'Where have you come from?' said Timothy. 'Dining somewhere, I suppose.'
'I don't see why not,' said Charlotte.
'People must go downstairs,' said Clara, passing. 'Take Charlotte,
Timothy. How d'you do, Mr. Flanders.'
'How d'you do, Mr. Flanders,' said Julia Eliot, holding out her hand.
'What's been happening to you?'
/*
'Who is Silvia? what is she?
That all our swains commend her?'
*/
sang Elsbeth Siddons.
Every one stood where they were, or sat down if a chair was empty.
'Ah,' sighed Clara, who stood beside Jacob, half-way through.
/*
'Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling.
To her let us garlands bring,'
sang Elsbeth Siddons.
'Ah!' Clara exclaimed out loud, and clapped her gloved hands; and Jacob clapped his bare ones; and then she moved forward and directed people to come in from the doorway.
'You are living in London?' asked Miss Julia Eliot.
'Yes,' said Jacob.
'In rooms?'
'Yes.'
'There is Mr. Clutterbuck. You always see Mr. Clutterbuck here. He is not very happy at home, I am afraid. They say that Mrs. Clutterbuck...' she dropped her voice. 'That's why he stays with the Durrants. Were you there when they acted Mr. Wortley's play? Oh, no, of course not-at the last moment, did you hear-you had to go to join your mother, I remember, at Harrogate-At the last moment, as I was saying, just as everything was ready, the clothes finished and everything-Now Elsbeth is going to sing again. Clara is playing her accompaniment or turning over for Mr. Carter, I think. No, Mr. Carter is playing by himself-This is BACH,' she whispered, as Mr. Carter played the first bars.
'Are you fond of music?' said Mr. Durrant.
'Yes. I like hearing it,' said Jacob. 'I know nothing about it.'
'Very few people do that,' said Mrs. Durrant. 'I daresay you were never taught. Why is that, Sir Jasper?-Sir Jasper Bigham-Mr. Flanders. Why is nobody taught anything that they ought to know, Sir Jasper?' She left them standing against the wall.
Neither of the gentlemen said anything for three minutes, though Jacob shifted perhaps five inches to the left, and then as many to the right. Then Jacob grunted, and suddenly crossed the room.
'Will you come and have something to eat?' he said to Clara Durrant.
'Yes, an ice. Quickly. Now,' she said.
Downstairs they went.
But half- way down they met Mr. and Mrs. Gresham, Herbert Turner, Sylvia Rashleigh, and a friend, whom they had dared to bring, from America, 'knowing that Mrs. Durrant-wishing to show Mr. Pilcher.-Mr. Pilcher from New York-This is Miss Durrant.'
'Whom I have heard so much of,' said Mr. Pilcher, bowing low.
So Clara left him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
About half-past nine Jacob left the house, his door slamming, other doors slamming, buying his paper, mounting his omnibus, or, weather permitting, walking his road as other people do. Head bent down, a desk, a telephone, books bound in green leather, electric light... 'Fresh coals, sir?'... 'Your tea, sir.'... Talk about football, the Hotspurs, the Harlequins; six-thirty Star brought in by the office boy; the rooks of Gray's Inn passing overhead; branches in the fog thin and brittle; and through the roar of traffic now and again a voice shouting: 'Verdict- verdict-winner-winner,' while letters accumulate in a basket, Jacob signs them, and each evening finds him, as he takes his coat down, with some muscle of the brain new stretched.
Then, sometimes a game of chess; or pictures in Bond Street, or a long way home to take the air with Bonamy on his arm, meditatively marching, head thrown back, the world a spectacle, the early moon above the steeples coming in for praise, the sea-gulls flying high, Nelson on his column surveying the horizon, and the world our ship.
Meanwhile, poor Betty Flanders's letter, having caught the second post, lay on the hall table-poor Betty Flanders writing her son's name, Jacob Alan Flanders, Esq., as mothers do, and the ink pale, profuse, suggesting how mothers down at Scarborough scribble over the fire with their feet on the fender, when tea's cleared away, and can never, never say, whatever it may be-probably this-Don't go with bad women, do be a good boy; wear your thick shirts; and come back, come back, come back to me.
But she said nothing of the kind. 'Do you remember old Miss Wargrave, who used to be so kind when you had the whooping-cough?' she wrote; 'she's dead at last, poor thing. They would like it if you wrote. Ellen came over and we spent a nice day shopping. Old Mouse gets very stiff, and we have to walk him up the smallest hill. Rebecca, at last, after I don't know how long, went into Mr. Adamson's. Three teeth, he says, must come out. Such mild weather for the time of year, the little buds actually on the pear trees. And Mrs. Jarvis tells me-'Mrs. Flanders liked Mrs. Jarvis, always said of her that she was too good for such a quiet place, and, though she never listened to her discontent and told her at the end of it (looking up, sucking her thread, or taking off her spectacles) that a little peat wrapped round the iris roots keeps them from the frost, and Parrot's great white sale is Tuesday next, 'do remember,'-Mrs. Flanders knew precisely how Mrs. Jarvis felt; and how interesting her letters were, about Mrs. Jarvis, could one read them year in, year out-the unpublished works of women, written by the fireside in pale profusion, dried by the flame, for the blotting-paper's worn to holes and the nib cleft and clotted. Then Captain Barfoot. Him she called 'the Captain,' spoke of frankly, yet never without reserve. The Captain was enquiring for her about Garfit's acre; advised chickens; could promise profit; or had the sciatica; or Mrs. Barfoot had been indoors for weeks; or the Captain says things look bad, politics that is, for as Jacob knew, the Captain would sometimes talk, as the evening waned, about Ireland or India; and then Mrs. Flanders would fall musing about Morty, her brother, lost all these years-had the natives got him, was his ship sunk-would the Admiralty tell her?-the Captain knocking his pipe out, as Jacob knew, rising to go, stiffly stretching to pick up Mrs. Flanders's wool which had rolled beneath the chair. Talk of the chicken farm came back and back, the women, even at fifty, impulsive at heart, sketching on the cloudy future flocks of Leghorns, Cochin Chinas, Orpingtons; like Jacob in the blur of her outline; but powerful as he was; fresh and vigorous, running about the house, scolding Rebecca.
The letter lay upon the hall table; Florinda coming in that night took it up with her, put it on the table as she
