The Belfry

by May Sinclair

The situation was, for him, most horrible; but it was worse for Viola. I wondered: Is she shivering all down her spine? Is she going to flinch? Why will she look at the poor chap?

And then I saw. She was looking at him with a little tender smile, a smile that helped him across, that said: "Come on. Come on. It's difficult, I know, but you're doing it beautifully."

Well, so he was. He was doing it more beautifully than the Canon or any of them. For that group on the lawn were like a rather eager rescue party, holding out hands to a struggling swimmer in the social surf. They expected him to struggle and he didn't. He landed himself in the middle of them with an adroitness that put them in the wrong. What's more, he held his own when he got there. He looked about as different from any of the men on that tennis-ground as a man well could look. He looked odd; and that saved him. They with their distinction had not achieved absolute difference from each other. His difference from all of them was so absolute that it was a sort of distinction in itself.

As soon as he got there Norah came up with the subalterns in tow. She made a little friendly rush at him. She said, "I'm Norah, the youngest. I expect Viola's told you about me. She's told me lots about you."

She meant well, dear child. But she overdid it. She hadn't allowed—none of us except Viola had allowed—for his appalling sensitiveness. The poor chap told me afterwards that he could bear up against the Canon's stiff face and what he called Mrs. Thesiger's ladylike refinements of repudiation, and the poker that Victoria had swallowed, but that that kid's kindness, coming on the top of it all, floored him. He took her hand (I think he squeezed it), and his mouth opened, but he couldn't speak; he just breathed hard and flushed furiously; and his eyes looked as if he were going to cry. But of course he didn't cry. He was, he said, far too much afraid of the subalterns.

It was a good thing, perhaps, after all, that it took him that way. His emotion made him quiet and subdued; it toned him down, so that he started well from the very beginning.

After tea he recovered and talked to the Colonel and the subalterns while the rest of us listened. He said, I remember, that the building of Dreadnoughts was of more importance to the country than Disestablishment. And even more important than the building of Dreadnoughts was the building of submarines. The submarine was the ship of the future. There should be, he said, at least fifty submarines for every Dreadnought turned out.

That made them all sit up. (It was not a platitude in nineteen-six, but a prophecy.) The Colonel and the subalterns hung on his words; and when the Canon saw them hanging, his mouth began to relax a little of its own accord. In his first hour Jevons had scored, notably.

It was as if he had said to himself, "I'll bring these people round, see if I don't. I give myself an hour."

Dinner passed without any misadventure, but you could see that he was careful. Also you could see by his twinkle that he was amusing himself by his own precautions, as if, again, he had said to himself, "They're all expecting me to make noises over my soup, and they'll be disappointed. I just won't make any."