almost looking on the sea.... One would be safe from Insult there. You know——” her voice broke for a moment, “he was Insulting, he meant to be Insulting. I’m—Upset. I’ve been thinking over it ever since.”