The Osbornes

by E. F. Benson

“I don’t think it was in the least,” said he. “You said it had to be faced, and I think I’ve given it a facer, at least the example of the governor and the mater has. Besides, there are other things that will colour up the gray-matter, children, we hope, sons going to school and daughters growing up.”

Again Dora knew that he spoke with excellent sense, but again she felt that it was not sense she wanted, so much as lovers’ nonsense, which is more essentially real than any sense. She wanted something airy, romantic, golden.... And then she looked at him again, and her wants faded from her. He brought her himself. She gave a little sigh and raised herself till her face was on a level with his.

“O Claude, I should be a donkey, if I was not content,” she said.

“Lord, there’d be a pair of us then, if I wasn’t,” said he.

Sunday succeeded and breakfast in consequence was put an hour earlier so that any servant in the house could go to church. Mr. Osborne himself, though the day was already of scorching heat, came down in a black frock-coat suit of broadcloth, and his wife rustled in black satin. It was clearly expected that all their guests would go also, for at half-past ten a stream of vehicles drove to the door past the window of the smoking-room.

“Got to start early,” said he, “so that the men may put up the cattle and come too, but there’s no call for you gentlemen to put out your cigars. The ladies won’t mind a whiff of tobacco in the open air, Sir Thomas, and the church is but a step outside the Park gates, so that you can sit and finish there. There are the ladies assembling. Time to go: never keep the fair sex waiting, hey? or else the most indulgent of them will turn a cold shoulder.”

The church, as Mr. Osborne had said, was but a stone’s throw beyond the Park gates, and as they all arrived at twenty minutes to eleven there was time, before the groaning of the organ summoned them in, to have a turn under the trees and finish the cigars that had barely been begun.

It had been so taken for granted that everybody was coming to church that out of all the party there was only one absentee, namely, Austell, to whose room Mr. Osborne had sent with inquiries if he was ready, and the suggestion to send back the motor for him if he was not. But he certainly was not ready and the motor had not gone back for him, since he had said that he was not very well. Otherwise the whole of the party were there, and by degrees strayed into church. Mrs. Osborne had gone there at once from the carriage with Lady Austell, in order to escape from the heat, and they were already seated in the big square family pew which belonged to the house, when the others began to come in. Sir Thomas and Mr. Osborne were the last, because they had been discussing the recent rise in the price of tin up till the last moment. They entered, indeed, so shortly before the procession of four choir boys, two men and the vicar, that Mr. Osborne had barely time to sit down by his wife in the place she always kept for him next her in church, after standing up and putting his face in his hat, before he had to stand up again. Sir Thomas sat next Lady Austell. The two looked rather like a codfish in conjunction with a withered lily.

The pew was four-sided, the fourth side opening into the body of the church through the easternmost of the arches of the south aisle. In the centre of it was a very beautiful alabaster monument to the first earl and his wife, while the window was of exquisite early German glass to the memory of the second. Elsewhere in numbers round the walls were other smaller tablets, some bearing medallions, others merely catalogues of the cardinal virtues with which the deceased were blessed, but the whole place was historical, established. And here this morning sat Mr. Osborne and his family and friends, among whom were Lady Austell and her daughter, who was going to join together the two families. She sat just opposite Claude, and of them all, he alone to the most observant eye was ambiguous. He might as well, so far as appearance went, have been of the Austells as of the Osbornes.

Dora, it was to be feared, was not very attentive, and her face wore that peculiarly rapt look, which, as May Thurston had once told her, was a certain indication that she was not thinking about what was going on. As far as the service of the church went that was true; she was completely occupied with the occupants of the pew. The sermon was in progress and her mother sat with eyes mournfully fixed on the Elizabethan monument in the centre, just as if the first earl had been her husband, while next her Sir Thomas had his eyes fixed on nothing at all, for they were tightly closed. His wife, next to him, and round the corner, made futile little attempts to rouse him to consciousness again, by pretending to put her parasol in a more convenient place, so that it should incidentally hit his foot. This, eventually, she succeeded in doing, and he opened one eye and rolled it drowsily and reproachfully at Lady Austell, as if she had interrupted some celestial reverie. Then he closed it again.