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

the cup on the keys of the grand piano and fled upstairs, softly, swiftly, three steps at a time, to the sanctuary of my uncle’s study, his snuggery. I arrived there breathless, convinced there was no return for me. I was very glad and ashamed of myself, and desperate. By means of a penknife I contrived to break open his cabinet of cigars, drew a chair to the window, took off my coat, collar and tie, and remained smoking guiltily and rebelliously, and peeping through the blind at the assembly on the lawn until it was altogether gone.⁠ ⁠…

The clergymen, I thought, were wonderful.

III

A few such pictures of those early days at Beckenham stand out, and then I find myself among the Chiselhurst memories. The Chiselhurst mansion had “grounds” rather than a mere garden, and there was a gardener’s cottage and a little lodge at the gate. The ascendant movement was always far more in evidence there than at Beckenham. The velocity was increasing.

One night picks itself out as typical, as, in its way, marking an epoch. I was there, I think, about some advertisement stuff, on some sort of business anyhow, and my uncle and aunt had come back in a fly from a dinner at the Runcorns. (Even there he was nibbling at Runcorn with the idea of our great Amalgamation budding in his mind.) I got down there, I suppose, about eleven. I found the two of them sitting in the study, my aunt on a chair-arm with a whimsical pensiveness on her face, regarding my uncle, and he, much extended and very rotund, in the low armchair drawn up to the fender.

“Look here, George,” said my uncle, after my first greetings. “I just been saying: We aren’t Oh Fay!”

“Eh?”

“Not Oh Fay! Socially!”

“Old fly, he means, George⁠—French!”

“Oh! Didn’t think of French. One never knows where to have him. What’s gone wrong tonight?”

“I been thinking. It isn’t any particular thing. I ate too much of that fishy stuff at first, like salt frog spawn, and was a bit confused by olives; and⁠—well, I didn’t know which wine was which. Had to say that each time. It puts your talk all wrong. And she wasn’t in evening dress, not like the others. We can’t go on in that style, George⁠—not a proper ad.”

“I’m not sure you were right,” I said, “in having a fly.”

“We got to do it all better,” said my uncle, “we got to do it in Style. Smart business, smart men. She tries to pass it off as humorous”⁠—my aunt pulled a grimace⁠—“it isn’t humorous! See! We’re on the upgrade now, fair and square. We’re going to be big. We aren’t going to be laughed at as Poovenoos, see!”

“Nobody laughed at you,” said my aunt. “Old Bladder!”

“Nobody isn’t going to laugh at me,” said my uncle, glancing at his contours and suddenly sitting up.

My aunt raised her eyebrows slightly, swung her foot, and said nothing.

“We aren’t keeping pace with our own progress, George. We got to. We’re bumping against new people, and they set up to be gentlefolks⁠—etiquette dinners and all the rest of it. They give themselves airs and expect us to be fish-out-of-water. We aren’t going to be. They think we’ve no Style. Well, we give them Style for our advertisements, and we’re going to give ’em Style all through.⁠ ⁠… You needn’t be born to it to dance well on the wires of the Bond Street tradesmen. See?”

I handed him the cigar-box.

“Runcorn hadn’t cigars like these,” he said, truncating one lovingly. “We beat him at cigars. We’ll beat him all round.”

My aunt and I regarded him, full of apprehensions.

“I got idees,” he said darkly to the cigar, deepening our dread.

He pocketed his cigar-cutter and spoke again.

“We got to learn all the rotten little game first. See, f’rinstance, we got to get samples of all the blessed wines there are⁠—and learn ’em up. Stern, Smoor, Burgundy, all of ’em! She took Stern tonight⁠—and when she tasted it first⁠—you pulled a face, Susan, you did. I saw you. It surprised you. You bunched your nose. We got to get used to wine and not do that. We got to get used to wearing evening dress⁠—you, Susan, too.”

“Always have had a tendency to stick out of my clothes,” said my aunt. “However⁠—Who cares?” She shrugged her shoulders.

I had never seen my uncle so immensely serious.

“Got to get the hang of etiquette,” he went on to the fire. “Horses even. Practise everything. Dine every night in evening dress.⁠ ⁠… Get a brougham or something. Learn up golf and tennis and things. Country gentleman. Oh Fay. It isn’t only freedom from Goochery.”

“Eh?” I said.

“Oh!⁠—Gawshery, if you like!”

“French, George,” said my aunt. “But I’m not ol’ Gooch. I made that face for fun.”

“It isn’t only freedom from Gawshery. We got to have Style. See! Style! Just all right and one better. That’s what I call Style. We can do it, and we will.”

He mumbled his cigar and smoked for a space, leaning forward and looking into the fire.

“What is it,” he asked, “after all? What is it? Tips about eating; tips about drinking. Clothes. How to hold yourself, and not say jes’ the few little things they know for certain are wrong⁠—jes’ the shibboleth things.”

He was silent again, and the cigar crept up from the horizontal towards the zenith as the confidence of his mouth increased.

“Learn the whole bag of tricks in six months.” he said, becoming more cheerful. “Ah, Susan? Beat it out! George, you in particular ought to get hold of it. Ought to get into a good club, and all that.”

“Always ready to learn!” I said. “Ever since you gave me the chance of Latin. So far we don’t seem to have hit upon any Latin-speaking stratum in the population.”

“We’ve come to French,” said my aunt, “anyhow.”

“It’s a very useful language,” said my uncle. “Put a point on things. Zzzz. As for accent, no Englishman has an accent. No Englishman pronounces French properly. Don’t you