“You clearly discarded it on insufficient grounds,” said Gregory.
“I don’t like to see a middle-aged man too much of a scarecrow,” Godfrey continued along his own line. “Harriet, my dear, a very quiet and impressive effect! I never saw you look more yourself.”
“That is a chance I have not had,” said Gregory. “No one ever saw me look more like Father.”
“Well, you should not have left your own suit at Cambridge, my dear,” said his mother. “You could not be seen in the old one you wear or should wear every night.”
“Oh, that is what it is, Harriet?” cried Godfrey. “Here he has been bemoaning himself and playing the martyr because he was made to wear other people’s old clothes! I hadn’t a thought but what it was that. I declare I have been feeling quite a sense of guilt, for dressing myself up to the hilt, while he was left to appear in cast-offs. And really he has a whole collection of suits, more than I have, I daresay. Well, what a boy!”
“I will give this one back to you to-morrow,” said Gregory.
“Oh, you will, will you? Well, you won’t then. I have done with it; I have got too fat for it,” said Godfrey, laughing.
“Sir Percy and Lady Hardisty!” said Buttermere. “Miss Hardisty!”
“Well, my dear Rachel,” said Godfrey, “I have had it in my mind all day that you were to be with us to-night. If there is a thing I like to see, it is you and Harriet together.”
“It does show up Harriet as in her prime,” said Rachel.
“Mellicent, you and I will be absorbed in ourselves the whole evening,” said Jermyn. “People cannot think less of us than they do.”
“It is unfair of them,” said Mellicent. “We could so easily think less of them. Their opinion makes an impression that remains.”
“Harriet, my dear,” said Sir Percy, stooping very low, “you can tell me that things are all right with you? There is nothing for me to be troubled about?”
“Mrs. Calkin, Miss Dabis, Miss Kate Dabis!” said Buttermere.
“Dear me, three whole women!” said Rachel. “The drawback to a party is that it makes you so ashamed of being a woman, and it is paltry to be ashamed of anything that is not really wrong. Look at dear Harriet, greeting them as if they were nothing to be ashamed of!”
“That is the essence of being a hostess,” said Mellicent.
“It is too kind of you to have a welcome for our whole party, Lady Haslam,” said Agatha.
“I really think it is,” said Mellicent. “Mrs. Calkin is known to be honest.”
“No one is all bad,” said Rachel, “though I never know why that is so certain.”
“We felt quite embarrassed by coming in, a group of widows and spinsters,” said Geraldine. “It is too much even of a good thing, people might think.”
“Why is it a good thing?” said Mellicent. “And why do what causes you embarrassment?”
“Hush, my dear. Geraldine really is embarrassed,” said Rachel. “It must be trying to speak true words in jest. It is such a true saying that many are spoken.”
“We cannot have too much of a good thing, Miss Dabis,” said Godfrey. “We are grateful to you for giving it to us.”
“We all came because we were asked,” said Kate. “It is so satisfying to come to a party, that we just thanked and came.”
“Mrs. Christy!” said Buttermere.
“We shall be educated the whole evening,” said Jermyn.
“And amongst old-fashioned men who do not approve of women’s higher education,” said Mellicent. “For it will be higher, I am sure. Here is the reason for Camilla’s not coming!”
“Mr. Bellamy!” said Buttermere.
“Oh, yes, the reason. Yes, yes,” said Sir Percy.
“They say a parson counts as a woman, but we won’t count him one to-night,” said Rachel. “I am sure Harriet doesn’t mean us to, and we should follow the lead of our hostess.”
“He does make rather an effect, coming in,” said Mellicent.
“Yes, an effect, yes. He has rather much manner, hasn’t he?” said Sir Percy, peering forward.
“Well, Lady Haslam, I am late,” said Bellamy. “And I was not delayed or called away, or anything useful. I am just shamefully and miserably late.”
“You will take my wife in to dinner, will you, Rector?” said Godfrey.
“The last shall be first,” said Bellamy, bringing his hands together.
“You are not quite the last,” said Agatha, as though content to annul this quotation.
“No, but I am to be quite the first,” said Bellamy.
“Mr. Spong!” said Buttermere.
“It is almost your turn to be ashamed, Father,” said Mellicent. “We are all human beings together, but we are not all men together like you and Mr. Spong.”
“Yes, yes, men together, fellow-guests,” said Sir Percy, just rubbing his hands.
“Lady Haslam,” Dominic said, “I am sensible of your peculiar kindness in bidding me to complete your party to-night. I am neither the man nor in the mood to enhance the spirits of the occasion, and friendship confers the most when it demands the least.”
“Spong, will you take Mrs. Calkin in to dinner?” said Godfrey.
Dominic caused a smile of conscious privilege to alter his face.
“Mellicent, you will let Jermyn take Griselda as well as you?” said Harriet. “We are a man too few.”
“You are double privileged, Jermyn,” said Dominic. “We shall all be finding it in our hearts to envy you.”
“That is not at all a pretty speech to make before your partner!” cried Geraldine, leaning to catch Dominic’s eye, as she accepted Matthew’s arm.
“I am confident,” said Dominic, “that Mrs. Calkin understood me to refer to quantity rather than quality of companionship.”
“Now, Rachel, you and I will lead the way,” said Godfrey. “I said to Harriet that I would have you for a partner, whether you fell to my share or not. I don’t care a jot about the etiquette of the thing.”
“Do you mean that I am not the chief woman guest?” said Rachel. “I thought that was why I generally went in with you.”
“Sir Godfrey and Lady Hardisty are such very old friends,” said Agatha, proceeding with Dominic.
“Yes,” said Dominic, looking down on her with protection. “There is something very beautiful in the spectacle of a tried intimacy. I think our good friends, the Haslams and the Hardistys, show us as striking an example as we could see.”
“I have found them all such congenial intimates myself,” said Agatha. “I have always in my mind the kindness of the whole group at the time when life was emptied for me. It is at those times that we find out the true value of friends.”
“Mrs. Calkin, it is,” said Dominic, with an impulse to pause which he checked for the sake of the procession. “I should not have thought two months ago, when the greatest of all losses fell also upon me, that I should ever again call myself a fortunate man. But in the proven worth of my fellows, I must thus describe myself.”
“Well, now, let us take our seats,” said Godfrey, walking round the table. “Let us sit where our names are. Myself at the top, Harriet at the bottom, and all of you in between. Now are we all settled?”
He paused and bent his head, unmindful of Bellamy’s office, and caused Dominic to cast an arrested look at him and stand with his eyes held down well into the hum of talk.
“And now what kind of wine are we all to drink?” he said in a voice that seemed to counteract the foregoing solemnity. “Mrs. Calkin, we must persuade you to change your custom to-night.”
“No, I won’t have anything to drink, thank you.”
“Mrs. Calkin, we are not, I hope, to take that statement literally,” said Dominic, supplying her with water.
“Lemonade, madam?” said Buttermere at Agatha’s elbow.