GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

Lucian Webber had not arrived when she reached the castle. Miss Carew glanced at her melancholy face as she entered, but asked no questions. Presently, however, she put down her book, considered for a moment, and said,

“It is nearly three years since I have had a new dress.” Alice looked up with interest. “Now that I have you to help me to choose, I think I will be extravagant enough to renew my entire wardrobe. I wish you would take this opportunity to get some things for yourself. You will find that my dressmaker, Madame Smith, is to be depended on for work, though she is expensive and dishonest. When we are tired of Wiltstoken we will go to Paris, and be millinered there; but in the meantime we can resort to Madame Smith.”

“I cannot afford expensive dresses,” said Alice.

“I should not ask you to get them if you could not afford them. I warned you that I should give you expensive habits.”

Alice hesitated. She had a healthy inclination to take whatever she could get on all occasions; and she had suffered too much from poverty not to be more thankful for her good-fortune than humiliated by Miss Carew’s bounty. But the thought of being driven, richly attired, in one of the castle carriages, and meeting Janet trudging about her daily tasks in cheap black serge and mended gloves, made Alice feel that she deserved all her mother’s reproaches. However, it was obvious that a refusal would be of no material benefit to Janet, so she said,

“Really I could not think of imposing on your kindness in this wholesale fashion. You are too good to me.”

“I will write to Madame Smith this evening,” said Lydia.

Alice was about to renew her protest more faintly, when a servant entered and announced Mr. Webber. She stiffened herself to receive the visitor. Lydia’s manner did not alter in the least. Lucian, whose demeanor resembled Miss Goff’s rather than his cousin’s, went through the ceremony of introduction with solemnity, and was received with a dash of scorn; for Alice, though secretly awe-stricken, bore herself tyrannically towards men from habit.

In reply to Alice, Mr. Webber thought the day cooler than yesterday. In reply to Lydia, he admitted that the resolution of which the leader of the opposition had given notice was tantamount to a vote of censure on the government. He was confident that ministers would have a majority. He had no news of any importance. He had made the journey down with Lord Worthington, who had come to Wiltstoken to see the invalid at the Warren. He had promised to return with him in the seven-thirty train.

When they went down to dinner, Alice, profiting by her experience of the day before, faced the servants with composure, and committed no solecisms. Unable to take part in the conversation, as she knew little of literature and nothing of politics, which were the staple of Lucian’s discourse, she sat silent, and reconsidered an old opinion of hers that it was ridiculous and ill-bred in a lady to discuss anything that was in the newspapers. She was impressed by Lucian’s cautious and somewhat dogmatic style of conversation, and concluded that he knew everything. Lydia seemed interested in his information, but quite indifferent to his opinions.

Towards half-past seven Lydia proposed that they should walk to the railway station, adding, as a reason for going, that she wished to make some bets with Lord Worthington. Lucian looked grave at this, and Alice, to show that she shared his notions of propriety, looked shocked. Neither demonstration had the slightest effect on Lydia. On their way to the station he remarked,

“Worthington is afraid of you, Lydia — needlessly, as it seems.”

“Why?”

“Because you are so learned, and he so ignorant. He has no culture save that of the turf. But perhaps you have more sympathy with his tastes than he supposes.”

“I like him because I have not read the books from which he has borrowed his opinions. Indeed, from their freshness, I should not be surprised to learn that he had them at first hand from living men, or even from his own observation of life.”

“I may explain to you, Miss Goff,” said Lucian, “that Lord Worthiugton is a young gentleman—”

“Whose calendar is the racing calendar,” interposed Lydia, “and who interests himself in favorites and outsiders much as Lucian does in prime-ministers and independent radicals. Would you like to go to Ascot, Alice?”

Alice answered, as she felt Lucian wished her to answer, that she had never been to a race, and that she had no desire to go to one.

“You will change your mind in time for next year’s meeting. A race interests every one, which is more than can be said for the opera or the Academy.”

“I have been at the Academy,” said Alice, who had made a trip to London once.

“Indeed!” said Lydia. “Were you in the National Gallery?”

“The National Gallery! I think not. I forget.”

“I know many persons who never miss an Academy, and who do not know where the National Gallery is. Did you enjoy the pictures, Alice?”

“Oh, very much indeed.”

“You will find Ascot far more amusing.”

“Let me warn you,” said Lucian to Alice, “that my cousin’s pet caprice is to affect a distaste for art, to which she is passionately devoted; and for literature, in which she is profoundly read.”

“Cousin Lucian,” said Lydia, “should you ever be cut off from your politics, and disappointed in your ambition, you will have an opportunity of living upon art and literature. Then I shall respect your opinion of their satisfactoriness as a staff of life. As yet you have only tried them as a sauce.”

“Discontented, as usual,” said Lucian.

“Your one idea respecting me, as usual,” replied Lydia, patiently, as they entered the station.

The train, consisting of three carriages and a van, was waiting at the platform. The engine was humming subduedly, and the driver and fireman were leaning out; the latter, a young man, eagerly watching two gentlemen who were standing before the first-class carriage, and the driver sharing his curiosity in an elderly, preoccupied manner. One of the persons thus observed was a slight, fairhaired man of about twenty-five, in the afternoon costume of a metropolitan dandy. Lydia knew the other the moment she came upon the platform as the Hermes of the day before, modernized by a straw hat, a canary-colored scarf, and a suit of a minute black-and-white chessboard pattern, with a crimson silk handkerchief overflowing the breast pocket of the coat. His hands were unencumbered by stick or umbrella; he carried himself smartly, balancing himself so accurately that he seemed to have no weight; and his expression was selfsatisfied and goodhumored. But — ! Lydia felt that there was a “but” somewhere — that he must be something more than a handsome, powerful, and lighthearted young man.

“There is Lord Worthington,” she said, indicating the slight gentleman. “Surely that cannot be his invalid friend with him?”

“That is the man that lives at the Warren,” said Alice. “I know his appearance.”

“Which is certainly not suggestive of a valetudinarian,” remarked Lucian, looking hard at the stranger.

They had now come close to the two, and could hear Lord Worthington, as he prepared to enter the carriage, saying, “Take care of yourself, like a good fellow, won’t you? Remember! if it lasts a second over the fifteen minutes, I shall drop five hundred pounds.”

Hermes placed his arm round the shoulders of the young lord and gave him a playful roll. Then he said with good accent and pronunciation, but with a certain rough quality of voice, and louder than English gentlemen usually speak, “Your money is as safe as the mint, my boy.”

Evidently, Alice thought, the stranger was an intimate friend of Lord Worthington. She resolved to be particular in her behavior before him, if introduced.