"I am not," I said, "concerned with that. You may be right. Perhaps we should all of us have done better to hold aloof and offer him no welcome at the outset. But, do you know, I feel a certain responsibility? Having been received here, having poured money like water into the pockets of his so-called friends, will he not form a low view of our sincerity and goodwill if every one abandons him at a time like this? I am disinterested: we have accepted nothing from him, we can look to him for nothing; but there is a reproach which I feel it my duty to remove."
I could not make Arthur see that people like Connie Maitland, liée with the poor man one moment and throwing him to the wolves the next... We are not all of us like that in England.
"Well, for Heaven's sake, don't ask him when I'm here," was the utmost encouragement I got from my husband.
Truly honestly, I think this stubborn opposition drove me perhaps farther than I had first intended to go. A day or two later I found myself in the same house as Sir Adolphus and I spoke to him...
"You," I said, "do not know me; and I only know you by sight, though I have long been acquainted with your record of generous support to the cause of music. Will you allow a total stranger to tell you her disgust with the venomous attacks which have been made on you since the beginning of the war?"
Little enough, you may think; but I believe those were the first kind words that he had heard for three or four years. The man is not prepossessing, but we formed quite a friendship...
"Will not you and Lady Erskine," I said, "come and dine with me some night? I am not in a position to entertain in any sense of the word; my boy is at the front, my husband is away on business; but perhaps, if a family party would not bore you..."
Though I called myself a total stranger, he knew very well who I was; indeed he told me that he had always wanted to meet Brackenbury and Spenworth (the Cheniston Romneys were, of course, his excuse)... We arranged a night ... though, when the time came, there was not more than the three of us. My relations with Spenworth are not so cordial that I derive the least pleasure from seeing him at my table; and one truly honestly never knows how he is going to behave. Brackenbury... If you do not want to accept an invitation, it is surely possible to decline it civilly...
"That fellow!," cried Brackenbury. "He ought to be interned."
"You really must not talk such nonsense," I said. "He is as loyal as you are."