The Helpmate Part 24

They talked about the Eliotts, for the Canon's catholicity bridged the gulf between Thurston Square and vociferous, high-living, fas.h.i.+onable Scale. He had lately succeeded (by the power of his eloquence) in winning over Mrs. Eliott from St. Saviour's to All Souls. He hoped also to win over Mrs. Eliott's distinguished friend. For the Canon was mortal. He had yielded to the unspiritual seduction of filling All Souls by emptying other men's churches. Lawson Hannay smiled on the parson's success, hoping (he said) to see his money back again.

Money or no money, he left him a clear field with Mrs. Majendie. Ladies, when they were pretty, appealed to Lawson as part of the appropriate decoration of a table; but, much as he loved their charming society, he loved his dinner more. He loved it with a certain pure extravagance, illuminated by thought and imagination. Mrs. Hannay was one with him in this affection. Her heart shared it; her fancy ministered to it, rising higher and higher in unwearying flights. It was a link between them; almost (so fine was the pa.s.sion) an intellectual tie. But reticence was not in Hannay's nature; and his emotion affected Anne very unpleasantly.

She missed the high lyric note in it. All epicurean pleasures, even so delicate and fantastic a joy as Hannay's in his dinner, appeared gross to Anne.

Majendie at the other end of the table caught sight of her detached, unhappy look, and became detached and unhappy himself, till Mrs. Hannay rallied him on his abstraction.

"If you _are_ in love, my dear Wallie," she whispered, "you needn't show it so much. It's barely decent."

"Isn't it? Anyhow, I hope it's quite decently bare," he answered, tempted by her folly. They were gay at Mrs. Hannay's end of the table. But Anne, who watched her husband intently, looked in vain for that brilliance which had distinguished him the other night, when he dined in Thurston Square. These Hannays, she said to herself, made him dull.

Now, though Anne didn't in the least want to talk to Mr. Hannay, Mr.

Hannay displeased her by not wanting to talk more to her. Not that he talked very much to anybody. Now and then the Canon's niece, Mildred Wharton, the pretty girl on his left, moved him to a high irrelevance, in those rare moments when she was not absorbed in Mr. Gorst. Pretty Mildred and Mr. Gorst were flirting unabashed behind the roses, and it struck Anne that the Canon kept an alarmed and watchful eye upon their intercourse.

To Anne the dinner was intolerably long. She tried to be patient with it, judging that its length was a measure of the height her hosts had risen to. There she did them an injustice; for in the matter of a menu the Hannays could not rise; for they lived habitually on a n.o.ble elevation.

At the other end of the table Mrs. Hannay called gaily on her guests to eat and drink. But, when the wine went round, Anne noticed that she whispered to the butler, and after that, the butler only made a feint of filling his master's gla.s.s, and turned a politely deaf ear to his protests. And then her voice rose.

"Lawson, that pineapple ice is delicious. Gould, hand the pineapple ice to Mr. Hannay. I adore pineapple ice," said Mrs. Hannay. "Wallie, you're drinking nothing. Fill Mr. Majendie's gla.s.s, Gould, fill it--fill it."

She was the immortal soul of hospitality, was Mrs. Hannay.

In the drawing-room Mrs. Hannay again took possession of Anne and led her to the sofa. She fairly enthroned her there; she hovered round her; she put cus.h.i.+ons at her head, and more cus.h.i.+ons under her feet; for Mrs.

Hannay liked to be comfortable herself, and to see every one comfortable about her. "You come," said she, "and sit down by me on this sofa, and let's have a cosy talk. That's it. Only you want another cus.h.i.+on.

No?--Do--Won't you really? Then it's four for me," said Mrs. Hannay, supporting herself in various postures of experimental comfort, "one for my back, two for my fat sides, and one for my head. Now I'm comfy. I adore cus.h.i.+ons, don't you? My husband says I'm a little down cus.h.i.+on myself, so I suppose that's why."

Anne, in her mood, had crushed many innocent vulgarities before now; but she owned that she could no more have snubbed Mrs. Hannay effectually than you could snub a little down cus.h.i.+on. It would be impossible, she thought, to make any impression at all on that yielding surface.

Impossible to take any impression from her, to say where her gaiety ended and her vulgarity began.

"Isn't it funny?" the little lady went on, unconscious of Mrs. Majendie's att.i.tude. "My husband's your husband's oldest friend. So I think you and I ought to be friends too."

Anne's face intimated that she hardly considered the chain of reasoning unbreakable; but Mrs. Hannay continued to play cheerful elaborations on the theme of friends.h.i.+p, till her husband appeared with the other three men. He had his hand on Majendie's shoulder, and Mrs. Hannay's soft smile drew Mrs. Majendie's attention to this manifestation of intimacy. And it dawned on Anne that Mrs. Hannay's gaiety would not end here; though it was here, with the mixing of the company, that her vulgarity would begin.

"Did you ever see such a pair? I tell Lawson he's fonder of Wallie than he is of me. I believe he'd go down on his knees and black his boots for nothing, if he asked him. I'd do it myself, only you mustn't tell Lawson I said so." She paused. "I think Lawson wants to come and have a little talk with you."

Hannay approached heavily, and his wife gave up her place to him, cus.h.i.+ons and all. He seated himself heavily. His eyes wandered heavily to the other side of the room, following Majendie. And as they rested on his friend there was a light in them that redeemed their heaviness.

He had come to Mrs. Majendie prepared for weighty utterance.

"That man," said Hannay, "is the best man I know. You've married, dear lady, my dearest and most intimate friend. He's a saint--a Bayard." He flung the name at her defiantly, and with a gesture he emphasised the crescendo of his thought. "A _preux chevalier, sans peur_" said Mr.

Hannay, "_et sans reproche_."

Having delivered his soul, he sat, still heavily, in silence.

Anne repressed the rising of her indignation. To her it was as if he had been defending her husband against some accusation brought by his wife.

And so, indeed, he was. Poor Hannay had been conscious of her att.i.tude--conscious under her pure and austere eyes, of his own shortcomings, and it struck him that Majendie needed some defence against her judgment of his taste in friends.h.i.+p.

When the door closed behind the Majendies, Mr. Gorst was left the last lingering guest.

"Poor Wallie," said Mrs. Hannay.

"_Poor_ Wallie," said Mr. Hannay, and sighed.

"What do you think of her?" said the lady to Mr. Gorst.

"Oh, I think she's magnificent."

"Do you think he'll be able to live up to it?"

"Why not?" said Mr. Gorst cheerfully.

"Well, it wasn't very gay for him before he married, and I don't imagine it's going to be any gayer now."

"_Now_" said Mr. Hannay, "I understand what's meant by the solemnisation of holy matrimony. That woman would solemnise a farce at the Vaudeville, with Gwen Richards on."

"She very nearly solemnised my dinner," said Mrs. Hannay.

"She doesn't know," said Mr. Hannay, "what a dinner is. She's got no appet.i.te herself, and she tried to take mine away from me. A regular dog-in-the-manger of a woman."

"Oh, come, you know," said Gorst. "She can't be as bad as all that.

Edith's awfully fond of her."

"And _that's_ good enough for you?" said Mrs. Hannay.

"Yes. That's good enough for me. _I_ like her," said Gorst stoutly; and Mrs. Hannay hid in her pocket-handkerchief a face quivering with mirth.

But Gorst, as he departed, turned on the doorstep and repeated, "Honestly, I like her."

"Well, honestly," said Mr. Hannay, "I don't." And, lost in gloomy forebodings for his friend, he sought consolation in whiskey and soda.

Mrs. Hannay took a seat beside him.

"And what did you think of the dinner?" said she.

"It was a dead failure, p.u.s.s.y."

"You old stupid, I mean the dinner, not the dinner-party."

Mrs. Hannay rubbed her soft, cherubic face against his sleeve, and as she did so she gently removed the whiskey from his field of vision. She was a woman of exquisite tact.

"Oh, the dinner, my plump p.u.s.s.y-cat, was a dream--a happy dream."

CHAPTER XII

"There are moments, I admit," said Majendie, "when Hannay saddens me."