“I can’t understand what you are making such a fuss about. You’ll have to give in, in the end. You a poet, indeed! What next? If you would come down to breakfast in time, and give over burning the gas till one o’clock in the morning, it would be more to the point than writing silly verses. I’d be ashamed to waste my time scribbling nonsense all day long!” So cried Agnes, in Martha-like irritation, and Ronald turned his eyes upon her with that deep, dreamy gaze which only added fuel to the flame.
He was not angry with Agnes, who, as she herself truly said, “did not understand.” Out of the storm of her anger an inspiration had fluttered towards him, like a crystal out of the surf. “The Worker and the Dreamer”—he would make a poem out of that idea! Already the wonderful inner vision pictured the scene—the poet sitting idle on the hillside, the man of toil labouring in the heat and glare of the fields, casting glances of scorn and impatience at the inert form. The lines began to take shape in his brain.
”...And the worker worked from the misty dawn,
Till the east was golden and red;
But the dreamer’s dream which he thought to scorn,
Lived on when they both were dead...”
“I asked him three times over if he would have another cup of coffee, and he stared at me as if he were daft! I believe he is half daft at times, and he will grow worse and worse, if Margot encourages him like this!” Agnes announced to her father, on his weary return from City.
It was one of Agnes’s exemplary habits to refuse all invitations which could prevent her being at home to welcome her father every afternoon, and assist him to tea and scones, accompanied by a minute résumé of the bad news of the day. What the housemaid had broken; what the cat had spilt; the parlourmaid’s impertinences; the dressmaker’s delinquencies; Ronald’s vapourings; the new and unabashed transgressions of Margot—each in its turn was dropped into the tired man’s cup with the lumps of sugar, and stirred round with the cream. There was no escaping the ordeal. On the hottest day of summer there was the boiling tea, with the hot muffins, and the rich, indigestible cake, exactly as they had appeared amidst the ice and snows of January; and the accompanied recital hardly varied more. It was a positive relief to hear that the chimney had smoked, or the parrot had had a fit.
Once a year Agnes departed on a holiday, handing over the keys to Margot, who meekly promised to follow in her footsteps; and then, heigho! for a fortnight of Bohemia, with every arrangement upside down, and appearing vastly improved by the change of position. Instead of tea in the drawing-room, two easy-chairs on the balcony overlooking the Park; cool iced drinks sipped through straws, and luscious dishes of fruit. Instead of Agnes, stiff and starched and tailor-made, a radiant vision in muslin and laces, with a ruffled golden head, and distracting little feet peeping out from beneath the frills.
“Isn’t this fun?” cried the vision. “Don’t you feel quite frivolous and Continental? Let’s pretend we are a newly-married couple, and you adore me, and can’t deny a thing I ask! There was a blouse in Bond Street this morning... Sweetest darling, wouldn’t you like me to buy it to-morrow, and show me off in it to your friends? I told them to send it home on approval. I knew you couldn’t bear to see your little girl unhappy for the sake of four miserable guineas!”
This sort of treatment was very agreeable to a worn-out City man, and as a pure matter of bargaining, the blouse was a cheap price to pay for the refreshment of that cool, restful hour, and the pretty chatter which smoothed the tired lines out of his face, and made him laugh and feel young again.
Another night Mr Vane would be decoyed to a rendezvous at Earl’s Court, when Margot would wear the blouse, and insist upon turning round the pearl band on her third finger, so as to imitate a wedding-ring, looking at him in languishing fashion across the table the while, to the delight of fellow-diners and his own mingled horror and amusement. Then they would wander about beneath the glimmer of the fairy-lights, listening to the band, as veritable a pair of lovers as any among the throng.
As summer approached, Mr Vane’s thoughts turned to these happy occasions, and it strengthened his indignation against his son to realise that this year a cloud had arisen between himself and his dearest daughter. Margot had openly ranked herself against him, which was a bitter pill to swallow, and, so far from showing an inclination to repent as the prescribed time drew to a close, the conspirators appeared only to be the more determined. Long envelopes were continually being dispatched to the post, to appear with astonishing dispatch on the family breakfast-table. The pale, wrought look on Ronald’s face as he caught sight of them against the white cloth! No parent’s heart could fail to be wrung for the lad’s misery; but the futility of it added to the inward exasperation. Thousands of men walking the streets of London vainly seeking for work, while this misguided youth scorned a safe and secure position!