The Belfry

by May Sinclair

And there they were, all holding themselves well, and all well dressed—the two youngest in white, the elders in light colours on a scale that deepened to Victoria's old rose. I remember them, even to what they wore and the pathos of their wearing it; they stood out so against the black panelling of the old room. It was full of oak chests and bureaus and Chinese cabinets, and Madonnas in Italian frames, and red and white ivory chessmen, and little bookcases with books in white vellum with scarlet title-pieces, and family portraits, and saints in triptychs on golden backgrounds, and murderous assegais and the skins and horns of animals. And the leaves of the old elms stuffed up the low, mullioned windows looking on the garden.

And somehow you were aware of great streams of empire and of race, streams of august tradition; of sanctity and heroism and honour, and beautiful looks and gentle ways and breeding, all meeting there.

I looked at the Thesigers and I looked at all these things, and I thought again of Jevons—of Jevons as absolutely impossible. You may say it was pure snobbishness to think of him in that way, and I daresay it was; but there wasn't any other way.

It wasn't their tradition, you see, that appealed to me so much as their behaviour. I don't think I ever met people who knew so well how to behave.

They kept it up. All evening they behaved like people under some heavy calamity which they ignored for the comfort of their guest and for their own dignity. And yet, even if I hadn't known of their calamity, I must have felt it in the air. They knew that I knew it; but that was all the more reason why they should ignore it; they wanted to remove from me the oppression of my knowledge.

During dinner, perhaps, you felt the tension of the catastrophe; any guest who knew as much as I did was bound to be aware of it. It was in little sudden, momentary silences, in the hushed voices and half-scared movements of the butler and the parlourmaid, in the stiffness of the Canon's lip, and in some shade of the elder girls' manner to Viola.

I remember how, in one of those silences, Norah, who sat facing me, leaned forward and addressed me. She said, "Mr. Furnival, you've come from Belgium, haven't you? Do tell me about it! I can't get a word out of Viola."

I supposed they hadn't told Norah. They had spared the youngest. She was only seventeen.

The butler and the parlourmaid, standing rigid by the sideboard, looked at each other in their fright. Mrs. Thesiger saw them and flushed. But Canon Thesiger, who had his back to them, observed that Belgium was a large order, and that Mr. Furnival would have to tell her about it afterwards.

But there was never any afterwards for Norah. She said, "I believe there's a joke about Belgium, and that Mr. Furnival's in it."