lightness into this sombre opening.
‘Trust Hugh for not agreeing with anything he doesn’t understand,’ she said.
Mrs. Goodford took no notice whatever of this. It is likely that her quick little eye had intercepted the telegraphic suggestion of champagne, and that she was justly irritated at her son-in-law’s rejection of it. She laid herself out to be more markedly disagreeable than usual.
‘Well, all I can say is, that I hope your Miss Pemberton isn’t one of those lively young ladies who are always laughing and joking, or you’ll be fit to kill her with your serious airs. I should never have guessed that you were going to be a bridegroom in a few weeks’ time.’
‘But you haven’t got to guess, Grandmamma,’ said Hugh. ‘You know already.’
‘And I’m told she has a nice little fortune of her own,’ continued Mrs. Goodford. ‘Trust a Keeling for that. Ah, dear me, yes: there are some that go up in the world and some that go down, and I never heard that the Keelings were among those that go down.’
Hugh hardly thought about this at all before he answered. It was a perfectly evident proposition.
‘I dare say not,’ he said, still non-committally.
‘Yes; and it was true before you were born or thought of,’ continued this terrible old lady. ‘Your father didn’t marry so much beneath him either. Ah, he was in a precious small way, he was, when he came a-courting your mother.’
Mrs. Goodford had now, so to speak, found her range. She had been like a gun, that has made a few trial shots, dropping a shell now on Alice, now on Hugh. But this last one went off right in the centre of the target. She disliked her son-in-law with that peculiar animus which is the privilege of those who are under a thousand obligations to the object of their spite, for since nearly thirty years ago, when he had taken Emmeline off her hands, till last Christmas, when he had given her a new Bath-chair in addition to his usual present of a hundred pounds, Keeling had treated her with consistent and contemptuous liberality. This liberality, naturally, was not the offspring of any affection: the dominant ingredient in it was pride. However Mrs. Goodford might behave, he was not to be disturbed from his sense of duty towards his mother-in-law. Nor, at present, was he sufficiently provoked to make any sort of retort, but merely told John to pass him the sugar.
Mrs. Goodford finished her plum tart.
‘Yes, some do go up in the world,’ she went on. ‘Who’d have thought thirty years ago that T. Keeling of the fish-shop in the High Street was going to be Mr. Thomas Keeling of the Stores?’
A slight smile appeared on Keeling’s grim face. He could not resist replying to this.
‘Who’d have thought it, do you ask?’ he said. ‘Why, I thought it; I knew it all along, I may say.’
‘And they tell me you’re going to be Mayor of Bracebridge next year,’ said Mrs. Goodford, delighted to have drawn him into conversation with her. If only she could engage him in it she trusted herself to make him lose his temper before many minutes were over.
‘Yes, they’ve told you right there,’ said he. ‘Or perhaps you’ve got some fault to find with that, Mrs. Goodford.’
Mrs. Keeling looked round in a distressed and flurried manner, with her feeble geniality showing like some pale moon behind clouds that were growing rapidly thicker.
‘Yes, and me the Lady Mayoress,’ she said. ‘Why, I’m ever so nervous even now in the thinking of all the grand parties I shall have to give. And the hospital will be finished next year too, and what a to-do we shall have over that. And what do you say now, Mamma, to having your cup of coffee in my boudoir quietly with Alice and me, leaving the gentlemen to have a cigarette.’
Mrs. Goodford gave a thin little laugh like a bat’s squeak.
‘No, I’ll sit here a bit longer,’ she said, ‘and talk to the gentlemen and the Lord Mayor of Bracebridge. Dear me, to think of all the changes we see! And I shouldn’t wonder if there was more in store yet. I learned when I was a girl that there was once a King of England who used to like a bit of stale fish——’
Keeling suddenly pointed an awful forefinger at her.
‘Now, that’s enough!’ he said. ‘Never in my life have I sold a bit of bad goods, fish, flesh, or fowl, or whatever you like to name, that I wasn’t willing to take it back with humble apologies for its having left my shop. Not one atom of bad stuff did any one buy of me if I knew it. And any one who says different to that speaks a false-hood. If you’ve got anything to answer me there, Mrs. Goodford, let’s have it now and have done with it.’
There was not a word in reply, and after having given her good space to answer him, he spoke again.
‘So we’ll have no more talk of stale fish at my table,’ he said.
Mrs. Keeling rose.
‘Well, then, I’m sure that’s all comfortably settled,’ she said, ‘and pray, Mamma, and you, Thomas, don’t go worrying each other any more, when we might be having such a pleasant family party, on Sunday afternoon too. Come along with me, Mamma, and let’s have our coffee served in my boudoir, and let’s all sit and cool after our lunch.’
This appeal was more successful. Something in the simple dignity of Keeling’s reply had silenced her, and she was led away like a wicked little elephant between her daughter and Alice. Not one word did Keeling say till they had left the room, and then, though his usual allowance of port on Sunday was one glass after lunch and two after dinner, he helped himself again and pushed the bottle towards Hugh.
‘Join your mother, John,’ he said to his other son.
‘Oh, mayn’t I——’ began John, with an eye to cherries.
‘You may do as I bid you without more words,’ said his father.
For a few minutes he sat glowering and sipping.
‘That’s why some men take to drink,’ he observed. ‘They’re driven silly by some ill-conditioned woman like your grandmother. Nag, nag, nag: it was Alice first, then you, then me. Does she come to eat her dinner with us on Sunday just to insult us all, do you think?’
Hugh considered this as he helped himself.
‘I think that’s part of her reason,’ he said. ‘She also wants to get a good dinner for nothing.’
‘I expect that’s about it. She may call me a tradesman if she likes, who has been a fishmonger, for that’s quite true. But she shan’t call me such a rotten bad man of business as to send out stale goods. She wouldn’t be getting her hundred pounds regular as clock-work at Christmas time, if I had been that sort of a man.’
‘You answered her very properly, I thought,’ remarked Hugh.
‘Of course I did. I didn’t want to do it: never in my life have I wanted to speak like that to any woman, let alone your mother’s mother, but she gave me no option. Now I’m off to my books.’
He rose.
‘It would be rather a good thing if you went into my mother’s room
