An Autumn Sowing

by E. F. Benson

‘But it isn’t,’ said Alice. ‘I can’t express it, but I can feel it. I know I should agree with Miss Propert and Lord Inverbroom about it. What did Miss Propert say?’

‘Well, talking of waste of time,’ observed Lady Keeling indignantly, ‘I can’t think of any worse waste than caring to know what Miss Propert said.’

Keeling turned to her.

‘Perhaps you can’t,’ he said, ‘and you’d better have your nap. That won’t be waste of time. You’re tired with talking, and I’m sure I am too.’

He left the room without more words, and Lady Keeling settled another cushion against what must be called the small of her back.

‘Your father’s served them out well,’ she said. ‘That’s the way to get on. To think of their not considering him good enough for their Club. He has shown his spirit very properly. But the idea of Miss Propert telling him what’s right and what isn’t, on twenty-five shillings a week.’

‘I can’t bear to think of Mr Silverdale not having his rubber of bridge now and then,’ said Alice. ‘It was such a refreshment to him.’

Keeling had intended to pass an hour among his books to wash off the scum, so to speak, of this atrocious conversation, but when he got to his library, and had taken down his new edition of Omar Khayyam, which Charles Propert had induced him to buy, he found it could give him very little emotion. He was aware of the exquisite type, of the strange sensuous wood-cuts that somehow affected him like a subtle odour, of the beautiful binding, and not least of the text itself, but all these perfections were no more than presented to him; they did not penetrate. He could not rid himself of the scum; the odiousness of his wife’s approbation would not be washed off. And what made it cling was the fact that she had divined him correctly, had rejoiced at his ‘serving the Club out.’ It was just that which Norah deprecated, and he felt that Lord Inverbroom’s complete silence on the point, his forbearance to hint ever so faintly that perhaps Keeling would reconsider his action, expressed disapprobation as eloquently as Norah’s phrase, which he had finished for her, had done. It was a caddish act, that was what they both thought about it, and Alice, when she had finished her nonsense about Mr Silverdale’s rubber of bridge, had a similar protest in her mind. He did not rate poor Alice’s mind at any high figure; it was but the fact that she was allied to the other two, and opposed to her mother, that added a little weight to her opinion.

He wanted to be considered a gentleman, and when others declined to receive him as such, he had but justified their verdict by behaving like a cad.... He was a cad, here was the truth of it, as it struck him now, and that was why he had behaved like one.

He shut his meaningless book, now intensely disliking the step he had taken, which at the time had seemed so smart a rejoinder. Probably if at this moment Lord Inverbroom had appeared, asking him to cancel it, he would have done so. But that was exactly what it was certain Lord Inverbroom would not do. There remained Norah; he wondered whether Norah would refer to it again. Probably not: he had made clear that he thought the offering of her opinion was a great impertinence. And now to his annoyance he remembered that his wife had also considered it as such. Again she agreed with him, and again the fact of her concurrence made him lose confidence in the justice of his own view. He had instantly acquitted Norah of deliberate impertinence; now he reconsidered whether it had been an impertinence at all.... What if it was the simple desire of a friend to save a friend from a blunder, an unworthiness?