The Empty Sack Part 37

CHAPTER XX

The guests went early. It was a relief to have them go. Not that they differed from other guests to whom Collingham Lodge was accustomed to open its doors, or that the dinner was less fastidiously good than Junia was in the habit of giving. Dinner and guests had both been up to form; and yet it was a relief when the last car glided from beneath the portico.

"Why do you suppose it is?"

Junia had asked this question so often of late that Collingham had ceased to try to answer it. Instead, he lit a cigar and strolled to the open French window. He, too, found it a relief to relax in the company of his family, though less puzzled than Junia at the state of mind.

"Oh, come out!" Edith called from the terrace. "It's heavenly."

It was a soft, warm, velvety night, starlit and voluptuous. The air astir was just enough to carry the scents of roses, honeysuckle, mignonette, and new-mown hay. Except for the dartings of small living things and the occasional peep of a half-awake bird, there was no sound but that of the plash of the fountains on the terraces. Edith went in for a light wrap for her mother; Collingham, his cigar in hand, dropped into the teakwood chair.

"It isn't our dinners only," Junia complained, when, with the wrap about her shoulders, she had settled herself in the wicker armchair she preferred; "it's all dinners. It's just as if people didn't enjoy them any more."

"Well, they don't." Edith half loungingly swung herself in a Gloucester hammock. "What we've got to learn, mother dear, is that entertaining, as we called it, was a pre-war habit which we've outlived in spirit, though we haven't quite come to the point in fact."

"There's something in that," Collingham agreed.

"And yet there's got to be hospitality," Junia reasoned. "You can't just live and die to yourself."

Edith swung lazily.

"Hospitality, yes; but isn't there a difference between that and entertaining?"

"If so, what is it?"

"I'm not sure that I can say. Isn't the one a permanent necessity, and the other merely a custom that can go out of date?"

"Between your custom that can go out of date and your permanent necessity, I don't see that there's much distinction."

"Well, there is, mother dear. It's like this: Entertaining is giving people something they don't particularly want and which you expect them to repay; while hospitality is opening your house to people in need, whether they can repay you or not."

"Oh, if we're going to open our houses to people in need-"

"Well, what?"

"I'm sure I don't know what; nor you, either."

"And that's just it. We're halting between two states of mind. Ever since the war began, mere entertaining bores us; and we're terrified at the idea of genuine hospitality; so there we are. We still give dinners and go to them; but when we do we feel it's something fatuous, which can't help making us dull."

Out of the silence that ensued Collingham said, moodily:

"It's all very fine to talk of opening your house to people in need; but it's not as easy as it looks."

"Is anything ever as easy as it looks, dad? Don't we s.h.i.+rk the social problems that are upsetting the world by declaring them impossible to solve, when a material difficulty only puts us on our mettle?"

He turned this over. All that day he had been calculating his own possible responsibility in Teddy Follett's going wrong, and was thinking of it now. In the end he said:

"All the same you've got to follow the regular trend. If you were in business you'd know. You can't do things differently from other people.

You may be as sorry as you like not to be able to help; but if you can't, you can't-and there's an end of it."

"Mr. Ayling in his new book, _Social Problems and the Individual_, says there's a distinction to be drawn between _can't_ and _can't_-there's the can't that comes from lack of ability, and the can't that springs from the accepted standard. He says-"

"I don't believe your father is at all interested in that, Edith dear."

"Oh yes; let her go on. I'm not afraid of what Ayling thinks."

But before Edith could resume the attention of all three was called by the tinkle of the telephone bell in the library, which could be approached from the terrace through the drawing-room. With a muttered, "Who's ringing up at this time of night?" Collingham dragged himself in to answer it. The women remained silent, each listening to see if the call was for her.

"Yes?... This is Mr. Collingham.... Who?... Oh, it's you, Mr. Brunt?...

Yes?... What did you say?... Killed? Who's killed?... Not Flynn the detective, who comes in and out of the bank?... Indeed! Dear me! Dear me! Where was it?... Who did it?... Not that boy?... Oh, my G.o.d!... What happened?... Tell me quickly.... Over beyond Jersey City! Yes? Yes?...

And they've got him?... In the Brig? That's the Ellenbrook jail, isn't it?... Jackman, too, did you say?... Wounded, but not killed....

Badly?... Oh, the poor fellow!... In the hospital?... That's right....

Has anyone communicated with his family?... Good! Good!... And Flynn's wife?... Oh, the poor woman!... And the boy's family?... You don't know anything? Then no one has informed his mother?... Not that you know of.... I see.... He's to be brought into court to-morrow morning....

Poor little devil!... Oh, I know he doesn't deserve pity, but-but I can't help it, Brunt. His father was with us so long and-and one thing and another!... No; I'll appear in court myself and see what I can do for him.... Good night, then. I'll see you in the morning."

"What boy can that be?" Junia whispered, as her husband hung the receiver in its place.

"I'm sure I don't know-unless-unless it's the Follett boy."

"Oh, I hope not. It would make such awful complications."

They waited for Collingham to come and tell them his plainly thrilling news, but he remained in the library.

"It _would_ make complications," Edith ventured, in a low voice, "if it proved to be young Follett-with Bob in love with his sister."

Junia spoke not so much from impulse as from inspiration.

"He's more than in love with her. He's married to her."

"Mother!"

"Yes; he was married to her a few days before he sailed. I've known it all along."

Edith was breathless.

"Did he tell you?"

"No; she did."

"She? The Follett girl? Why, mother!"

Junia rose. She knew that if her suspicions were correct she would have things to do before she slept.

"Go to bed now, dear; and I'll come to your room and give you the whole story. In the meantime I may have to tell your father."

"You mean to say that he doesn't know?"