“Got a cold in your chest, Rose?” he had inquired, when once she came in her parsonage voile and fichu, and on another occasion had coarsely remarked: “I like to see a woman’s shoulders. Why don’t you show your shoulders, Rose? In my young days every woman showed her shoulders if she’d got any she wasn’t ashamed of. But nowadays the women run either to bone or muscle—so perhaps you’re right.”
Most of the Alard silver was on the table—ribbed, ponderous stuff of eighteenth century date, later than the last of the lost causes in which so much had been melted down. Some fine Georgian and Queen Anne glass and a Spode dinner-service completed the magnificence, which did not, however, extend to the dinner itself. Good cooks were hard to find and ruinously expensive, requiring also their acolytes; so the soup in the Spode tureen might have appeared on the dinner-table of a seaside boarding-house, the fish was represented by greasily fried plaice, followed by a leg of one of the Conster lambs, reduced by the black magic of the kitchen to the flavour and consistency of the worst New Zealand mutton.
Peter noted that things had “gone down,” and had evidently been down for a considerable time, judging by the placidity with which (barring a few grumbles from Sir John) the dinner was received and eaten. The wine, however, was good—evidently the pre-war cellar existed. He began to wonder for the hundredth time what he had better do to tighten the Alard finances—eating bad dinners off costly plate seemed a poor economy. Also why were a butler and two footmen necessary to wait on the family party? The latter were hard-breathing young men, recently promoted from the plough, and probably cheap enough, but why should his people keep up this useless and shoddy state when their dear lands were in danger? Suppose that in order to keep their footmen and their silver and their flowers they had to sell Ellenwhorne or Glasseye—or, perhaps, even Starvecrow....
After the dessert of apples from Conster orchard and a dish of ancient nuts which had remained untasted and unchanged since the last dinner-party, the women and Gervase left the table for the drawing-room. Gervase had never sought to emphasise his man’s estate by sitting over his wine—he always went out like this with the women, and evidently meant to go on doing so now he had left school. George on the other hand remained, though he rather aggressively drank nothing but water.
“It’s not that I consider there is anything wrong in drinking wine,” he explained broad-mindedly to Sir John and Peter, “but I feel I must set an example.”
“To whom?” thundered Sir John.
“To my parishioners.”
“Well, then, since you’re not setting it to us, you can clear out and join the ladies. I won’t see you sit there despising my port—which is the only good port there’s been in the Rye division since ’16—besides I want a private talk with Peter.”
The big clergyman rose obediently and left the room, his feelings finding only a moment’s expression at the door, when he turned round and tried (not very successfully) to tell Peter by a look that Sir John must not be allowed to drink too much port in his gouty condition.
“He’s a fool,” said his father just before he had shut the door. “I don’t know what the church is coming to. In my young days the Parson drank his bottle with the best of ’em. He didn’t go about being an example. Bah! who’s going to follow Georgie’s example?”