If Miss Merrick had a faculty for disconcerting her aunt, her aunt had an equal faculty for “drawing” her father. His eye did not turn from the landscape, but it became more fixed and more pleasant as he said, “Ah, my dear Kate, rust, you know, is a matter of environment, and without my good little whetstone here I don’t fancy that the combined efforts of our not highly intelligent country people could save me from it—when I go among them. A mental fog, a stagnant dulness, you know, affect one in spite of one’s resolve to keep one’s steel bright. Up here we have our own little space of dry, bracing air—we keep one another sharpened, don’t we, Felicia? Rather uncomfortably sharpened, we sometimes find, when we come down from our tiny Parnassus.”
Smiling, speaking in his most leisurely tones, Mr. Merrick laid his arm around his daughter’s shoulders. She did not emphasize the effectiveness of the caress by returning it, or even by looking up, though her slight smile seemed to claim for his speech a jocular intention, while disavowing its magnificent complacency.
Mrs. Merrick’s sudden flush made evident her nose’s amelioration. “It is well to have the gift of idealization, Austin—it makes life far more comfortable. Will you risk rust, then, in coming to us, for a week?” The irony of her tone was not easy.
“One moment, Kate.” Mr. Merrick, still leaning on his daughter’s shoulder, stretched out a demonstrative forefinger. “Do you see that quite delightful effect—that group of trees melting against the sky—“ It was to Felicia alone that he spoke, naming a French painter of whom Mrs. Merrick had never heard. “He could do it; it’s like one of his smiling bits.” His eye still dwelt upon it as he said, “I am rather busy just now, Kate. I have a great deal of reading on hand. I am studying a rather obscure phase of that most obscure thing—German idealism; what caves they creep into, poor fellows! Any depth rather than face the sun, the unpleasant sun;—I can’t leave just now.”
“But a holiday would do you good.” Mrs. Merrick was forced to some urgency. Much as she wished this exasperating brother-in-law of hers to feel that she dispensed favours, she seldom met him in one of these sourly suave contests without being made to feel that she was receiving one. Indeed, her odd sceptical, scoffing brother-in-law, his solitude, his disdain, and his pagan-looking house as a background, was a figure she could not afford to miss from her parties—parties often so painfully scraped together—painfully commonplace when scraped. This year her party was surprisingly significant, but even in its midst Austin would count well as her appendage—would certainly redeem her from her husband’s heavy conformity, that simply counted for nothing. He impressed her, and she imagined that he must impress other people.
“I have a really interesting group,” she said, and she recited the list, adding, “Mr. Jones particularly wants to meet you. He found your book so suggestive—“ Mrs. Merrick, in pinching circumstances, was careless of consistency; she had no appearances to keep up before Felicia.
“Jones? Ah, yes,” Mr. Merrick repeated with benignity.
“A clever man, you know.”
“Not bad,” Mr. Merrick owned, indulgent in discriminating gravity. “That little book of his on Comte wasn’t half bad; you remember it, Felicia?”
Mrs. Merrick had not heard of the book on Comte; it was an added discomfiture. “You will come, then?” She gathered up her reins.