"All right,Auntie Tibby,"called Helen,while Margaret,thoughtful again,said:"In a way,I wish we had a real boy in the house--the kind of boy who cares for men.It would make entertaining so much easier.""So do I,"said her sister."Tibby only cares for cultured females singing Brahms."And when they joined him she said rather sharply:"Why didn't you make that young man welcome,Tibby?
You must do the host a little,you know.You ought to have taken his hat and coaxed him into stopping,instead of letting him be swamped by screaming women."Tibby sighed,and drew a long strand of hair over his forehead.
"Oh,it's no good looking superior.I mean what I say.""Leave Tibby alone!"said Margaret,who could not bear her brother to be scolded.
"Here's the house a regular hen-coop!"grumbled Helen.
"Oh,my dear!"protested Mrs.Munt."How can you say such dreadful things!The number of men you get here has always astonished me.If there is any danger it's the other way round.""Yes,but it's the wrong sort of men,Helen means.""No,I don't,"corrected Helen."We get the right sort of man,but the wrong side of him,and I say that's Tibby's fault.There ought to be a something about the house--an--I don't know what.""A touch of the W.'s,perhaps?"
Helen put out her tongue.
"Who are the W.'s?"asked Tibby.
"The W.'s are things I and Meg and Aunt Juley know about and you don't,so there!""I suppose that ours is a female house,"said Margaret,"and one must just accept it.No,Aunt Juley,I don't mean that this house is full of women.I am trying to say something much more clever.
I mean that it was irrevocably feminine,even in father's time.Now I'm sure you understand!Well,I'll give you another example.
It'll shock you,but I don't care.Suppose Queen Victoria gave a dinner-party,and that the guests had been Leighton,Millais,Swinburne,Rossetti,Meredith,Fitzgerald,etc.Do you suppose that the atmosphere of that dinner would have been artistic?Heavens no!The very chairs on which they sat would have seen to that.So with our house--it must be feminine,and all we can do is to see that it isn't effeminate.
Just as another house that I can mention,but I won't,sounded irrevocably masculine,and all its inmates can do is to see that it isn't brutal.""That house being the W.'s house,I presume,"said Tibby.
"You're not going to be told about the W.'s,my child,"Helen cried,"so don't you think it.And on the other hand,I don't the least mind if you find out,so don't you think you've done anything clever,in either case.Give me a cigarette.""You do what you can for the house,"said Margaret.
"The drawing-room reeks of smoke."
"If you smoked too,the house might suddenly turn masculine.Atmosphere is probably a question of touch and go.
Even at Queen Victoria's dinner-party--if something had been just a little different--perhaps if she'd worn a clinging Liberty tea-gown instead of a magenta satin--""With an Indian shawl over her shoulders--"
"Fastened at the bosom with a Cairngorm-pin--"Bursts of disloyal laughter--you must remember that they are half German--greeted these suggestions,and Margaret said pensively,"How inconceivable it would be if the Royal Family cared about Art."And the conversation drifted away and away,and Helen's cigarette turned to a spot in the darkness,and the great flats opposite were sown with lighted windows,which vanished and were relit again,and vanished incessantly.
Beyond them the thoroughfare roared gently--a tide that could never be quiet,while in the east,invisible behind the smokes of Wapping,the moon was rising.
"That reminds me,Margaret.We might have taken that young man into the dining-room,at all events.Only the majolica plate--and that is so firmly set in the wall.I am really distressed that he had no tea."For that little incident had impressed the three women more than might be supposed.It remained as a goblin football,as a hint that all is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds,and that beneath these superstructures of wealth and art there wanders an ill-fed boy,who has recovered his umbrella indeed,but who has left no address behind him,and no name.
