“Quite well,” he said. “He always is.”
“Yes, that is so like him,” said she. “But, really, have you any strain of insanity in your very extraordinary family? My darlings, did I kick you? Oh, Sahara, naughty! All that book, and I hadn’t read it. Commandez du thé, Hortense. So convenient, she doesn’t know a word of English. Did you ever see such a murderish-looking woman? But she can make hats out of a tooth-brush and some waste-paper. Some day she will kill me for my diamonds, and find out afterwards that they are paste. Then she will be sorry, and so shall I. Do attend, monster. Can you tell me why Helen, head over ears in love with him,—that was why I brought them together,—should behave like that? Shutting herself up with the bear and that dreadful aunt of yours who plays Patience. And Frank thinks, in some confused way, that it is so beautiful. He looks so funny when Helen’s name is mentioned, rather like a widower, who hears a hymn-tune in four sharps on Sunday evening. So frightfully old-fashioned, that sort of thing. Those two find a sort of spiritual thrill in standing a hundred miles apart and shouting ‘Caro mio! O Carissima!’ to each other at the tops of their voices. I can’t bear that sort of Platonic love. Yes, you Challoners are all mad. If Becky Sharp lived with Savonarola in a grand piano, you would find a little Challoner crying on the drawing-room carpet one morning.”
“Why Becky Sharp?” he inquired, parenthetically.
“Only to add a little joie-de-vivre. No imputation on your morals.”
Lady Sunningdale struggled to a sitting attitude on the bed. Several French books flopped to the ground, and were instantly worried by the dogs: Zó’hár and A Rebours flew in gnawed fragments about the room.
Martin agreed with Lady Sunningdale in the view she took of Helen’s conduct, but he felt bound to defend his sister against so wild an attack.
“Anyhow, she’s doing a difficult thing because she thinks it right,” he said. “Give her credit for the difficulty.”
“Difficult?” cried Lady Sunningdale. “There is no merit in doing a difficult thing just because it’s difficult. I might just as well try to stand on my head in the drawing-room and say to my wondering guests, ‘Admire me, please. Though foolish, this is difficult, and is only accomplished by prayer and fasting.’ Is that profane? I think it must be, because my father was a Nonconformist, and whenever I say anything without thinking, it is nearly sure to be a reminiscence of my unhappy childish days, and comes out of the Bible. But it doesn’t prove that a thing is the least worth doing because it is difficult. She is standing on her head, then? And in a parsonage, too!”
“Yes, it amounts to that,” said Martin. “But with a moral purpose.”
There was a discreet tap at the door and Hortense entered with tea.