The Osbornes

by E. F. Benson

“There’s more on your mind yet, Eddie, my dear,” she said. “Do you think I’ve lived with you these years and seen you off your victuals by day and heard you tossing and turning in your bed at night without getting to know when you’ve told me all, or when you’ve got something further unbeknown to me yet? It’s not me only you’re thinking of.”

Mr. Osborne beamed on his wife.

“Well, if you aren’t right every time,” he said. “You’ve guessed it all I reckon. Yes, it’s Claude. I doubt whether I didn’t make a mistake about Claude at the beginning, and whether we shouldn’t have done better to put him into the business like Percy, and let Alfred leave him his money or not just as he liked. But there, if we made a mistake, it’s our business to make the best we can of it now. But whenever I see the boy I think we did the right thing by him, and we’ve got to go on doing the right thing. And if a young fellow has been to Eton and Cambridge, and is going to be as rich a man and richer nor his father was, without having to do a stroke of work for it, I ask you, Mrs. O., what’s he to do with himself in Sheffield? Of course, he could go to London and work at the law or go into the Army or adopt any other of the ways of wasting time and doing nothing, without having it cast up at you, but think of the chance he gets, if you and I settle in London and have a country house as well, so that he can ask his friends down for a bit of shooting or whatever’s on, and bring them home to dine, and stop for his mother’s dance or concert, or whatever you have named for such a day.”

He paused a moment.

“He’ll be home for good now in a month’s time, and I should like to be able to say to him, ‘Claude, my boy, there’s no need for you to think how you’ll occupy yourself in Sheffield for your vacation, for we’ll soon be moving on. Mother and I’—that’s what I shall say—you understand—‘have come to an agreement, and there’ll be a house for you in Grosvenor Square, perhaps, or in Park Lane to bring your friends to, and a shooting box somewhere else, so that whether it’s Lord This or the Honourable That, you can bring them down and find a welcome, and a bird or two to shoot at, and the pick of the London girls for you to dance with.’”

“Eh, Edward, you talk as if the thing was done,” said his wife.

“Well, so it is, if you and I make up our minds to it. And you guessed right; it’s a particular feeling I’ve always had about Claude. Eton and Cambridge may have made a change in him, or it may be that he was something different all along. But to see him come into a room, into that smoking room for instance at the Club. Why, it’s as if the whole place belonged to him, it is, if only he cared to claim it. And the very waiters know the difference: and I warrant you there’s always an evening paper ready for him, whoever has to go without. But in London he’ll find friends, yes, and a girl to marry him, I wager you, whose folk came over with the Conqueror. Maria, I should like to speak of my son-in-law the Earl, or the Countess my boy’s mother-in-law. There’s a deal in a name if you can get hold of the right one.”

Mrs. Osborne gave a great sigh, and looked at her rings, and as she sighed the row of pearls that hung over her ample bosom rose and fell. There was a great deal in what Edward had said, and that which concerned Claude appealed to her most. She had felt it all again and again, and again and again she had wished, content though she was with the very comfortable circumstances of her life, that they had some other house in which to welcome him home for his vacation. She felt he was her own son at heart, but his manners were such! It was Claude all over to behave as if the whole room belonged to him, should he choose to claim it. She was devoted to Percy, but Percy, she well knew, felt as she did when he was going out to dinner, and thought about what he should say, and looked to see if his hair was tidy, and hoped he hadn’t left his handkerchief behind. But Claude seemed to know that everything was all right, with him, or if it wasn’t he didn’t care. Once on a solemn occasion, when a Royal visitor was in Sheffield, the whole family had been bidden to lunch with the mayor, and Claude had discovered in the middle of lunch that he hadn’t got a pocket-handkerchief, and the day was enough to make anybody persp——. And then in thought Mrs. Osborne checked again, and said to herself “action of the skin.” But Claude, though hot, had been as cool as a cucumber. He just stopped a waiter who was going by and said, “Please send out to the nearest shop and get me a handkerchief.” Mrs. Osborne would never have dared to do that, and if she had, she felt that the handkerchief wouldn’t have come. But in five minutes Claude had his, “and never paid for it neither,” thought Mr. Osborne to himself in a mixed outburst of pride and misgiving. Claude wanted a handkerchief and it came. He didn’t bother about it.

But the whole suggestion of giving up Sheffield where she was so friendly and pleasant with so many local magnates and their wives, and launching into the dim unplumbed sea of London was bewildering though exciting. She had no doubts about Edward; wherever Edward was he would do his part; she was only doubtful about her own. And these doubts were not of durable quality, while the reflections about Claude were durable in texture. Once a friend of Claude’s at Cambridge had come to stay at the brown stone house, and it had all been very awkward. He was an honourable, too, and his father was a lord, and though he was very quiet and polite, Mrs. Osborne had seen that something was wrong from the first. The most carefully planned dinners had been offered him, and Edward had brought out the Chateau Yquem, which was rarely touched, and this young man had eaten and drunk as if “it was nothing particular.” Mrs. Osborne had tried to console herself with the thought that he didn’t think much of his victuals, whatever they were, but it was not that he refused dishes. He just ate them all, and said no more about it. And he had been regaled with two dinner parties during the three days he was with them, to which all sorts of Aldermen and their wives and daughters had been bidden. She had not forgotten his rank either, for though there were two knights and their wives present at one of these dinners, and at the other two knights and a baronet, he had taken her in on both occasions. Nor was their conversation wholly satisfactory, for though Mrs. Osborne had the Morning Post brought up to her room with her early tea, while the young man was there, in order that she might be up to date with the movements and doings of the nobility, she had extraordinarily bad luck, since the bankruptcy case that was going on was concerned with the affairs of his sister and her husband, and the memorial service at St. James’s proved to be coincident with the obsequies of his great-uncle. Mrs. Osborne felt that these things would not happen when they were in the midst of everything in town.

So the momentous decision had been made and two strenuous years had followed, during which time Mr. Osborne had settled to adopt (as became a man of property in these Socialistic days) the Conservative cause in politics, and after one defeat to get himself returned for one of the divisions of Surrey. During that time, too, No. 92 Park Lane had been pulled down and by amalgamation with No. 93, been built up again in a style that enabled Mrs. O. to have her friends to dine, with a bit of a dance afterward or Caruso to sing, without it being necessary for late comers to huddle together on the stairs where they could not hear a note, or stand in the doorway of the ballroom without being able to get in, or to dance if they did. And though, as has been stated, the years had been strenuous and the struggle continuous, neither Mrs. Osborne nor her husband ever felt that it was a losing game that they were playing. Apart from this one defeat in the Conservative interest, and one dismal attempt at a dance in the house that they had taken before No. 92 was ready, to which eight men came (all told and counting Percy) they had swiftly and steadily mounted. For true to the principles on which her husband had amassed so large a fortune, all that Mrs. Osborne offered was of the very best, or at any rate of the sort which momentarily most attracted. The singer who was most in vogue sang at her concerts, or the heels that were most admired danced there, and beyond doubt the extreme pleasure that the excellent woman took in her own hospitality contributed largely to its success. She was no careworn anxious-eyed hostess, but bubbled with good-humour, was genuinely glad to see the world fill her rooms, and always welcomed the suggestion that any guest should bring a friend, whose name was instantly entered by her admirable secretary on her visiting list.