His wife’s feelings, for example, were already revealing themselves in an impatient play of her fan that made her father presently lean forward to suggest: “If we men are to talk shop, is it necessary to keep Bessy in this hot room?”
Amherst rose and opened the window behind his wife’s chair.
“There’s a breeze from the west—the room will be cooler now,” he said, returning to his seat.
“Oh, I don’t mind—” Bessy murmured, in a tone intended to give her companions the full measure of what she was being called on to endure.
Mr. Tredegar coughed slightly. “May I trouble you for that other box of cigars, Amherst? No, not the Cabañas.” Bessy rose and handed him the box on which his glance significantly rested. “Ah, thank you, my dear. I was about to ask,” he continued, looking about for the cigar-lighter, which flamed unheeded at Amherst’s elbow, “what special purpose will be served by a preliminary review of the questions to be discussed tomorrow.”
“Ah—exactly,” murmured Mr. Langhope. “The madeira, my dear John? No—ah—_please_—to the left!”
Amherst impatiently reversed the direction in which he had set the precious vessel moving, and turned to Mr. Tredegar, who was conspicuously lighting his cigar with a match extracted from his waist-coat pocket.
“The purpose is to define my position in the matter; and I prefer that Bessy should do this with your help rather than with mine.”
Mr. Tredegar surveyed his cigar through drooping lids, as though the question propounded by Amherst were perched on its tip.
“Is not your position naturally involved in and defined by hers? You will excuse my saying that—technically speaking, of course—I cannot distinctly conceive of it as having any separate existence.”
Mr. Tredegar spoke with the deliberate mildness that was regarded as his most effective weapon at the bar, since it was likely to abash those who were too intelligent to be propitiated by it.
“Certainly it is involved in hers,” Amherst agreed; “but how far that defines it is just what I have waited till now to find out.”
Bessy at this point recalled her presence by a restless turn of her graceful person, and her father, with an affectionate glance at her, interposed amicably: “But surely—according to old-fashioned ideas—it implies identity of interests?”
“Yes; but whose interests?” Amherst asked.
“Why—your wife’s, man! She owns the mills.”
Amherst hesitated. “I would rather talk of my wife’s interest in the mills than of her interests there; but we’ll keep to the plural if you prefer it. Personally, I believe the terms should be interchangeable in the conduct of such a business.”
“Ah—I’m glad to hear that,” said Mr. Tredegar quickly, “since it’s precisely the view we all take.”
Amherst’s colour rose. “Definitions are ambiguous,” he said. “Before you adopt mine, perhaps I had better develop it a little farther. What I mean is, that Bessy’s interests in Westmore should be regulated by her interest in it—in its welfare as a social body, aside from its success as a commercial enterprise. If we agree on this definition, we are at one as to the other: namely that my relation to the matter is defined by hers.”
He paused a moment, as if to give his wife time to contribute some sign of assent and encouragement; but she maintained a puzzled silence and he went on: “There is nothing new in this. I have tried to make Bessy understand from the beginning what obligations I thought the ownership of Westmore entailed, and how I hoped to help her fulfill them; but ever since our marriage all definite discussion of the subject has been put off for one cause or another, and that is my reason for urging that it should be brought up at the directors’ meeting tomorrow.”
There was another pause, during which Bessy glanced tentatively at Mr. Tredegar, and then said, with a lovely rise of colour: “But, John, I sometimes think you forget how much has been done at Westmore—the Mothers’ Club, and the playground, and all—in the way of carrying out your ideas.”
Mr. Tredegar discreetly dropped his glance to his cigar, and Mr. Langhope sounded an irrepressible note of approval and encouragement.
Amherst smiled. “No, I have not forgotten; and I am grateful to you for giving my ideas a trial. But what has been done hitherto is purely superficial.” Bessy’s eyes clouded, and he added hastily: “Don’t think I undervalue it for that reason—heaven knows the surface of life needs improving! But it’s like picking flowers and sticking them in the ground to make a garden—unless you transplant the flower with its roots, and prepare the soil to receive it, your garden will be faded tomorrow. No radical changes have yet been made at Westmore; and it is of radical changes that I want to speak.”
Bessy’s look grew more pained, and Mr. Langhope exclaimed with unwonted irascibility: “Upon my soul, Amherst, the tone you take about what your wife has done doesn’t strike me as the likeliest way of encouraging her to do more!”
“I don’t want to encourage her to do more on such a basis—the sooner she sees the futility of it the better for Westmore!”
“The futility—?” Bessy broke out, with a flutter of tears in her voice; but before her father could intervene Mr. Tredegar had raised his hand with the gesture of one accustomed to wield the gavel.
“My dear child, I see Amherst’s point, and it is best, as he says, that you should see it too. What he desires, as I understand it, is the complete reconstruction of the present state of things at Westmore; and he is right in saying that all your good works there—night-schools, and nursery, and so forth—leave that issue untouched.”
A smile quivered under Mr. Langhope’s moustache. He and Amherst both knew that Mr. Tredegar’s feint of recognizing the justice of his adversary’s claim was merely the first step to annihilating it; but Bessy could never be made to understand this, and always felt herself deserted and betrayed when any side but her own was given a hearing.
“I’m sorry if all I have tried to do at Westmore is useless—but I suppose I shall never understand business,” she murmured, vainly seeking consolation in her father’s eye.
“This is not business,” Amherst broke in. “It’s the question of your personal relation to the people there—the last thing that business considers.”
Mr. Langhope uttered an impatient exclamation. “I wish to heaven the owner of the mills had made it clear just what that relation was to be!”
“I think he did, sir,” Amherst answered steadily, “in leaving his wife the unrestricted control of the property.”
He had reddened under Mr. Langhope’s thrust, but his voice betrayed no irritation, and Bessy rewarded him with an unexpected beam of sympathy: she was always up in arms at the least sign of his being treated as an intruder.
“I am sure, papa,” she said, a little tremulously, “that poor Richard, though he knew I was not clever, felt he could trust me to take the best advice–-“