THE BEST OF THINGS.
"The New Poor?" said Holder, like myself, one of them. "Nonsense. There are none. There are people who will not use their imaginations, of course. They are poor, but not newly so. This so-called new poverty doesn't touch me. True, the money I make will not go so far as it used to, but my imagination goes very much farther. I have trained it, encouraged it, my wife's and boy's too. We have cast off the absurd restraints imposed by the law of probability. In the old days, when I used to think, say, of motors, I was invariably badgered by the spectre of improbability. I used to think of a four-hundred-pound car, or perhaps, in a daring moment, my thoughts would creep timidly, like mice out into a still kitchen, on to the six-hundred-pound plane, only to scurry back to the lower plane almost instantly. Now I've thrown all that overboard. Rubbish! When I think of motors I think in terms of Rolls-Royces. Why think cheaply? It's a poor imagination that won't run to a six-cylinder car at least. Strictly, I shall never own a real motor scooter. What of it? In my mind I use Rolls-Royces. We've rather worked the thing up at home. Come and dine with us and see for yourself."
We had sausages and mashed potatoes, with water. And I may say that never have I enjoyed a meal more. You see, Holder kept on telling us all the time about the famous dinner which now, owing to the War, we should never really eat, but which we were at perfect liberty to imagine we were eating. I am sorry you were not there. The hors d'œuvres! Holder describes hors d'œuvres better than any man I know. Oh, masterly, the colour ... Ruskin, perhaps. Anyhow, he carried us quite away.
His wife chose oysters. His description of oysters, instantly furnished, was a little gem—a pearl, silver-grey, so much so that I too chose oysters. His little boy, Dickie, chose caviare; but he really did not care for it. He bit on a piece of button in his sausage, poor child. That was why he did not appreciate the caviare. But Holder distracted his mind with some very remarkable mushroom soup—potage de champignons—a brilliant word-sketch. We all chose it.
For fish there was saus—pardon me, sole. The little lad, Dickie, chose salmon; but Holder reminded him that he had had salmon the previous evening; it was out of season in any case, and he described how the sole tasted that probably Dickie will never touch. The boy appeared to enjoy it immensely.
I think it was the game, simple roast partridges, exquisitely cooked, which Mrs. Holder enjoyed most. Her eyes were frankly shining as she pensively chewed the third quarter of her sausage, and she thrilled to the juices of the partridge of the dinner she could no longer hope really to eat, but which Holder, thank God, would often describe, at any rate until a tax is put on conversation. Even then something might be done—deaf and dumb language, possibly—an evasion, I admit, but even the New Poor must eat occasionally.
We all enjoyed the game course most, with the exception of Dickie. The lad had finished his sausage, and mashed potato alone is not inspiring. But that great man, Holder, noticed it in time, and he satisfied the child with a word-painting of the brown crisp skin of cooked goose. Then we drank some magnificent wine. Holder ransacked the English language for it. A vivifying champagne.
But enough of food, or you will think we were gourmands. None of us cared for any sweets after such a meal. And that is what I like about the Holders: with them enough is as good as the feast they will never have.
After dinner we smoked a very fine cigar in the imaginary conservatory which Holder has just run up, and I have rarely, if ever, heard a better description of men smoking cigars in a conservatory. Next, Holder played me a fast game of billiards. He allowed me to choose my own table, and I picked the most expensive in the catalogue. Dickie marked for us. Then he went to bed. I heard his father whisper a most convincing description of eiderdowns and real wool blankets when he kissed him. He is only a very little boy—big blue eyes, you know, like a girl's; they watered a little. Excitement....
It was a clear moonlit night with a touch of frost in the air, so Mrs. Holder rang for the visionary footman, a good-looking, most willing, sensible man, according to Holder's quick portrait of him, who piled up some great logs on a bank of coals of a positively fantastic size, and we gathered round to enjoy a run in the brand-new, latest model Rolls-Royce which is one of the special things which Holder will never possess in this world. Ah, but she was a queen of cars, and the best of cars always run better at night. I wonder why. So smoothly silky, so dreamily sweet-running, a pouring of cream! I wish I could convey to you the satin sound of her transmission, the low golden purr of her gears, the fanning of her velvet wings—wheels, that is. I would sooner ride in that verbal car of Holder's than walk round the real backyard that is my own, unless I fall behind with the rent, as I begin to fear I shall....
Down the dreamy moon-drenched highways, across the magic silver-flecked moors, we climbed on the wings of the peregrine to the keen, cold uplands, soared awhile, then dropped to the warm and sheltered valley and so home again. We felt the radiator, Holder and I, and it was quite cool. She will never boil on a stiff hill. Mrs. Holder was glowing from her ride; for an instant she looked pink and pretty; she had lost that wistful pinched look.
I went inside for a phrase or so of Holder's admirable idea of what cherry brandy should be. We chatted for a little about the estate that he will never purchase, and then I left, having promised to go round there to-morrow for a little shooting. It will be hot work among the pheasants if Holder has not lost his voice.
He and his wife came down the drive to the entrance-gates with me.
"Good-night," they said; "we're glad you've enjoyed yourself."
Holder was a little hoarse, for he is a generous host. I think too the motor run had tired them both, for their faces were again a little haggard; and the wind had brought tears to the eyes of Mrs. Holder.
So I said good-bye to them—and to Jack, their elder boy, whom they will never see again. He lies in France. But, you understand, it was as if he had been with us all again for a little while that evening.
