The Duchess walked in with great deliberation, and seated herself, upright and stately, in Molly’s own chair, exactly as she was accustomed to do in one of her poor people’s cottages when about to admonish a drunken husband or a slatternly wife. The poor people, who knew that the lecture was really an excuse offered by the Duchess to her own conscience for the forgiveness and solid kindness that were to follow, always listened meekly enough. Unfortunately Molly did not know anything except that she was on her defence. These court martial airs roused her spirit, and she sailed across the room with a flushed face, and cast herself down with insolent negligence on the settle.
“I have been a district visitor in this neighbourhood for some years. I don’t know whether you were aware of it when you took this house.”
“No,” said Molly, “I wasn’t. But I don’t think I should have had any objection.”
The Duchess frowned. She had come, not prepared to make peace, perhaps, but disposed to entertain a truce. Now the enemy seemed not to desire either peace or truce.
“I asked because I could not understand my son’s choice of such a residence. Does he really mean to stay here?”
“You must ask him that. I suppose he will leave it when I do—not before.”
The Duchess, routed from her own position, was obliged to accept Molly’s.
“Why have you brought him here? Do you wish him to forfeit his place in society altogether?”
“I don’t know what society you mean. Our friends are visiting us here as usual, and they think the place charming. If it keeps away frumps and bores, so much the better.”
Caroline was confounded. In her mind the common notions of her generation on the subjects of piety, morality, and social propriety were inextricably blended. Quite unconsciously to herself she had included in her scheme for Alistair’s salvation the possession of a big Cubitt-built house in Eaton Square, with menservants eating five substantial meals a day in the basement, and doing little else; a carriage and pair, conveying him and his wife to an endless round of serious entertainments in other Cubitt-built houses, wherein similar menservants ate similar meals; the directorship of some respectable railway or insurance company to occupy his mind; a seat on a hospital committee by way of good works; and, above all, a stately pew furnished with red cushions and hassocks, in which he would be seen regularly every Sunday morning, carrying the glossiest of silk hats and wearing the straightest of frock-coats. No doubt she placed first of all that spiritual change which she deemed necessary to all men, but she believed that if Alistair were once converted all these other things would be added unto him, and perhaps she also believed, without being conscious of it, that if the other things were present the conversion would be added.