Tono-Bungay - H. G. Wells (my reading book txt) 📗

of unspecified social pretension, and evading the display of the economic facts of the case. Most of the husbands were “in business” off stage, it would have been outrageous to ask what the business was⁠—and the wives were giving their energies to produce, with the assistance of novels and the illustrated magazines, a moralised version of the afternoon life of the aristocratic class. They hadn’t the intellectual or moral enterprise of the upper-class woman, they had no political interests, they had no views about anything, and consequently they were, I remember, extremely difficult to talk to. They all sat about in the summerhouse and in garden-chairs, and were very hatty and ruffley and sunshady. Three ladies and the curate played croquet with a general immense gravity, broken by occasional loud cries of feigned distress from the curate. “Oh! Whacking me about again! Augh!”

The dominant social fact that afternoon was Mrs. Hogberry; she took up a certain position commanding the croquet and went on, as my aunt said to me in an incidental aside, “like an old Roundabout.” She talked of the way in which Beckenham society was getting mixed, and turned on to a touching letter she had recently received from her former nurse at Little Gossdean. Followed a loud account of Little Gossdean and how much she and her eight sisters had been looked up to there. “My poor mother was quite a little Queen there,” she said. “And such nice common people! People say the country labourers are getting disrespectful nowadays. It isn’t so⁠—not if they’re properly treated. Here of course in Beckenham it’s different. I won’t call the people we get here a Poor⁠—they’re certainly not a proper Poor. They’re Masses. I always tell Mr. Bugshoot they’re Masses, and ought to be treated as such.”⁠ ⁠…

Dim memories of Mrs. Mackridge floated through my mind as I listened to her.⁠ ⁠…

I was whirled on this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to fall off into a tête-à-tête with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. Mumble⁠—but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that afternoon, either by way of humour or necessity.

That must have been one of my earliest essays in the art of polite conversation, and I remember that I began by criticising the local railway service, and that at the third sentence or thereabouts Mrs. Mumble said in a distinctly bright and encouraging way that she feared I was a very “frivolous” person.

I wonder now what it was I said that was “frivolous.”

I don’t know what happened to end that conversation, or if it had an end. I remember talking to one of the clergy for a time rather awkwardly, and being given a sort of topographical history of Beckenham, which he assured me time after time was “Quite an old place. Quite an old place.” As though I had treated it as new and he meant to be very patient but very convincing. Then we hung up in a distinct pause, and my aunt rescued me. “George,” she said in a confidential undertone, “keep the pot a-boiling.” And then audibly, “I say, will you both old trot about with tea a bit?”

“Only too delighted to trot for you, Mrs. Ponderevo,” said the clergyman, becoming fearfully expert and in his element; “only too delighted.”

I found we were near a rustic table, and that the housemaid was behind us in a suitable position to catch us on the rebound with the tea things.

“Trot!” repeated the clergyman to me, much amused; “excellent expression!” And I just saved him from the tray as he turned about.

We handed tea for a while.⁠ ⁠…

“Give ’em cakes,” said my aunt, flushed, but well in hand. “Helps ’em to talk, George. Always talk best after a little nourishment. Like throwing a bit of turf down an old geyser.”

She surveyed the gathering with a predominant blue eye and helped herself to tea.

“They keep on going stiff,” she said in an undertone.⁠ ⁠… “I’ve done my best.”

“It’s been a huge success,” I said encouragingly.

“That boy has had his legs crossed in that position and hasn’t spoken for ten minutes. Stiffer and stiffer. Brittle. He’s beginning a dry cough⁠—always a bad sign, George.⁠ ⁠… Walk ’em about, shall I?⁠—rub their noses with snow?”

Happily she didn’t. I got myself involved with the gentlewoman from next door, a pensive, languid-looking little woman with a low voice, and fell talking; our topic, cats and dogs, and which it was we liked best.

“I always feel,” said the pensive little woman, “that there’s something about a dog⁠—A cat hasn’t got it.”

“Yes,” I found myself admitting with great enthusiasm, “there is something. And yet again⁠—”

“Oh! I know there’s something about a cat, too. But it isn’t the same.”

“Not quite the same,” I admitted; “but still it’s something.”

“Ah! But such a different something!”

“More sinuous.”

“Much more.”

“Ever so much more.”

“It makes all the difference, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said, “All.”

She glanced at me gravely and sighed a long, deeply felt “Yes.” A long pause.

The thing seemed to me to amount to a stalemate. Fear came into my heart and much perplexity.

“The⁠—er⁠—roses,” I said. I felt like a drowning man. “Those roses⁠—don’t you think they are⁠—very beautiful flowers?”

“Aren’t they!” she agreed gently. “There seems to be something in roses⁠—something⁠—I don’t know how to express it.”

“Something,” I said helpfully.

“Yes,” she said, “something. Isn’t there?”

“So few people see it,” I said; “more’s the pity!”

She sighed and said again very softly, “Yes.”⁠ ⁠…

There was another long pause. I looked at her and she was thinking dreamily. The drowning sensation returned, the fear and enfeeblement. I perceived by a sort of inspiration that her teacup was empty.

“Let me take your cup,” I said abruptly, and, that secured, made for the table by the summerhouse. I had no intention then of deserting my aunt. But close at hand the big French window of the drawing-room yawned inviting and suggestive. I can feel all that temptation now, and particularly the provocation of my collar. In an instant I was lost. I would⁠—Just for a moment!

I dashed in, put down