It came after a studied silence, a dumbness of set purpose. "Oh why—why—is it always Mrs. Picture, or Scatcherd, or Septimius Severus? Why can it never be Gwen—Gwen—Gwen?"
The attenuated chaperonage of the lady of the house may have been moved by a certain demonstrativeness of her son's at this point, to say from afar:—"I hope we are going to have some 'Ifigenia in Aulide.' Because I should have enjoyed that." Which carried an implication that the musical world had been palming off an inferior article on a public deeply impressible by the higher aspects of Opera.
CHAPTER XXV
HOW THE EARL ASKED AFTER THE OLD TWINS. MERENESS. RECUPERATIVE POWER. HOW THE HOUSEHOLD HAD ITS ANNUAL DANCE. HOW THE COUNTESS HAD A CRACKED LIP. HOW WAS DR. TUXFORD SOMERS? SIR SPENCER DERRICK. GENERAL RAWNSLEY. HE AND GWEN'S INTENDED GREAT GRANDMOTHER-IN-LAW. GWEN HAD NEVER HAD TWINS BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. THE GENERAL'S BROTHER PHILIP. SUPERANNUATED COCKS AND HENS. HOW GWEN HAD DREAMED SHE WAS TO MARRY A KETTLE-HOLDER. HOW MRS. LAMPREY HAD A LETTER FOR GWEN, WHICH TOOK GWEN OFF TO CHORLTON AT MIDNIGHT
When the Earl of Ancester came back to the Towers next day he certainly did look a little boiled down; otherwise, cheerful and collected. "I am quite prepared to endure another Christmas," said he resignedly to Gwen. "But a little seclusion and meditation is good to prepare one for the ordeal, and Bath certainly deserves the character everybody gives it, that you never meet anybody else there. I suppose Coventry and Jericho have something in common with Bath. I wonder if outcasts can be identified in either. Nothing distinguishes them in Bath from the favourites of Fortune. How are the old ladies?"
This was in the study, where the Earl and his daughter got a quiet ten minutes to recapitulate the story of each during the other's absence. It was late in the afternoon, two hours after his arrival from London. He had been there a day or two to make a show of fulfilling his obligations towards politics; had sat through a debate or two, and had taken part in a division or two, much to the satisfaction of his conscience. "But," said he to Gwen, "if you ask me which I have felt most interest in, your old ladies or the Foreign Enlistment Act, I should certainly say the old ladies." So it was no wonder his inquiry about them came early in this recapitulation.
Gwen found herself, to her surprise, committed to an apologetic tone about old Mrs. Picture's health, and maintaining that she was really better intrinsically, although evidently some person or persons unnamed must have said she was worse. She started on her report with every good-will to make it a prosperous one, and got entangled in some trivialities that told against her purpose. Perhaps her last letter to her father, written from Pensham on the night of her arrival there, had given too rose-coloured an account of her visit to Chorlton, and had caused the rather serious headshake which greeted her admission that old Maisie was still a quasi-invalid, on her back from the merest—quite the merest—weakness. The Earl admitted that, as a general rule, weakness might be mere enough to be negligible; but then it should be the weakness of young and strong people, possessed of that delightful property "recuperative power," which does such wonders when it comes to the scratch. Never be without it, if you can help.
The episode of the champagne was reassuring, and gave Hope a helping hand. Moreover, Gwen had just got another letter from Ruth Thrale, brought by Onesimus the bull-cajoler, which gave a very good account on the whole, though one phrase had a damping effect. We were not "to rely on the champagne," as it was "not nourishment, but stimulus." She must be got to take food regularly, said Dr. Nash, however small the quantity. This seemed to suggest that she had fallen back on that vicious practice of starvation. But "my mother" was constantly talking with "mother" about old times, and it was giving "mother" pleasure.
"I wish," said Gwen, as her father went back to "Honoured Lady" for second reading, and possibly second impressions, "I wish that Dr. Nash had written separately. I want to know what he thinks, and I want to know what Ruth thinks. I can mix them up for myself."