“Strickland should have done that for you, dear. Are you off now?”
“Yes, presently,” he answered. “I’m not sure I can come to the Gainsboroughs, Sue; we’ve some rather special business next week.”
“I think we ought to get to know everybody as much as possible, Cyril, if only for the sake of the girls. And the University are the most interesting of all. If you knew what a pleasure it is to me to talk about something besides wine and money now and then!”
Cyril instantly threw diplomacy to the winds and began to enjoy himself, standing with his back to the fire. “I don’t want to be a kill-joy,” he replied, “but I learned more about those two subjects from old Wacks at Cambridge than I ever have since from anybody. But he wasn’t married. I daresay the female dons understand the use of the globes and all that. By George! I remember their queer get-ups. Must have been some very deep thinking that led to most of those marriages; which, after all, proves your theory of the Higher mind. Let’s go, and take Dicky if she wants to come,” he added with the boldness that often came to him suddenly after hunting down one of his wife’s insincerities.
By this time she felt nothing but an irritable longing to get him out of the room. Through the whole of their married life he had amused himself by making a cockshy of the sentiments which she presented to the world as the expression of her thoughts. He often exaggerated her insincerity, for the sentiments were as much her own as any other jewellery she might have bought to adorn herself. She admired them quite as much as any she could have originated.
“One of the children will come, of course,” she said impatiently, “if Mrs. Gainsborough really wants some young people. It is very kind of her, for I don’t suppose you have the least idea how dull it is for them, seeing nothing but soldiers and business people who have nothing to talk about. The Gainsboroughs are probably teetotallers—in spite of the set you mixed with at Cambridge and who had probably nothing to do with the life there. Most clever people think very little about their food. But you had better have your wine at the club before you start or they will think there is something the matter with you. Isn’t the time getting on? That clock is a little slow.”
When the time for the party came it turned out to be less of a feast of intellect than had been hoped and feared by the Fultons. In the first place the Carpenters were there, because Mrs. Carpenter was as difficult to keep out of any social gathering as was King Charles’s head from Mr. Dick’s “Memorial.” If the festivity were a heavy duty for the cementing of business connections, Mrs. Carpenter was invited to lighten the dough of wealth with the ferment of culture. If it were a frivolous affair for the benefit of the young and thoughtless, she was there with her daughters. Hostesses included her as a precaution against any subsequent rumour that the scene had been one of unbridled licence. “Really, my dear—of course I wasn’t there so I can’t say, but I believe, etc.” If it were an ordinary mixed dinner, town and gown, she must be there to make things smooth between everybody; to interpose when Mrs. Alderman Snack was talking to Professor Cameo about rabbits, and see that the conversation was switched off at once on to his last book. She had read it of course and was so anxious to contradict him on one point, the condition of India before the mutiny. “My grandfather, you know, was there as a subaltern and he always said he was convinced, etc.” “A wonderful woman, Mrs. Carpenter,” everybody said. “She talks so well upon anything.”
Mrs. Gainsborough, being so very nervous as she was, of course had not settled on a day to ask the new general and his wife until she had made sure that the Carpenters would come. Mrs. Carpenter had therefore consulted her little note-book and had chosen a day when she had only one or two small committees and dear Amy’s dancing lesson to attend, so that she would be “nice and fresh for the evening.” Poor Mr. Carpenter, who was the overworked underwriter to an insurance company, was not likely to be at all nice and fresh, even if he had a good twenty minutes to dress after hurrying up from the office. He could be trusted to be punctual, though, and would be quite up to a little educated chaff with anyone of his own set—Mrs. Vachell or one of the Manleys—so long as he hadn’t to tackle a stranger. He was, as it turned out, very happily situated, as there were only the Vachells, and Mrs. Eric Manley and her unmarried brother-in-law and two young men for Emma Gainsborough and Teresa. One was David Varens, whose father, Sir Richard Varens, belonged to a family that had owned land round Millport for three or four hundred years. Sir Richard had given money and land to Millport University and his son David had just left Oxford. It would never have done if Mrs. Carpenter had not been there.
The third unmarried man was Mr. Joseph Price, the son of Mr. Manley’s partner. Eton and Cambridge had recently handed him back to the home nest, which he was prepared, with the backing of the Liberal Party and his father’s money, to re-line and generally bring up to date. The old birds were to be furbished up and taught new songs; the young lady birds from neighbouring nests were to be simply knocked off their perches, and Londoners coming to Millport were to understand that Millshire was young Mr. Price’s country seat and Millport was his little village where he went to post his letters and chat to the Mayor at election time. You could even buy things in the town now, he was told—quite fairly decent; of course not clothes and all that, but groceries and gloves and that sort of thing his mother found she could get there now. But the hotels were pretty scandalous sort of places. What? I should say so. Lots of churches though; some quite decent ones in the old part of the town if you’re interested in glass and all that kind of thing. And good music too; you ought to go to the concerts if music doesn’t bore you. There was a fellow there the other day—what’s his name—came all the way from Russia with a little handbag—he beat everyone else hollow—never heard anything like it—thought his arm would come off. Abs’lutely wond’f’l. You’ve heard him b’fur ’n town, ’f course? (I have burst into Mr. Price’s way of speaking for a moment, but I cannot reproduce it perfectly.)
This was to Teresa, whom, owing to her father’s military position and their having lived in London, he was treating with unusual effusiveness. He knew Emma Gainsborough slightly and had made an honest effort to talk to her. He always tried to keep close to the ideal manner at which he aimed, the manner of the particular social pen through whose doors he had been allowed to squeeze because of his politics and his father’s money. He was already getting on very well with the manner, a sort of mincingly polite way of speaking, with the vowels squeezed slowly out as if through a confectioner’s icing tube, and laid along the sentence, or else omitted altogether; the exact opposite to the broad flat tones of his native habit. The natural rudeness of vanity was sugared over in this way to just the “right” effect he sought; enthusiasm for this or that “discovery,” indifference to anything tainted with popularity unless some popular thing became discredited enough in time to make it discoverable as a new taste.