tell me,” he said. “Mrs. Chump is here, you have quarrelled with her, and she has shut her door, and you have shut yours. It’s quite intelligible and full of dignity. I really can’t smother my voice in consequence.”
He laughed with unnecessary abandonment. The sensitive young women wanted no other schooling to recover themselves. In a moment they were seen leaning back and contemplating him amusedly, as if he had been the comic spectacle, and were laughing for a wager. There are few things so sour as the swallowing of one’s own forced laugh. Wilfrid got it down, and commenced a lecture to fill the awkward pause. His sisters maintained the opera-stall posture of languid attention, contesting his phrases simply with their eyebrows, and smiling. He was no match for them while they chose to be silent: and indeed if the business of life were conducted in dumb show, women would beat men hollow. They posture admirably. In dumb show they are equally good for attack and defence. But this is not the case in speech. So, when Arabella explained that their hope was to see Mrs. Chump go that day, owing to the rigorous exclusion of all amusement and the outer world from the house, Wilfrid regained his superior footing and made his lecture tell. In the middle of it, there rang a cry from the doorway that astonished even him, it was so powerfully Irish.
“The lady you have called down is here,” said Arabella’s cold glance, in answer to his.
They sat with folded hands while Wilfrid turned to Mrs. Chump, who advanced, a shock of blue satin to the eye, crying, on a jump: “Is ut Mr. Wilfrud?”
“It’s I, ma’am.” Wilfrid bowed, and the censorious ladies could not deny that, his style was good, if his object was to be familiar. And if that was his object, he was paid for it. A great thick kiss was planted on his cheek, with the motto: “Harm to them that thinks ut.”
Wilfrid bore the salute like a man who presumes that he is flattered.
“And it’s you!” said Mrs. Chump. “I was just off. I’m packed, and bonnutted, and ready for a start; becas, my dear, where there’s none but women, I don’t think it natural to stop. You’re splendid! How a little fella like Pole could go and be father to such a mighty big son, with your bit of moustache and your blue eyes! Are they blue or a bit of grey in ‘em?” Mrs. Chump peered closely. “They’re kill’n’, let their colour be anyhow. And I that knew ye when ye were no bigger than my garter! Oh, sir! don’t talk of ut; I’ll be thinkin’, of my coffin. Ye’re glad to see me? Say, yes. Do!”
“Very glad,” quoth Wilfrid.
“Upon your honour, now?”
“Upon my honour!”
“My dears” (Mrs. Chump turned to the ladies), “I’ll stop; and just thank your brother for’t, though you can’t help being garls.”
Reduced once more to demonstrate like schoolgirls by this woman, the ladies rose together, and were retiring, when Mrs. Chump swung round and caught Arabella’s hand. “See heer,” she motioned to Wilfrid. Arabella made a bitter effort to disengage herself. “See, now! It’s jeal’sy of me, Mr. Wilfrud, becas I’m a widde and just an abom’nation to garls, poor darlin’s! And twenty shindies per dime we’ve been havin’, and me such a placable body, if ye’ll onnly let m’ explode. I’m all powder, avery bit! and might ha’ been christened Saltpetre, if born a boy. She hasn’t so much as a shot to kill a goose, says Chump, poor fella! But he went, anyway. I must kiss somebody when I talk of ‘m. Mr. Wilfrud, I’ll take the girls, and entitle myself to you.”
Arabella was the first victim. Her remonstrance was inarticulate. Cornelia’s “Madam!” was smothered. Adela behaved better, being more consciously under Wilfrid’s eye; she prepared her pocket-handkerchief, received the salute, and deliberately effaced it.
“There!” said Mrs. Chump; “duty to begin with. And now for you, Mr. Wilfrud.”
The ladies escaped. Their misery could not be conveyed to the mind. The woman was like a demon come among them. They felt chiefly degraded, not by her vulgarity, but by their inability to cope with it, and by the consequent sickening sense of animal inefficiency—the block that was put to all imaginative delight in the golden hazy future they figured for themselves, and which was their wine of life. An intellectual adversary they could have combated; this huge brogue-burring engine quite overwhelmed them. Wilfrid’s worse than shameful behaviour was a common rallying-point; and yet, so absolutely critical were they by nature, their blame of him was held mentally in restraint by the superior ease of his manner as contrasted with their own lamentably silly awkwardness. Highly civilized natures do sometimes, and keen wits must always, feel dissatisfied when they are not on the laughing side: their dread of laughter is an instinctive respect for it.
Dinner brought them all together again. Wilfrid took his father’s seat, facing his Aunt Lupin, and increased the distress of his sisters by his observance of every duty of a host to the dreadful intruder, whom he thus established among them. He was incomprehensible. His visit to Stornley had wrought in him a total change. He used to like being petted, and would regard everything as right that his sisters did, before he went there; and was a languid, long-legged, indifferent cavalier, representing men to them: things made to be managed, snubbed, admired, but always virtually subservient and in the background. Now, without perceptible gradation, his superiority was suddenly manifest; so that, irritated and apprehensive as they were, they could not, by the aid of any of their intricate mental machinery, look down on him. They tried to; they tried hard to think him despicable as well as treacherous. His style was too good. When he informed Mrs. Chump that he had hired a yacht for the season, and added, after enlarging on the merits of the vessel, “I am under your orders,” his sisters were as creatures cut in twain—one half abominating his conduct, the other approving his style. The bow, the smile, were perfect. The ladies had to make an effort to recover their condemnatory judgement.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Chump; “and if you’ve got a yacht, Mr. Wilfrud, won’t ye have a great parcel o’ the arr’stocracy on board?”
“You may spy a title by the aid of a telescope,” said Wilfrid.
“And I’m to come, I am?”
“Are you not elected captain?”
“Oh, if ye’ve got lords and real ladies on board, I’ll come, be sure of ut! I’ll be as sick as a cat, I will. But, I’ll come, if it’s the rroon of my stomach. I’d say to Chump, ‘Oh, if ye’d only been born a lord, or would just get yourself struck a knight on one o’ your shoulders,—oh, Chump!’ I’d say, ‘it wouldn’t be necessary to be rememberin’ always the words of the cerr’mony about lovin’ and honourin’ and obeyin’ of a little whistle of a fella like you.’ Poor lad! he couldn’t stop for his luck! Did ye ask me to take wine, Mr. Wilfrud? I’ll be cryin’, else, as a widde should, ye know!”
Frequent administrations of wine arrested the tears of Mrs. Chump, until it is possible that the fulness of many a checked flow caused her to redden and talk slightly at random. At the first mention of their father’s name, the ladies went out from the room. It was foolish, for they might have watched the effect of certain vinous innuendoes addressed to Wilfrid’s apprehensiveness; but they were weakened and humbled, and everything they did was foolish. From the fact that they offended their keen critical taste, moreover, they were targets to the shaft that wounds more fatally than all. No ridicule knocks the strength out of us so thoroughly as our own.
Whether or not he guessed their condition favourable for his plans, Wilfrid did not give them time to call back their scattered powers. At the hour of eleven he sent for Arabella to come to him in the library. The council upstairs permitted Arabella to go, on the understanding that she was prepared for hostilities, and ready to tear the mask from Wilfrid’s face.
He commenced, without
