To which Elvira, still crocheting, replies, “Oh, indeed. And pray what may that be?”
This was not Elvira’s own idea. Springing from her chair, she had got as far as: “Look here. If you have come home early merely for the purpose of making a row—” before the mutual friend could stop her. The mutual friend was firm. Only by exacting strict obedience could he guarantee a successful issue. What she had got to say was, “Oh, indeed. Etcetera.” The mutual friend had need of all his tact to prevent its becoming a quarrel of three.
Adolphus, allowed to proceed, explained that the subject about which he wished to speak was the subject of dinner. The mutual friend this time was beforehand. Elvira’s retort to that was: “Dinner! You complain of the dinners I provide for you?” enabling him to reply, “Yes, madam, I do complain,” and to give reasons. It seemed to Elvira that the mutual friend had lost his senses. To tell her to “wait”; that “her time would come”; of what use was that! Half of what she wanted to say would be gone out of her head. Adolphus brought to a conclusion his criticism of Elvira’s kitchen; and then Elvira, incapable of restraining herself further, rose majestically.
The mutual friend was saved the trouble of suppressing Adolphus. Until Elvira had finished Adolphus never got an opening. He grumbled at their dinners. He! who can dine night after night with his precious Freemasons. Does he think she likes them any better? She, doomed to stay at home and eat them. What does he take her for? An ostrich? Whose fault is it that they keep an incompetent cook too old to learn and too obstinate to want to? Whose old family servant was she? Not Elvira’s. It has been to please Adolphus that she has suffered the woman. And this is her reward. This! She breaks down. Adolphus is astonished and troubled. Personally he never liked the woman. Faithful she may have been, but a cook never. His own idea, had he been consulted, would have been a small pension. Elvira falls upon his neck. Why did he not say so before? Adolphus presses her to his bosom. If only he had known! They promise the mutual friend never to quarrel again without his assistance.
The acting all round was quite good. Our curate, who is a bachelor, said it taught a lesson. Veronica had tears in her eyes. She whispered to me that she thought it beautiful. There is more in Veronica than people think.
CHAPTER XII
I am sorry the house is finished. There is a proverb: “Fools build houses for wise men to live in.” It depends upon what you are after. The fool gets the fun, and the wise men the bricks and mortar. I remember a whimsical story I picked up at the bookstall of the Gare de Lyon. I read it between Paris and Fontainebleau many years ago. Three friends, youthful Bohemians, smoking their pipes after the meagre dinner of a cheap restaurant in the Latin Quarter, fell to thinking of their poverty, of the long and bitter struggle that lay before them.
“My themes are so original,” sighed the Musician. “It will take me a year of fête days to teach the public to understand them, even if ever I do succeed. And meanwhile I shall live unknown, neglected; watching the men without ideals passing me by in the race, splashed with the mud from their carriage-wheels as I beat the pavements with worn shoes. It is really a most unjust world.”
“An abominable world,” agreed the Poet. “But think of me! My case is far harder than yours. Your gift lies within you. Mine is to translate what lies around me; and that, for so far ahead as I can see, will always be the shadow side of life. To develop my genius to its fullest I need the sunshine of existence. My soul is being starved for lack of the beautiful things of life. A little of the wealth that vulgar people waste would make a great poet for France. It is not only of myself that I am thinking.”
The Painter laughed. “I cannot soar to your heights,” he said. “Frankly speaking, it is myself that chiefly appeals to me. Why not? I give the world Beauty, and in return what does it give me? This dingy restaurant, where I eat ill-flavoured food off hideous platters, a foul garret giving on to chimney-pots. After long years of ill-requited labour I may—as others have before me—come into my kingdom: possess my studio in the Champs Elysées, my fine house at Neuilly; but the prospect of the intervening period, I confess, appals me.”