Part 42 (1/2)
The boy began to feel exceedingly confused. Yet he had never been less bored. Miss Haddon might be stout and sixty-four. Nevertheless, her net personality was far less wearisome than that of many a town-bred sylph.
Unconsciously Claude ate with a hearty appet.i.te, indulged immoderately in excellent roast beef, and even swallowed a beautifully-cooked Spanish onion without thinking of the committal of a crime. During dessert Miss Haddon gave him a racy description of a rural cricket match and of the supper and speeches which followed it, and he found himself laughing heartily and wis.h.i.+ng he had been there. He pulled himself up short with a sudden sensation of horror, and his hostess rose to go into the drawing-room.
”Shall we play Halma or Ek Bahr?” she asked; ”or would they be out of order? I wish particularly to conform to all your tenets.”
”Dear lady, please, we have no tenets,” he protested. ”Do remember that, or you will never become what you wish. But I do not care for any games.”
”Then shall we sit down and each read a volume of the 'Yellow Book'?”
She hastened towards a table to find copies of that work, but something in her brisk and anxious movement caused Claude to exclaim hurriedly:
”Please--please teach me Halma.”
That night he went up to bed flushed with triumph.
Miss Haddon had allowed him to win a couple of games. Never before had he felt so absolutely certain of the unusual acuteness of his intellect.
IV
Three days later, Miss Haddon and Claude Melville were feeding chickens--under protest.
”I mean to give it up, of course,” the former said. ”It's a degrading pursuit; it's almost as bad as the 'things that Jimmy does,' the things that give him such a marvellous complexion and keep his figure so magnificent.”
She threw a handful of grain to the frenzied denizens of the enlarged meat-safe before them, and added in a tone of pensive reflectiveness:
”Why is it, I wonder, that these actions which, as you have taught me, are unworthy of thinking people, tend to make the body so beautiful, the eyes so bright and clear, the cheeks rose-tinted, the limbs straight and supple?”
All the time that she was speaking her glance crept musingly over Claude's tall, but weak-looking and rather flaccid form, seeming to pause on his thin undeveloped arms, his lanky legs, and his slightly yellow face. That face began to flush. She sighed.
”There must be something radically wrong in the scheme of the universe,”
she continued. ”But, of course, one ought to live for the mind and for subtle sensations, even though they do make one look an object.”
Her eyes were on the chickens now, who were fighting like feathered furies, pouncing, clucking, running for safety, grain in beak, or, with a fiery anxiety, chasing the favoured brethren who had secured a morsel and were hoping to be permitted to swallow it. Claude glanced at her furtively out of the corner of his eye, and endeavoured, for the first time in his life, to stand erect and broaden his rather narrow chest.
Silently he resolved to give instructions to his tailor not to spare the padding in his future coats. He was glad, too, that knee-breeches, for which he had occasionally sighed, had not come into fas.h.i.+on again. After all, modern dress had its little advantages. Miss Haddon was still scattering grain, rather in the att.i.tude of Millet's ”_Sower_,” and still talking reflectively.
”We must try to convert Jimmy,” she said. ”I have a good deal of influence over him, Mr Melville. We must try to make him more like you, more thoughtful, more inactive, more frankly sensual, more fond of sofas, in the future than he has been in the past. Do you know, I am ashamed to say it, but I don't believe I have ever seen Jimmy lying on a sofa. Poor Jimmy! Look at that hen! She is choking. Hens gulp their food so! And then, he's inclined to be persistently unselfish. That must be stopped too. I have learnt from you that to be decadent one must be acutely and untiringly selfish. The blessings of selfishness! What a volume might be written upon them! Mr Melville, all chickens must be decadent, for all chickens are entirely selfish. It is strange to think that the average fowl is more advanced in ethics--is it ethics I mean?--than the average man or woman, is it not? And we ate a decadent at dinner last night. I feel almost like a cannibal.”
She threw away the last grain, and was silent. But suddenly Claude spoke.
”Miss Haddon,” he said, and his voice had never sounded so boyish to her before, ”you have been laughing at me for nearly a week.” He paused, then he went on, rather unevenly, in the up-and-down tones induced by stifled excitement, ”and I have never found it out until this moment. I suppose you think me a great fool. I daresay I have been one. But please don't--I mean, please let us give up acting our farce.”
”But have we reached the third act?” she said.
They were walking through the garden, among the crocuses and violets now.
”I am sure I don't know,” he answered, trying to seem easy. ”Perhaps it is a farce in one act.”