The Challoners. E. F. Benson

Martin, old boy, come here a moment.”

      Again his duty, the need for remonstrance, strove with his tenderness.

      “Martin,” he said, gently, “that’s rather strong language to use to your sister, isn’t it? Don’t get in that sort of habit, dear fellow; never use words idly like that.”

      At this all the genial instinctive pleasure faded out of Martin’s face and his eyes fell.

      “Yes, father, I’m sorry,” he said, in a perfectly dull, conventional voice.

      “I know it was only thoughtlessness, old boy,” said his father; “but try to think. There then. How’s the game going?—is Helen playing with the frightful precision we are getting accustomed to? Look there, she’s hit your ball from right across the lawn. Don’t be too merciless, Helen, with your poor brother.”

      Helen smiled and made some laughing reply to her father. Then her eye caught sight of the book lying on the bank, her smile faded, and as she went after the ball she had hit she wondered what could be done. She guessed, though she had not heard the words, that Martin had already been rebuked for what he had said. She knew there had been one dreadful hour already that morning, and another was certain if her father saw the book. Mean time he was strolling down the lawn right in its direction, where it was lying radiant and blatant in its crimson cover on the vivid green of the grass. Martin also had seen what would happen, and as she passed him whispered to her:

      “He’ll see it. O Lord!” with a drearily comic expression.

      Mr. Challoner strolled on, came to where the book lay, and picked it up with the amiable intention of putting it on the chair to save its cover from the damp. As he did this, he read the title on the back. Then there was a dreadful pause.

      “Is this yours, Martin?” he asked.

      “Yes, father.”

      Mr. Challoner said nothing more, but went on his way, taking the book with him. At the corner of the box-hedge, however, he turned.

      “If you are up when I come back, Martin,” he said, “will you come into my study? But don’t wait up for me if I am late.”

      He turned his back again to walk on, and Martin thought he had gone. But next moment he paused again, and raised his voice slightly.

      “You should answer when I speak to you,” he said.

      “I thought you had gone, sir,” said Martin, with a little tremor of irritation in his tone.

      This time he passed out of sight, and Martin threw down his croquet-mallet.

      “Rather bad luck,” he said. “I’m not popular to-day. Helen, what a fool you were to leave it on the grass.”

      “Oh, I am so sorry Martin,” she said. “What can I do? Would it do any good if I said I had been reading it?”

      “No, not the slightest,” said he. “There would be enough to go round.”

      “I will if you like,” said she. “You see, the worst of it is that only three days ago, the day before you came home, he said that he would not have a book of hers in the house. But you couldn’t be expected to know that.”

      “No, but I did,” said Martin, “because you told me.”

      Helen threw down her mallet too.

      “Oh, it’s dreary,” she said.

      Lord Flintshire, Mr. Challoner’s elder brother, with whom he was dining to-night, was a figure of some distinction. He had been at one time a political factor of great weight in the country, a weight due chiefly to the force of inertia, since he never professed the least personal interest in politics and could not possibly be considered as having any ambition or aim to gratify in spending so much time and labour in the interests of the Conservative party. His wealth and position, in fact, were like a large, heavy parcel strongly tied up and dropped into the Tory scale. But at the age of fifty-five he and they considered that he had done enough, resigned the Cabinet appointment he held, and for the last seven years had devoted himself with far more zest than he had ever brought into the political arena to the aristocratic pursuit of doing nothing whatever. To the successful discharge of this he brought all his acuteness and perception and practised it with such charming success as to raise it to the level of a fine art. He was never in a hurry and never either felt or exhibited the slightest sign of irritation or annoyance at anything which the world or the powers of heaven or hell chose to do. He had great appreciation of the fine arts and even a higher appreciation of the inimitable comedy of life, so that to live in a beautiful house, which he did, and fill it with congenial people constituted for him a far more engrossing occupation than politics had ever been. For his brother Sidney he had a very real affection, but also a certain sympathetic pity. He could understand, as he had once told him, what it must be to “feel like that.”

      “You live perpetually in a bracing climate, my dear fellow,” he said, “and find it positively necessary to do dumb-bells all day. Yes, I will certainly give you a hundred pounds for your village Room. I shall be charmed to do so, but I don’t want to hear about it. And, pray, let me know if you want more.”

      There was only a small party that night, and when the women went upstairs and the men seceded to the smoking-room, Lord Flintshire detained his brother for a moment as he was leaving.

      “Will you not stop a quarter of an hour, my dear fellow,” he said, “and have a chat? I have not seen you since Easter. How are you all? How are Helen and Martin? That girl grows handsomer every time I see her. And Martin?”

      “Martin has just achieved one of his annual failures at Cambridge,” said his father. “Yes, I will wait a quarter of an hour, Rupert. I should like to talk to you about him. I am a good deal troubled.”

      “Wild oats of some kind?” asked the other. “If so, I should, if I were you, look very steadily in another direction. As one grows older, my dear Sidney, one is apt to look on wild oats as something much more poisonous than they really are—nightshade—deadly nightshade, for instance. But they are only wild oats really.”

      Sidney sat down.

      “Ah, you don’t expect me to share that view,” he said. “Sin is sin whether you are twenty or sixty. But Martin, as far as I know, has not been——“

      “Playing about,” said Lord Flintshire, with the amiable desire to find a periphrasis. But it did not please his brother.

      “I can’t discuss things with you in that spirit,” he said. “However, that point is really alien. I have no reason to suspect Martin of such things. But what I deplore is his general slackness. It is to the mind like low physical health to the body: it predisposes to all diseases. I had to speak to him severely about his failure at Cambridge this morning—too severely perhaps—and this evening again he has distressed me very much.”

      “What has he done?” asked Rupert.

      “Well, you will think it very insignificant, no doubt, but to me it appears most significant of his general state. He was playing croquet with Helen and I heard him say to her, ‘Well, of all the devilish things to do.’ Now, when we were boys, Rupert, we didn’t say that sort of thing at all, and we couldn’t have said it to our sisters.”

      Lord Flintshire felt some kindly amusement at this. Sidney was such a dear fellow.

      “But it is some years since we were boys,” said he at length, “and rightly or wrongly the world has begun to take things more—how shall I say it—to ride life on the snaffle instead of the curb. What else has Martin done?”

      “He has brought into the house ‘The Mill on the Floss.’”

      Rupert’s admirable courtesy enabled him not to smile.

      “Have you read the book?” he asked.

      “No; but I will not have a book of that author in the house.