The Osbornes

by E. F. Benson

Still in Sheffield, Mr. Osborne had, after the formation of the company, seen an extraordinary increase in business, with the result that his income, already scarcely respectable, mounted and mounted. Years ago he had built a chapel of corrugated iron outside and pitch-pine inside in the middle of that district of the town which had become his and was enstreeted with the houses of his workmen, and now he turned the corrugated building into a reading room, as soon as ever the tall Gothic church with which he had superseded it was ready for use. A princess had come to the opening of it, and had declared the discarded church to be a reading room, and there was really nothing more to do in Sheffield, except to say that he did not wish to become a knight. Mr. Osborne had no opinion of knights: knighthood in his mind was the bottom shelf of a structure, where, if he took a place, it might easily become a permanent one. But he had no idea of accepting a bottom place on the shelves. With his natural shrewdness he said that he had done nothing to deserve it. But he winked in a manner that anticipated familiarity toward shelves that were higher. He had not done with the question of shelves yet, though he had nothing to say to the lowest one.

It must not be supposed that because he had retired from active connection with the hardware business, his mind slackened. The exact contrary was the case. There was no longer any need for him to exercise that shrewd member on hardware, and it only followed that the thought he had previously given to hardware was directed into other channels. He thought things over very carefully as was his habit, before taking any step, summed up his work in Sheffield, settled that a knighthood was not adequate to reward him for what he had already done, but concluded that he had nothing more to do in Sheffield, just for the moment. And having come to that conclusion he had a long talk with Mrs. O. in her boudoir, where she always went after breakfast to see cook and write her letters. But that morning cook waited downstairs in her clean apron long after Mrs. Osborne had gone to her boudoir, expecting every moment to hear her bell, and no bell sounded. For more weighty matters were being debated than the question of dinner, and at first when Mr. Osborne broached the subject his wife felt struck of a heap.

“Well, Mrs. O., it’s for you to settle,” he said, “and if you’re satisfied to remain in Sheffield, why in Sheffield we remain, old lady, and that’s the last word you shall hear from me on the subject. But there’s a deal to be considered and I’ll just put the points before you again. There’s yourself to lead off with. You like seeing your friends at dinner and giving them of the best and so do I. Well, for all I can learn there’s a deal more of that going on in London where you can have your twenty people to dinner every night if you have a mind, and a hundred to dance to your fiddles afterward. And I’m much mistaken, should we agree to leave Sheffield and set up in town, if Mrs. O.’s parties don’t make some handsome paragraphs in the Morning Post before long.”

“Lor’, to think of that,” said Mrs. Osborne reflectively. She did not generally employ that interjection, which she thought rather common, and even now, though she was so absorbed, she corrected herself and said “There, to think of that.”

“But mind you, my dear,” continued Mr. Osborne, “if we go to town, and have a big house in the country, as per the scheme I’ve been putting before you, we don’t do it to take our ease, and just sit in a barouche and drive round the Park to fill up the time to luncheon. I shall have my work to do, and it’s you who must be helping me to get on, as you’ve always done, God bless you Maria, and fine and busy it will make you. There’s a county council in London as well as in Sheffield, and there’s a House of Parliament in London which there isn’t here. No, my dear, if we go to London it won’t be for a life of ease, for I expect work suits us both better, and there’s plenty of work left in us both yet. Give us ten years more work, and then if you like we’ll get into our Bath chairs, and comb out the fleece of the poodle, and think what a busy couple we are.”

Mr. Osborne got up and shuffled to the window in his carpet slippers. They had been worked and presented to him by his wife on his last birthday and this had been a great surprise, as she had told him throughout that they were destined for Percy. At this moment they suggested something to him.

“Look at me already, my dear!” he said. “What should I have thought ten years ago if I had seen myself here in your boudoir at eleven of the morning in carpet slippers instead of being at work in my shirt sleeves this last three hours. ‘Eddie,’ I should have said to myself, ‘you’re getting a fat, lazy old man with years of work in you yet.’ And, by Gad, Mrs. O., I should have been right. Give me a good dinner, but let me get an appetite for it, though, thank God, my appetite’s good enough yet.’ But let me feel I earn it.”

Mrs. Osborne got up from her davenport and came and stood by her husband in the window. In front of her stretched the broad immaculate gravel walk bordered by a long riband bed of lobelias, calceolarias and geraniums. Beyond that was the weedless tennis lawn, with its brand new net, where one of the very numerous gardeners was even now marking out the court with the machine that Mr. Osborne had invented and patented the year before he retired from entire control of his business, and which sold in ever increasing quantities. Below, the ground fell rapidly away and not half a mile off the long straggling rows of workmen’s houses between which ran cobbled roads and frequent electric trams, stretched unbroken into the town. Of late years it had grown very rapidly in the direction of this brown stone house, and with its growth the fogs and smoky vapours had increased so that it was seldom, as on this morning, that they could see from the windows the tall and very solid tower of the Gothic church that had supplanted the one of corrugated iron. He looked out over this with his wife’s hand in his for a moment in silence.

“I don’t know how it is with you, my dear,” he said, “but every now and then a feeling comes over me which I can’t account for or resist. And the feeling that’s been coming over me this last month agone, is that me and Sheffield’s done all the work we’re going to do together. But there are plenty of days of work for us both yet, but not together. Look at that there quarter, my dear, right from where the New Lane houses begin to where’s the big chimney of the works behind the church. I made that, as well you know, and it’s paid me well to do it, and it’s paid Sheffield to have me to do it. Not an ounce of bad material, to my knowledge, has gone into the factory gates, and not an ounce of bad workmanship has come out of them. I’ve paid high for first-class materials, and I seen that I got them. I’ve turned out none but honest goods what’ll do the work I guarantee them for, and last you ten times as long as inferior stuff, as you and cook know, since there’s not a pot or a pan in your kitchen, my dear, but what came from the shops. And I’ve made my fortune over it, and that’s over, so I take it, and what’s the sense of my sitting on top of a hill, just to look at my calceolarias and get an appetite for dinner by running about that court there? But if you’ve got a fancy for staying in Sheffield, as I say, this is the last word I speak on the subject.”

Mrs. Osborne nodded at him and pressed his arm, as he poured out these gratifying recollections in his rather hoarse voice.