‘Just tell Mamma that,’ said he, rising. ‘That’s what I want her to understand.’
The prospect of Mr Silverdale’s presence at dinner that night had filled Alice with secret and gentle flutterings, and accounted for the fact that she wore her amethyst cross and practised several of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words before evening service, in case she was asked to play after dinner. She reaped her due reward for these prudent steps, since Mr Silverdale expressed his admiration for amethysts at dinner, and afterwards came and sat close by the piano, beating time with scarcely perceptible movements of a slim white hand, not in the manner of one assisting her with the rhythm, but as if he himself pulsated with it. He had produced an extraordinarily unfavourable impression on John by constantly calling him by his Christian name, by talking about Tom Brown when he heard he was at Rugby, and by using such fragments of schoolboy slang as he happened to recollect from his boyish days. These in the rapidly changing vernacular of schoolboys were now chiefly out of date, but John saw quite clearly that the design was to be ‘boys together,’ and despised him accordingly. On Mr Keeling he produced merely the impression of a very ladylike young man of slightly inane disposition, and as Hugh was away, spending the evening at the house of his fiancée, Mr Silverdale was thrown on the hands of the ladies for mutual entertainment. With them he succeeded as signally as he had failed with John, saying that though preaching a sermon might be dry work for his hearers it was hungry work for the performer, eating salmon mayonnaise with great gusto, and remarking across the table to John, ‘Jolly good grub, isn’t it, John?’ a remark that endeared him to Mrs Keeling, though it made John feel slightly sick, and caused him to leave in a pointed manner on his plate the portion of the ‘good grub’ which he had not yet consumed. Like a wise tactician, therefore, Mr Silverdale abandoned the impregnable, and delivered his assaults where he was more likely to be successful. He had an eager and joyful manner, as of one who found the world an excellent joke.
‘Such a scolding as I had before church from my housekeeper,’ he said, ‘because I didn’t eat the buttered scones she sent me up for tea. I know some one who would have polished them off, eh, John?’
John’s eye, which had exactly as much expression in it as a dead codfish’s, cowed him for a moment, but he quickly recovered.
‘Such a scolding!’ he said. ‘She said I didn’t take sufficient care of myself, and naturally I told her that I had so many others to look after that I must take my turn with the rest. But when I told her that Mrs Keeling was going to take care of me this evening, she thought no more about the scones I hadn’t eaten! She knew I should be well looked after.’
Mrs Keeling had had a good nap before dinner, and her geniality had quite returned. She had also seen that Mrs Bellaway was right, and that there was plenty of mayonnaise.
‘Well, that does put me in a responsible position,’ she said. ‘At least I must insist on your having just a morsel more of the mayonnaise before they take it away. It’s a very simple dinner I’m giving you to-night: there’s but a chicken and a slice of cold meat and a meringue and a savoury to follow.’
Mr Silverdale laughed gleefully.
‘Dear me, this is absolute starvation,’ he exclaimed. ‘I should have eaten my scones.’