"Quite, dearest. We cannot be too careful. Besides we long ago agreed to be modern and sanitary in our manners."
"Won't you smoke?"
"Well, perhaps it would be more restful," said David, "more manly; but as a matter of fact of late I have been rather 'off' smoking. It is very wasteful, and as far as I am concerned it never produced much effect—either way—on the nerves. Still, it gives one a nice manly flavour. I always liked the smell of a smoking-room.... And your mother: how is she?"
"Very bad, I fear. The doctor tells me she can't last much longer, and hypocritical as the phrase sounds I couldn't wish her to, unless these pains can be mitigated, and this dreadful distress in breathing.... I wonder if some day I shall be like that, and if behind my back a daughter will be saying she couldn't wish me to live much longer, unless, etc. I shall miss her frightfully, if she does die.... Armstrong has been more than kind. He has got a woman's heart for tenderness. He thinks every day of some fresh palliative until the doctors quite dislike him. Fortunately his kindness gives mother a fleeting gleam of pleasure. She wants me to marry him—I don't know, I'm sure.... Whilst she's so bad I don't feel I could take any interest in love-making—and I suppose we should make love in a perfunctory way—We're all of us so bound by conventions. We try to feel dismal at funerals, when often the weather is radiant and the ride down to Brookwood most exhilarating. And love-making is supposed to go with marriage ... heigh-ho! What should you say if I did marry—Major Armstrong...? Did you ever hear of such a ridiculous name as Petworth? I should have to call him 'Pet' and every one would think I had gone sentimental in middle age. How can parents be so unthinking about Christian names? He can't see the thing as I do; it is almost the only subject on which he is 'huffy.' You are the other, about which more anon. He says the Petworth property meant everything to the Armstrongs, to his branch of the Armstrongs. But for that, they might have been any other kind of Armstrong—it always kept him straight at school and in the army, he says, to remember he was an Armstrong of Petworth. They have held that poor little property (I call it) alongside the Egmonts and the Leconfields for three hundred years, though they've been miserably poor. His second name is James—Petworth James Armstrong. But he loathes being called 'Jimmy.'
"Of course, dear, I've no illusions. I'm not bad to look at—indeed I sometimes quite admire my figure when I see myself after my bath in the cheval glass—but I'm pretty well sure that one of the factors in Pet's admiration for me was my income. Mother, it seems, has a little of her own, from one of her aunts, and if the poor darling is taken—though it is simply horrid considering that if—only that she has talked so freely to Army—I think I like 'Army' far better than 'Pet'—Well I mean she's been trying to tell him ever since he first came to call that when she is gone I shall have, all told, in my own right, Five thousand a year. So I took the first opportunity of letting him know that Two thousand a year of that would be held in reserve for the work of the firm and for the Woman's Cause generally.... Look here, I won't babble on much longer.... I know you're dying to make me confidences.... We'll ring for tea to be sent in here, and whilst the waiter is coming and going—Don't they take such a time about it, when they're de trop?—we'll talk of ordinary things that can be shouted from the house tops.
"I haven't been to the Office for three days. Does everything seem to be going on all right?"
David: "Quite all right. Bertie Adams tries dumbly to express in his eyes his determination to see the firm and me through all our troubles and adventures. I wish I could convey a discreet hint to him not to be so blatantly discreet. If there were a Sherlock Holmes about the place he would spot at once that Adams and I shared a secret.... But about Beryl—" (Enter waiter....)
Honoria (to waiter): "Oh—er—tea for two please. Remember it must be China and the still-room maids must see that the water has been fresh-boiled. And buttered toast—or if you've got muffins...? You have? Well, then muffins; and of course jam and cake. And—would you mind—you always try, I know—bringing the things in very quietly—here—? Because Lady Fraser is so easily waked..."
(The Swiss waiter goes out, firmly convinced that Honoria's anxiety for her lady mother is really due to the desire that the mother should not interrupt a flirtation and a clandestine tea.)
Honoria: "Well, about Beryl?"