“I hope you will forgive my intruding on you at this hour, Mrs. Hibbert,” he said. “My visit is almost a business one, if I may venture to call it so, and I hope its result may be pleasant to us both.” His manner was a faint echo of Aunt Anne’s. “I would have written to ask you to see me, but the idea that brings me only occurred to me an hour or two ago.”
“But of course I would see you,” she answered brightly. “And I think the morning is a delicious time of day to which we devote far too much idleness.”
“I thoroughly agree with you,” he said, and looked at her approvingly, for he was quite alive to the duties of domesticity. In his short married life it had been an everlasting irritation to him that his wife was a slattern and wholly indifferent about her home. It had made him keen to observe the ways of other women; though the sight of a well-kept house always depressed him a little, for it set him thinking of the denials in his own life, of what he might have had and could have been; it made him also a little extra deferential and gracious to the woman who presided over it. He was so to Florence this morning. He had noticed quickly that all signs of breakfast had vanished, he divined that the children were out of doors, and that she herself, with her slate and account-books, was deep in household matters. It was thus he thought that a woman should chiefly concern herself. Her husband, children, and home were her business in life. The rest could be left to the discretion and management of men. He felt that it was almost a duty on his part, in the absence of her husband, to discreetly manage Florence. Moreover, in the intervals of editing his paper, he had a turn for editing the lives of other people, and he felt it almost an obligation to give a good deal of time to the consideration of the private affairs of his staff. He liked the Hibberts too, and was really anxious to be good and useful to them. He had come to the conclusion that it was a pity that Florence and her children should stay in London while Walter was away. “She would be much better in the country,” he thought; “the children could run about; besides, what is the good of keeping that cottage near Witley empty?” and then he remembered his own mother, who was seventy years old and lived far off in the wilds of Northumberland. Her sole amusement appeared to be writing her son letters, lamenting that he never went to stay with her, and that since he lived in small and inconvenient bachelor chambers, she could not go and stay with him. It had been her desire that he should marry again. She had told him that it was foolish not to do so, that she could die happy if he had a wife to take care of him. But he never answered a word. “It would not be a bad idea if I had the old lady up for a couple of months, and took the Hibberts’ house,” he said to himself. The idea grew upon him. He imagined the dinners he could give to his staff and their wives—not to the outside world, for it bothered him. “We might ask Ethel Dunlop occasionally,” he thought; “a nice girl in her twenties, fond of pleasure, would brighten up the old lady.” He remembered the twenties with regret, and wished they were thirties; then he would not have felt so keenly the difference in years between them. But he reflected that after all he was still in the prime of life, as a man is, if he chooses, till he is fifty; and he struggled to feel youthful; but struggle as he would, youthful feelings held aloof. They were coy after forty, he supposed, and looking back he consoled himself by thinking that they had been rather foolish. Then he thought of Ethel’s cousin; confound her cousin! she seemed to like going about with him. Perhaps he made love to her; yet he was too much of a hobble-de-hoy for that, surely—three-and-twenty at most—a very objectionable time of life in the masculine sex, a time of dash and impudence and doing of things from sheer bravado at which wisdom, knowledge, and middle age hesitated. Ethel was probably only amusing herself with him. To fall in love with a cousin would show a lack of originality of which he was slow to suspect her. He wondered what the cousin did, and if he wanted a post of any sort; if he had a turn for writing and adventure. Perhaps he could be sent as special correspondent to the Gold Coast, where the climate would probably sufficiently engross him. Ethel at any rate might be invited to see his mother, it would cheer the old lady up to have a girl about her. Yes, he had quite made up his mind. Mrs. Hibbert should go to her country cottage with her two children; he would take the house near Portland Road for a couple of months, and the rest would arrange itself.
“I don’t know whether Walter would like it,” Florence said, when Mr. Fisher had explained his errand.
“I’ll answer for Walter,” Mr. Fisher said concisely. Of course he, a man, knew better than she did what Walter, also a man, would like; that was plainly conveyed in his manner. “It will be better for you and the children,” he went on, with gracious benevolence, for as he looked at Florence he thought how girlish she was. He felt quite strongly that in her husband’s absence it was his duty to look after her, and to teach her, pleasantly, the way in which she should go. It was absurd to suppose that a woman should know it without any direction from his sex, and he was now the proper person to give it. “I will send you plenty of novels to read, and if you would allow me to introduce you to her,” he added, with a shade of pomposity in his voice, “there is a friend of mine at Witley—Mrs. Burnett. You would be excellent companions for each other, I should say, for her husband comes up to town every morning, and——”
“I know her a little,” Florence said, “a tall, slight woman with sweet grey eyes.”
“I never looked at her eyes,” Mr. Fisher said quickly, and Florence felt reproved for having mentioned them. Of course, he would not look at the eyes of a married woman. Mr. Fisher had clear and distinct views about the proprieties, which he thought were invented especially for married and marriageable women. “Perhaps Miss Dunlop would pay you a visit,” he suggested.
“She has her father to take care of. Besides, Mrs. Baines is staying with me.”
“I saw Mrs. Baines with Wimple the other day. Has she adopted him?”
“With Mr. Wimple,” Florence said, bewildered at the sudden mention of the name again; and then remembering Walter, she added loyally, “she likes him because he is Walter’s friend.”