An Act in a Backwater E-Book

E.F. Benson

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The brother and sister of the poor nobleman settle in a simple town and bring a new element to the quiet life of this place, which gives many opportunities for comedy. Ginny Avesham is an attractive heroine, but the author tries so hard to show her kindness to the reader that she overdoes her and makes her a little theatrical. A simple story, with many good characters, but also with life features. Benson gave us a small but pleasant exploration of life in a small town.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER I

It was approaching half-past five on a June afternoon, and in consequence Colonel Raymond was approaching the Wroxton County Club. He was a man of method, and a retired Colonel of Volunteers, and thus he left his house (christened Lammermoor by his wife) with great regularity at a quarter past five in summer, and a quarter past four in winter, and marched rather than walked with an inflated chest and a gallant bearing. The Colonel, even at the age of fifty-six, remained one of those harmless idiots who draw themselves up and try to look interesting whenever a pretty woman passes them; indeed, he went further, for, being a little short-sighted, he drew himself up and tried to look interesting when he saw any female figure approaching, on the chance that at nearer range she might prove to be pretty. He had a somewhat flaming face, and a long mustache “silver sabled.” In very hot weather he was liable to touches of liver, and when thus afflicted, sometimes alluded, when only comparative strangers were present, to the trying climate of India, a country in which, as his intimate acquaintances knew, he had never set foot. But to the uninitiate the combination of the title of Colonel and the climate of India led to the deduction that he had seen service, and the Colonel did not put himself to the pains of correcting this. He would even encourage it further by sometimes talking of lunch as “tiffin.”

Now Colonel Raymond’s manner was so radically bluff and straightforward that it would be absurd to argue any want of sincerity from such trifles. Every man he met was either “the best fellow on this earth,” or “a blackguard, sir, a low Radical blackguard!” Shades and fine distinctions did not exist for him; there was no nonsense about him, he would say. But there was very little sense.

The Colonel had his idols. Dizzy, “old Dizzy,” was one of them, and this full measure of his approbation was conferred on the Queen when old Dizzy was created an Earl, for the aristocracy was another. His wife’s sister had married a man whose sister had married Lord Avesham, and had this fortunate peer known it, he must have often been gratified to have heard himself alluded to by the Colonel as “my noble relative.” His noble relative was President of the Wroxton County Club, toward which the Colonel was now marching; but on the few occasions on which his lordship had set foot in that establishment, the Colonel, if there, had speedily effaced himself, only to come in half an hour afterward with the avowed object of looking for him, and much regret at having missed him. He had once even gone so far as to address a note to Lord Avesham, with a few formal lines inside and his own name very large on the left-hand corner of the envelope. This he left conspicuously in the rack which held members’ letters, with “To await arrival” in the corner. But from some reason or other (Lord Avesham had been seen in Wroxton several times that week) the Colonel surreptitiously removed it the day after. Perhaps he thought that he would certainly meet his noble relative in the street, and could ask him to tiffin then.

On this particular afternoon the Colonel had drawn himself up and looked interesting quite a number of times–indeed, it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he had not looked dull for thirty seconds together during the second and more populous part of his walk. The day had been hot, and the inhabitants of Wroxton were streaming out for a walk in the cool of the evening. Once, a fine instance of the innate kindliness of the Colonel, he had gone so far as to help a nursery-maid over a crossing with her perambulator, for the strong should always assist the weak, and there was a butcher’s cart standing only a few doors off, which might have driven rapidly in her direction without warning. Then he had passed the younger Miss Clifford on her bicycle, and, though the younger Miss Clifford was forty-three and as plain as a biscuit, the gallant Colonel had fired some piece of robust wit at her on the subject of country lanes and chance meetings.

The smoking-room of the club was rapidly filling when the Colonel entered. Captain Johnson and Major Daltry were on the point of going to the billiard-room, and as they both played a game more slow than sure, the table would be occupied for the next hour. Colonel Raymond, with all his gallantry and romantic bearing where the other sex was concerned, did not trouble to stand on his manners when among what he called “old cronies,” and when he found that Mr. Hewson, who completed his regular four at whist, had not arrived, he was not pleased. Among his old cronies, in fact, he gave the impression of being always in a rage. At whist he certainly was, particularly with his partner. However, as he had to wait, he took up the evening paper until Mr. Hewson should appear, and, standing in front of the fireplace, read out scraps of news with loud, explosive comments.

“Perfectly childish and suicidal,” he said, hitting the paper angrily with his hand. “I have always said so, and I shall always say so. Our foreign policy is perfectly childish and suicidal. I don’t know what we are about. Why don’t we turn those blackguards out of Constantinople, and hang the Sultan, and make an end of the whole business in the good old English fashion. Old Dizzy would have done it long ago. I’m ashamed, positively ashamed to be English. Eh, what?”

And he turned fiercely on Mr. Newbolt, a gentle solicitor with mutton-chop whiskers, who had not spoken.

“I didn’t say anything, Colonel,” he remarked.

“No, sir,” retorted the Colonel, “there is nothing to be said. There is no justification possible for our policy. Childish and suicidal I call it, because I am a man who doesn’t mince matters, and isn’t afraid of speaking his mind. Bring me a whisky and soda, waiter. Ah, here is Hewson. Now perhaps we shall get a game of whist at last.”

“I am not late, Colonel,” he said. “It is only just the half hour.”

“Let us lose no more time in getting to our whist,” repeated Colonel Raymond.

Mr. Newbolt had furtively picked up the paper which the Colonel had dropped on Mr. Hewson’s entry.

“Hullo, here is news for you,” said he; “Lord Avesham is dead.”

“God bless my soul!” cried the Colonel, wheeling suddenly round. “Dead? My noble relative dead? Pooh, I don’t believe a word of it. It’s some lie of that infernal Radical paper of yours. Why, it was only the other day that–Let’s look.”

He took the paper out of Mr. Newbolt’s unresisting hand.

“Expired at nine o’clock this morning at his residence in Prince’s Gate,” he read. “Yes, Number Seventeen, that’s quite right. Seems to be true. Very shocking, indeed. Poor Avesham, poor fellow. Family all there–I must send a wire. No, I’ll send it after our whist, or to-morrow morning first thing. Dear me, dear, dear me! Waiter, am I going to wait all night for that whisky and soda? Bring it to the card-room, and look sharp.”

“He seems to have been ill some time,” said Mr. Newbolt, in quiet, precise tones. “I suppose you expected it, Colonel?”

“No, sir, I did not,” he replied. “The report of his illness was greatly exaggerated. It’s a blow to me, a blow.”

And the Colonel strutted out of the room, followed by the three others, as if Lord Avesham’s death had brought him within a life or two of the title.

Colonel Raymond’s whist was as explosive as his manner among his old cronies, and was conducted on principles founded crookedly on Cavendish. The rule there inculcated to retain command of a suit, he interpreted by readings of his own, and thus it not infrequently happened that a perfect spate of kings and aces would burst from his hand after his adversaries had begun to rough the suit. His unhappy partner had to cower beneath the rain of winning cards and censure when this happened.

“You should have drawn the trumps, sir,” the Colonel would say; “a baby in arms would have drawn the trumps. You could see I was keeping command of the ordinary suits, and if you had only had the sense to draw the trumps they would all have made. My deal, I think; cut again, please, I hate a slovenly cut. Let’s see, that’s a treble. We pay dear for your mistake. Honours? Two against us by honours. One of the instances, as Cavendish says, where a weak hand could have been turned into a winning hand by a little judgment and forethought.”

His partner, if discreet, would not reply, but sometimes, goaded to frenzy, if the same sort of thing had happened before that evening, he would point out with perfect justice that he had positively had no opportunity of taking a trick, as the Colonel held all the winning cards, and that being the case he might have played one of them, and opened trumps for himself.

That was what Colonel Raymond was waiting for.

“And weaken my own suit, sir,” he would cry, “and spoil all chance of what I was playing for. What would have been the use of that? You fail to understand the elementary laws of the game. You will spend an hour with Cavendish now and then, as I’m not ashamed to do, if you take my advice. It will save you many rubbers.”

But his partner, if wise, would say nothing, possessing his soul in a show, at any rate, of patience until the Colonel revoked. Sometimes he revoked early, sometimes late, but one revoke in an evening might be confidently looked for. It cost three tricks, it is true, but peace at any price was the motto of the Colonel’s partner, for after the revoke occurred the Colonel ceased to be a man of war, and let his kings die like men under the stroke of the ace. At other times he would cover his mistakes with humorous gallantry.

“I ought to have played the queen, sir, and I acknowledge it,” he would be so kind as to say; “but I couldn’t bear that that knave of a king–knave of a king, ha, ha!–should take her from me. The fair sex, sir, the fair sex.”

Morton Hall, the country-seat of the Colonel’s noble relative, was only a few miles out of Wroxton, and when he returned home that evening to dinner, after breaking the news of Lord Avesham’s death to Mrs. Raymond and his daughters, he held a loud, overbearing discussion across the table (for at home, as among his old cronies, his gallantry was relaxed) as to whether the eldest son of his deceased relative would be able to keep it open. The family was poor, and the Colonel asserted angrily, as if he had been personally affronted, that the death duties would be so heavy that they would have to let it.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, sipping his soup with a sound of many waters, though nobody had told him anything. “Don’t tell me. They are as poor as rats. Pepper, give me the pepper. I’d sooner wash my hands in this soup, Constance, than drink it. Simple water, simple warm water. As poor as rats. Poorer. It’s all that infernal Radical government. We are the best blood in England–the Aveshams are the best blood in England, and have served their king and country for five hundred years. There ought to be a government grant. Take away the soup.”

Mrs. Raymond was a resigned and feeble woman, with a thin, vague face which it was impossible to remember. Ten years of married life with her husband had made a phantom of her. She had the wreck of long-departed prettiness about her, but that had been sunk, becoming, as it were, a total loss, leaving her face devoid of any qualities. Her mind was destitute of hopes, aims, and regrets; she was as intangible to description as a moonbeam.

“It would be impossible to provide for all the families of all the poor peers in England, Robert,” she suggested.

“Impossible? Yes, if you have a government of Atheists and Socialists, who are afraid of the Sultan, and wish to abolish the House of Lords–God bless it! That is where the fault lies. England is going to the dogs. I wish, Constance, you would sometimes get hold of fish that is eatable. Worcester sauce. Give me the Worcester sauce. Venison–my fish is venison. Going to the dogs. Why, in the good old days it was sufficient for a man to be connected with a bishop or a peer to make sure of a government office. The apotheosis of the brewer, that’s what I call the England of to-day. Take away the fish. What else is there for dinner?”

“It is very hard to get good fish in this weather,” said Mrs. Raymond. “It is next to impossible to keep it.”

“Impossible? Nonsense. You women have no method. You’ve only got to keep it cool. No method at all. You keep fish all day in a hot kitchen, and then expect it to be good in the evening.”

“The fish was only sent in at half past six this evening,” said his wife, in a low, monotonous voice. “It was so late I thought it would not be here in time for dinner.”

“And a good thing if it hadn’t been,” retorted the Colonel; “I’d sooner have no fish at all than fish like that–uneatable, perfectly uneatable.”

Mrs. Raymond was silent, and the meal proceeded to the noise only of knives and forks.

“Arthur Avesham, too,” broke out the Colonel again. “He’ll have to make his way in the world alone now. What’s to happen to him and Jeannie? Tell me that. Some ignoramus said the other day that his father had bought him a place in Dalton’s brewery here. I don’t believe a word of it, not a word of it. Even if it’s true, what then? Eh?”

“Perhaps he’ll go on living at Morton, if it’s true,” said Mrs. Raymond, “or perhaps he’ll take a house at Wroxton.”

“Take a house in Wroxton?” cried her husband, again insulted. “Sheer nonsense. There’s not a house in the town to live in beside our own. And as for Morton, I tell you that they’ll have to shut it up. They’re as poor as rats.”

“If it’s true about his place in Dalton’s,” said Mrs. Raymond, “I suppose he will have a few hundred a year. His father cannot have left him nothing.”

“A few hundred a year!” said Colonel Raymond. “If I were to say that his income was a hundred and fifty all told, I should be overstating it. And what’s that to a young fellow who has been brought up with every luxury that wealth and rank can supply? Eh?”

“I thought you said they were as poor as rats,” remarked Mrs. Raymond, in the same even, colourless voice.

The argument–or, rather, the string of assertions–was not worth continuing, and Colonel Raymond only snorted contemptuously in reply. The three daughters had long been fidgeting on their seats and struggling against the twitchings of sleepiness. They were not yet of an age to dine with their parents, but Colonel Raymond insisted on their presence at dinner till bedtime came. Sometimes they were regaled with a grape or two, but usually they had to sit silent and unoccupied. Their father said he saw so little of them during the day, which was not surprising, since the first rule of the house was that he must never be disturbed. Occasionally he took them out for a walk, and then he might be seen stalking over the downs outside the town, stopping occasionally to revile them for lagging behind, followed by a string of small figures in various stages of labour and distress, panting and trotting after him. These nightmare excursions were part of Colonel Raymond’s system. A good, quick walk he considered the panacea of all childish ailments, particularly tiredness, which was synonymous with laziness, and he did not approve of coddling. Consequently their mother coddled them in private, and their father walked them off their legs in public. The happy mean did not result from this treatment, and they were growing up peaked and thin, and their father had to confess that even the best blood in England had a tendency to run to seed.

It was the habit of Mrs. Raymond to retire early, and on the entry of the tray with whisky and soda at ten o’clock she usually went to bed, leaving her husband to console himself for her absence by a drink of that invigorating mixture, another cigar, and his own thoughts. These latter were as straightforward as himself, and he usually ran over in his mind his gains and losses at whist, and, twirling his mustache, lived over again the moments in which he had assumed an interesting appearance. It must be understood that we are following the Colonel into the innermost sanctum of his being, and are recording what he scarcely recorded consciously himself. Probably he did not know how much he was absorbed in these two subjects, but the truth of the matter is he thought about little else except them and the aristocracy. To-night, however, the aristocracy held a dominating place in his reflections, and the quality of his meditations was not agreeable. That in-a-propos remark of his wife, in fact, returned again and again to his mind, and he could not help thinking that if Arthur Avesham came to live in Wroxton his habitual conversation about his noble relative, Arthur’s father, would have to be curtailed or, still worse, corrected.

CHAPTER II

In spite of the Colonel’s settled belief to the contrary, it was perfectly true that, only a few months before his noble relative’s death, Lord Avesham had bought for Arthur, his second and youngest son, a share in Dalton’s brewery in Wroxton, and he was to enter it the following September. Arthur had only just left Oxford, where he had shown an almost remarkable distaste for study and indoor pursuits, and a notable tendency not to get through examinations, and he had welcomed the brewing prospect with alacrity. The diplomatic service, for which he had been intended, had been closed to him through a couple of complete and graceful failures to compete successfully with other candidates, and he had dreaded that the gradual closing of other careers would eventually land him, as it had landed so many others at that terrific faute de mieux, the bar. But he was a very long way from being stupid, or, rather, his stupidity was of most limited range–of the range, in fact, which only comprises dates, idioms, and fractions, a small part of life. But when this is joined to an incapacity for continued application amounting almost to paralysis, parents and guardians would be wise to reconcile themselves to the fact that those they love will never distinguish themselves in examinations. As long, however, as that immemorial fiction is held up before the young that the object of education is to enable them to rise triumphant over examinations, so long dateless and unidiomatic children will continue to feel that they are disappointing their parents.

Arthur had felt this at times acutely, but he had accepted the inevitable with such success that Lord Avesham had written him down indifferent as well as stupid, and what was in him only great sweetness of disposition was credited as insouciance. This, too, he bore with equanimity.

Harry, his elder brother, his sister Jeannie, and himself had come down to Morton with their mother’s sister, Miss Fortescue, for the funeral of Lord Avesham, and were going to stop there for the present. Family councils had to be held about the disposition of affairs, and one was in progress on a morning in July about a fortnight after Lord Avesham’s death. They were certainly a remarkably handsome family, and it was to be conjectured that their good looks were a heritage–perhaps the most valuable he had bequeathed them–from their father, for the most that could be said about Miss Fortescue was that she had a very intellectual expression. Harry was sitting at a desk with some papers before him, and Miss Fortescue was sitting opposite him. Jeannie lounged in the window-seat, and Arthur was resting in a chair so long and low that all that could be seen of him was one knee and a great length of shin. The position of his head was vaguely indicated by a series of smoke-rings which floated upward at regular intervals. There had been silence for a few moments. Miss Fortescue’s baritone voice broke it.

“Well, what does the black sheep say?” she demanded.

There was a pause in the smoke-rings, and a voice asked:

“Do you mean me, Aunt Em?”

“Yes, dear. Whom else?”

“I thought you must mean me, but it was best to ask,” said the voice. “I’m not a black sheep, though; I’m only a sheep.”

Harry looked up, half impatient, half amused.

“Oh, Arthur, don’t be so trying,” he said. “It really rests with you.”

“I’d much sooner somebody settled for me,” said Arthur.

“But they won’t; speak, sheep,” said Miss Fortescue.

The chair in which Arthur sat creaked, and he struggled to his feet.

“I’m not good at speaking,” he said; “but if you insist–well, it’s just this. Harry, you’re a brick to suggest that we should all live here, but I think you’re wrong about it. In the first place, we’re poor, and if you keep Morton open we shall be all tied here, and we sha’n’t be able to fill the house with people, and we shall not be able to keep up the shooting; and here we shall be with this great shell over our heads, like bluebottles or some other mean insect which lives in palaces. In the second place, you will probably marry, and that will cramp you still further. In the third–this is from my own point of view, purely–if I live here, I know perfectly well that, with the best intentions in the world, on wet mornings when I don’t want to go out, and on fine ones when I do, I shall persuade myself that I am far from well, and not go to Wroxton and the brewery. Fourthly, you yourself will miss not being in London horribly. You’d bore yourself to death here. But you’re a brick for suggesting it. And–and that’s all.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“So the sheep has spoken,” said Jeannie. “Well done, sheep. But I thought you said you were wholly indifferent?”

“I know I did. But you drove me into a corner.”

Miss Fortescue looked at Arthur approvingly.

“For so stupid a boy, you have glimmerings of sense,” she said.

“Oh, I’m a sharp fellow,” said Arthur.

“Really, Arthur, I think you are,” said Harry. “Mind, my offer holds perfectly good, but I do think there is something in what you say.”

Arthur stood looking from one to the other, with his head a little on one side, like a dog who has done its trick. Unlike Jeannie and his brother, he was fair, with blue eyes and an extraordinarily pleasant face.

“Well, them’s my sentiments,” he said. “Your turn, Jeannie.”

“I know it is,” said Jeannie. “And what’s to happen to me, Arthur?” she demanded.

Arthur groaned slightly.

“I’ve done all that can be expected of me,” he said. “My turn is over.”

Jeannie jumped up.

“Oh, I know,” she said. “I’ll come and keep house for you in Wroxton, Arthur, and Harry shall come down to stay with us from Saturday till Monday, and we’ll go up to stay with him from–from Monday till Saturday.”

“A lot of beer shall I brew,” remarked Arthur. “Why, you could swim in it.”

“I don’t much see you living at Wroxton, Jeannie,” said Harry.

“Why not? I should enjoy it. I really should. And we’ll give high teas to the Canons.”

“I think you’d loathe it before a month was out,” repeated Harry.

“Indeed I shouldn’t.”

“We’re all so terribly unselfish, and that’s what is the matter with us,” said Arthur. “First Harry wants to let us all live with him, and then I want to live in that funny little town in order to attend to my work, and then Jeannie wants to live with me. Aunt Em, give us a contribution, and try, oh, try to be selfish; I’m sure you can.”

“Well, I think Jeannie is right,” said Miss Fortescue. “You would hate not living in London, Harry, and I think the best thing you can do is to have a flat there, quite small, so that one or two of us could very kindly come to stay with you, and let Jeannie and Arthur live in Wroxton. Then shut Morton up, or let it. You’d better let it, if possible. It’s only for a year or two, till you’ve paid these iniquitous Radical taxes. And then when you open it again you can order your beer from Arthur.”

Arthur gave a sigh of relief.

“Well, that’s settled,” he said. “Jeannie, let’s go into Wroxton this afternoon and see the householders or the house-agents. Oh, Aunt Em, what is going to happen to you?”

“You are all so unselfish,” said Miss Fortescue, “that I thought one of you might have considered that. But I was wrong.”

A general shout went up of “Come and live with me,” and the meeting was adjourned for the time being.

Miss Fortescue, who has hitherto been distinguished from the Aveshams generally by the fact of her not being at all good-looking, had her compensations. She was, in the first place, exceedingly musical, and had about as much wits as two generations of Aveshams put together. She was a woman of very pronounced opinions, and though you might accidentally hit upon a subject on which she had neither opinion nor knowledge, she would be happy to pronounce an opinion on it offhand with such conviction as to lead you to suppose she knew something about it. If you could induce her to argue about the said subject, though you might suspect that she knew nothing whatever of it, yet you would find it difficult to bring her ignorance home to her. She would glean facts from her opponent as she went along, and use them against him with telling effect. But it was next to impossible to make her argue; if you disagreed with her she would raise her eyes to the ceiling as if commending you and your benighted condition to the hands of Providence. Like most clever people, she was sublimely inconsistent, and though she genuinely abhorred the idea of the death of any living creature, she would eat flesh meals without any qualms whatever. This may be partly accounted for by the fact that she hated fads as much as the death of innocent animals, and it was her dislike of vegetarians rather than of a vegetable diet which led to so sturdy an inconsistency. The same contradictions appeared in her views about horses and dogs, and she would rather walk to the station, though hating bodily exercise, than have out a horse which was bursting with condition and make it pull her. The same misplaced tenderness applied to her treatment of dogs, and her own pug was an object-lesson of unwholesome overfeeding.

Miss Fortescue on this particular morning had been glad, by her last ungenerous speech, to shift the responsibility of her future on to other shoulders, or, at any rate, to delay her own decision. She wanted, in the main, to determine what she wanted to do, and she could not quite make up her mind. She had lived with the Aveshams since her sister’s death some eight years ago, and they all took it for granted (herself included) that she would continue to go on living with them. For herself, she would have much preferred to have gone on living at Morton, but she saw and admitted at once the reasonableness of Arthur’s view. Her own income, with the exception of a hundred a year for dress and travelling (she dressed with notable cheapness, and never travelled), she was prepared to give into the household coffers of whatever branch of the family she decided to live with, and as Jeannie and Arthur had only six hundred a year between them, the extra five hundred she could give constituted an additional reason for joining them. As far as the advantages of town and country were to be considered, she had no great choice, for she felt no thrill in the stir and noise of streets, and the sweet silence of the country could not appreciably add to her habitual tranquility. She hardly ever went out unless she was obliged, and on those occasions she took short walks very slowly, and it was something of a mystery, even to those who knew her best, as to what she did with the hours. She would always disappear soon after breakfast, and if asked at lunch what she had been doing, she would say, “Working.” Then, if pressed further as to what her work had been, she would only raise her eyes to the ceiling, and the incident would close. This raising of the eyes had long been a danger-signal to the Aveshams. It implied that Miss Fortescue was unwilling to say more on this particular subject, and any further questions would only evoke severe remarks on their inquisitiveness.

Jeannie and Arthur rode into Wroxton that afternoon and made the house-agent an unhappy man. The house they required had to be near the brewery, and also at the top of the hill, which, to begin with, was impossible, as the brewery was at the very bottom of the town. Then it had to have a good smoking-room, two nice sitting-rooms–one for Jeannie and one for Miss Fortescue, in case she decided to join them–a drawing-room and a dining-room (the size of these was really important), and four excellent bed-rooms away from the street. To be away from the street implied a garden, which must be private, sunny, and extensive. That red brick should be the material of the house was desirable, but not absolutely essential. The offices, Miss Fortescue insisted, should be really good, for they made all the difference to servants, whom one was bound to consider before one’s self. A small stable only, but well-aired and dry, was required, and the rent of the whole must be exceedingly low.