1
The next morning Teresa dressed very carefully; she put on a lilac knitted gown, cut square and low at the neck, and a long necklace of jade.
She got down to breakfast to find Arnold, Jollypot, Rory, and Guy already settled.
Rory looked at her with unseeing eyes, and got her her tea and boiled egg with obviously perfunctory politeness.
He was clearly eager to get back to the conversation with Guy which she had interrupted by her arrival and needs.
“But you know, Guy, the only amusing relation we had was old Lionel Fane—he was a priceless old boy ... what was it he used to say again when he was introduced to a lady?”
“‘How d’ye do, how d’ye do, oh beautiful passionate body that never has ached with a heart!’ And then, do you remember how he used to turn down his sock and scratch his ankle, and then look round with a grin and say, ‘I don’t mean to be provocative.’ ...”
“He was priceless! And then....”
“For God’s sake stop talking about your beastly relations,” growled Arnold; but Guy went on, undaunted.
“But the person I should have liked to have been was my mother or yours when they were young—their portraits by Richmond hanging in the Academy with a special policeman and roped off from the crowd—and that in the days of the Jersey Lily, too! Oh, it would have been glorious to have been a beauty of the eighties.”
“Yes; but one might as well have gone the whole hog, you know—been the Prince of Wales’s mistress, and that sort of thing. Your mother, of course, didn’t make such a very bad match, but mine—a miserable younger son of a Scotch laird! I mean, I think they might have done a lot better for themselves.”
“Oh, Lord! Let’s start a conversation about our relations, Teresa. Edward Lane, now ...” said Arnold.
But he could not down the shrill scream of Guy, once more taking up the tale: “Well, they weren’t, of course, so cinemaish as the Sisters Gunning, for instance ... but still, it was all rather amusing ... and all these queer Victorian stunts they invented....”
“Kicking off their shoes in the middle of a reel, and that sort of thing? Uncle Jimmy says there was quite a little war in Dublin as to which was the belle of the Royal Hospital Ball, then afterwards, too, in Scotland at the Northern Meeting....”
“I should have liked to have seen them driving with Ouida in Florence—the Italians saying, bella, bella, when they passed them, and Ouida graciously bowing and taking it as a tribute to herself.”
“I know! And then they....”
Then Concha strolled in, and Rory immediately broke off his sentence, jumped up eagerly, and cried, “Grant and Cockburn, please—four buttons, lilac.”
“What’s all this about?” said Arnold.
“Oh! I bet her a pair of spats last night that I’d be down to breakfast before her. Tea or coffee? I say, I suddenly remembered in the middle of the night the name of that priceless book I was telling you about; it’s Strawberry Leaves, by A. Leaf—I’ll try to get it for you.”
Evidently the “angel Intimacy” had been very busy last night after Teresa had gone to bed.
Then the Doña appeared—to the surprise of her daughters, as she generally breakfasted in her room.
Her appearance was a protest. Dick had decided (most unnecessarily, she considered) to have a cold and a day in bed.
Her eye immediately fell on Teresa, and in a swift, humorous glance from top to toe she took in all the details of her toilette.
“Thank you very much, but I prefer helping myself,” she said curtly to Rory; his attentiveness seemed to her a direct reflection on Arnold, who never waited on any one. Nor did she encourage his attempts at conversation. “I have been telling Miss Concha....” “I do hope you’ll take me round the garden—I know all about that sort of thing, I do really.”
It was a superb day, and the sun was beating fiercely on the tightly-shut windows; the room smelt of sausages and bacon and tea and soap and hair-wash. Teresa felt that the sight of the pulpy eviscera of Arnold’s roll would soon make her sick.
“By the way, where’s the Scot?” said Concha. “Arnold, hadn’t you better go up and find him?”
A scuffling was heard behind the door, and in burst Anna and Jasper, having, in spite of Nanny, simply scrambled through their nursery breakfast, as thrilled as ’Snice himself by the smell of new people. Jasper was all wriggling and squeaking in his desire for attention; Anna, outwardly calmer, was wondering whether Rory had relations abroad, and whether they wrote to him, and what the stamps on the envelopes were like.
“Now then, gently, darlings, gently! Wait a minute; here you are, Jasper,” and the Doña held out to him a spoonful of honey.
“But where is our good Scot?” repeated Concha.
“The worst of going up to Cambridge is that one never goes down,” shouted Guy to Jollypot, for want of a better audience; whereupon, regardless of the fact that Guy was still talking, Jollypot began to repeat to herself in a low, emotional voice:
Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
Jasper began to wriggle worse than ever, and, having first cast a furtive glance at his grandmother and aunts, said shrilly, “I dreamt of Mummie last night ... and she had ... she had ... such a funny nose....” and his voice tailed off in a little giggle, half proud, half guilty.
“Jasper!” exclaimed simultaneously the Doña, Teresa, Concha, and Anna, in tones of shocked reproval.
“Dear little man!” murmured Jollypot.
Shortly after her death, Jasper had genuinely dreamt that his mother was standing by his bed, and, on telling it next morning, had produced a most gratifying impression; but so often had he tried since to produce the same impression in the same way that to say he had “dreamt of Mummie” had become a recognised form of “naughtiness”; and, as one could attract attention by naughtiness as well as by pathos, he continued at intervals to announce that he had “dreamt of Mummie.”
“Concha, Teresa, Jollypot! We must hurry. The car will soon be here to take us to mass,” said the Doña.
Concha hesitated a moment—Teresa’s eye was on her—then said to herself, “I’ll not be downed by her,” and aloud, “I don’t think I’m coming this morning, Doña.”
The Doña raised her eyebrows; Teresa’s face was sphinx-like.
At that moment in walked David—looking a little embarrassed.
He gravely faced the friendly sallies; and then he said, with an evident effort:
“No; I didn’t sleep in, its ... I’ve been to early mass.”
“Walked?” exclaimed Arnold. “Lord!”
“Oh, Mr. Munroe, I’m so sorry!” cried the Doña, “you should have told me last night ... you see, I didn’t know you were a Catholic.”
“I bet you don’t know what ‘to sleep in’ means,” Rory whispered to Concha.