“That’s right, Alice!” Josiah sat down with an air of satisfaction. He was not indifferent to the sufferings of Maria, but of recent years she seemed to have developed a susceptibility to climatic conditions perhaps a little excessive for the wife of one who at heart was still a plain man. She had a proneness to whims and fancies now which in robuster days was lacking. He could only ascribe it to a kind of misplaced fineladyism, and he didn’t quite approve it.
“I spoke pretty straight to the Tribune ... to the subeditor. I said I hoped they fully realized their duty to the public and also to the Empire, but that I sometimes doubted it. He seemed a bit huffed, I thought ... but you’ll see I’ll be reported to-morrow all right. I’ll look after your mistress, Alice. Go and get the coffee.”
When Alice returned with the coffee she found the Mayor vigorously fanning the Mayoress with a table napkin, and she was peremptorily ordered “to nip upstairs for a bottle of sal volatile.”
XXXIV
THERE was honest satisfaction in the town when it was known that the Mayor had consented to remain another year in office. Most people agreed that it was a good thing for Blackhampton. But the Mayoress took to her bed.
Could she have had her way she would never have got up again. For many years now life had been a nightmare of ever-growing duties, of ever-increasing responsibilities. Her conservative temperament resisted change. She had not wanted to leave the Duke of Wellington for the comparative luxury of Waterloo Villa, she had not wanted to leave Waterloo Villa for the defiant grandeur of Strathfieldsaye. When she was faced with a whole year as Mayoress she fully expected to die of it, and perhaps she would have died of it but for the oblique influence of Gertrude Preston; but now she was threatened with a further twelve months of the same embarrassing public grandeur she was compelled to review her attitude towards an early demise.
Maria knew that if she allowed her light to be put out Gerty had the makings of a highly qualified successor. No one was better at shaking hands with a grandee, no one had a happier knack of saying the right word at the right time; and neither the Mayor nor the Mayoress, particularly the latter, knew what they would have done without her. Gerty, in fact, had become a kind of unofficial standard bearer and henchwoman of a great man. Every piece of gossip she heard about him was faithfully reported, every paragraph that appeared in the paper was brought to his notice, she flattered him continually and made him out to be no end of a fellow; and in consequence poor Maria was bitten with such a furious jealousy that she would like to have killed her designing but indispensable step-sister.