“Dear Mrs. Osborne,” she said. “How glad I am! Quite charming. A family party!”
“Clans all gathered now, Mrs. O.,” said her husband. “Let’s have a bit of dinner.”
The dinner was served throughout on silver; a grove of wine glasses stood at the right hand of each guest. In deference to Alfred’s lumbago all windows were closed, and the atmosphere soon became very warm and comfortable indeed. An immense glass chandelier hanging above the table, and studded with electric lights, was the chief author of illumination, but clumps of other lights were on the walls, and each picture had its separate lamp. Sir Thomas’s courtier-like speeches soon ceased, and he was content to eat and listen to the cultured conversation that flowed from Mrs. Per’s lips, while his face gradually deepened in colour to a healthy crimson and his capacity for bowing must certainly have ceased also. He asked the butler, whom he called “waiter,” which was the year of each particular vintage that was so lavishly pressed upon him, and occasionally, after sipping it, interrupted the welling of the cool springs of culture to look codfish-like up the table toward Mr. Osborne, and say, “Capital ninety-two, this.” And then Mrs. Per would begin again. Her talk was like the flowing of a syphon; it stopped so long only as you put your finger on the end of it, but the finger removed, it continued, uninterrupted, pellucid, without haste or pause. She was the daughter of a most respectable solicitor in Sheffield, whose father and grandfather had been equally highly thought of, and Per openly acknowledged that some of the most chaste designs in the famous ornamental tinware were the fruits of her pencil. But with the modesty of true genius she seldom spoke of drawing, though she was so much wrapped up in art, but discussed its kindred manifestations, and in particular the drama.
She gave a sweet little laugh.
“Oh, Sir Thomas, you flatter me,” she said in response to some gross and preposterous compliment about her age, while he was waiting for a second helping of broiled ham, to which Mrs. Osborne had successfully tempted him. “Indeed, you flatter me. I am quite old enough to remember Irving’s ‘Hamlet.’ What an inspired performance! It made me quite ill, from nervous exhaustion, for a week. I had a silly little schoolgirl ‘Hamlet’ of my own—yes, I will allow I was at school, though nearly on the point of leaving, and I assure you Irving’s ‘Hamlet’ killed it, annihilated it, made it—is it naughty of me?—made it stillborn. It was as if it had never lived. How noble looking he was!”
Sir Thomas raised his eyes towards Mrs. Osborne. “Best peach-fed ham I ever came across,” he said. “Wonderful man, wasn’t he, Mrs. Percy? Great artist, eh?”
Dora from opposite had heard the end of this.
“Claude, dear,” she said, “who is that nice fat man? I never saw anybody like his dinner so much. What an angel! It is funny to me, you know, coming back here and finding you of all people in that heavenly car, ready to drive me up from the station. We didn’t go quite the shortest way, did we? Last time I was here there was only our old pony-trap to take me and my luggage, so I had to walk. And do you know, Mrs. Osborne has put me in my own room.”
Claude turned towards her. In spite of the awful heat caused by the shut windows and the rich exhalation of roast meats, he was still perfectly cool.
“I did that pretty well then?” he said. “Do you remember my asking you about the house, and where your room was, and all that? So you never guessed why I asked? It was just that you might have your old room again. Such a business as there was with the mater. She said you ought to be on the first landing, where those big handsome rooms are. But I said ‘No.’ Give Dora the room on the second floor beyond the old school room, and you won’t hear any complaints.”