Chapter XIII Ructions
I
If this veracious chronicle were to be considered as a novel written for a purpose, or even what critics term “a serious contribution to contemporary literature,” it might be necessary to write at greater length concerning the Honeybun philosophy. Enough, however, has been said to indicate the startling—startling, that is to say, to a young mind—contrast between the Quinney practices and the Honeybun precepts. Substantial meals, admirably cooked, were eaten at regular hours in Soho Square, and the table talk was as material as the roast and boiled. Quinney, before his young daughter, exulted honestly in his hard-won success. The gospel of work was preached in both houses—too insistently, perhaps—but an Atlantic roared between them.
For some months Posy was shrewd enough to digest the Honeybun teaching in silence. She prattled away to her mother, well aware that her girlish confidence would not be repeated to her father. Susan, indeed, served as a lay figure upon which she could drape new ideas and confections. Susan was a born listener. In Lavender Gardens the art of talking was practised by every member of the family simultaneously. Nobody listened, except Posy, who hoped that the day would soon come when she might be considered worthy to join the magnificent chorus. For the moment her mind was expanding. Under her father’s tutelage, she was acquiring a knowledge of beautiful things, masterpieces of handicraft; in Lavender Gardens, where no lavender grew, beautiful ideas, Utopian schemes for the regeneration of all woman-kind, were poured unstintingly into her brain-cells.
So far, so good!
Those of us who clamour for results, who yearn to tabulate and classify inevitable consequences, will have prepared themselves for ructions. Quinney was a fighter, a fighter for his own hand. The Honeybuns fought quite as aggressively on behalf of others. It is a nice point for moralists to consider whether or not a woman like Mrs. Honeybun is justified in filling the mind of a young girl with more or less disturbing theories, thinly disguised as cardinal principles, which must sooner or later clash seriously with home teaching. Mrs. Honeybun had no qualms on the subject, being too ardent a propagandist to consider effects when causes were so dear to her. In her small hall, thick with dust from the feet of many pilgrims, hung a brilliantly illuminated text, purple and gold upon vellum:
“LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
She appropriated enthusiastically any text out of the New Testament which could serve her purpose. Texts from the same source, which might be used against that purpose, were triumphantly capped by convincing quotations from the Veda, or the Koran, or the writings of Confucius. The accomplished lady was armed cap-à-pie with the coagulated wisdom of the ages.
Posy’s first encounter with her father took place, by the luck of things, at a moment when the little man had just concluded a more than usually successful deal with a millionaire who collected things he did not understand. All big dealers have exceptional days and weeks when Fortune comes to them with both hands full. A clean sweep of many “gems” had been accomplished—what Quinney called a “mop up.” His mind naturally was concentrated upon filling the gaps in the sanctuary with other gems of even purer ray serene. Posy confided to Ethel that at such moments her daddy “swanked.” The temptation to make a swanker “sit up” under the process described in Lavender Gardens as “seeing things in their true proportion” was irresistible to a young and ardent acolyte. Posy conceived it to be her duty, her mission, to lead her parents to the light. Admittedly, they wallowed in outer darkness.
She tackled her father at breakfast, which, as a rule, he gobbled up in silence, thinking of the day’s work ahead. A wiser than she would have selected the postprandial hour, when Nicotina clouds the air of controversy with beneficent and soothing vapours. Quinney had mentioned curtly that he was going to attend a sale at Christopher’s. Whereupon Posy threw this bomb:
“Daddy, dear, when are you going to retire from active business?”
Quinney stared at his daughter. Her intelligent eyes were sparkling; in her delicately-cut nostrils titillated the dust of battle.
“Retire from—business?”
“Haven’t you made enough?”
Susan looked frightened, but she had anticipated a conflict between two strong wills, and was acutely sensible of her own impotence to prevent it.
“Ho! Now, what do you call enough, my girl?”
Posy was prepared to answer this. She riposted swiftly:
“Haven’t we enough to live on decently, and something to spare for others?”
“We?” His voice took a sharper inflection. “How much have you laid by, missie?”
The sharpness and veiled impatience of her tone matched his as she answered:
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t. What I’ve made is mine—my very own. I can do what I like with it.”
“Oh, father!”
“Oh, father!” He mimicked her cleverly. “Do you have the sauce to sit there and tell me, your father, that what I’ve made isn’t mine?”
Posy quoted Mrs. Honeybun with overwhelming effect.
“You are a trustee for what you hold, accountable for every penny.”
“Accountable—to you?”
He leaned forward, forgetting his bacon, which he liked frizzlingly hot.
“Accountable to Society and God.”
“Ho! Then suppose you leave me, my young chick, to account in my own way to Society and God?”
Posy blushed. Let us not label her rashly as a prig. The nymph Echo must have repeated silly remarks in her time. Posy said slowly, speaking with conviction:
“I am part of Society, and I am part of what we call, for want of a better word, God.”
Susan murmured warningly:
“That will do, Posy.”
“No, it won’t!” shouted Quinney. “We’ll have this out here and now. What d’ye mean? What the devil d’ye mean? Are you dotty? Why do you spring this on me? What’s the game? ‘Ave you been a-listening to blasphemous agitators a-spoutin’ rubbish in ‘Yde Park?”
“No.”
“Then where does she get it from?” He appealed to Susan with frantic gestures. “You hear her, mother. Where does she get this from? Answer me!”
“Such talk is in the air, Joe,” Susan replied feebly. Explosions lacerated her ears. She had come to place an inordinate value upon peace and quiet.
“In the air! By Gum! she’s been breathing the wrong air.” Inspiration gripped and shook him. “Gosh! You got this from that dirty Socialist, Honeybun. Don’t deny it! These are his notions. But I never thought he’d poison your young mind with ’em.”
Posy said with dignity:
“Mr. Honeybun is the best man I know. He practises what he preaches; he lives in and for others. He uses his talents, regardless of his own comfort and worldly prosperity, to ameliorate the lot of the poor and oppressed.”
Echo again.
“Poor and oppressed! Ameliorate! What a talker! Now, look ye here, young Posy, I’m going to deal squarely by you. I’m square to the four winds of Heaven, I am! You and I have got to understand each other—see? You’re as green as the grass, but you do ’ave some of my brains. I ain’t a-goin’ to argue with you for one minute. Don’t think it! I’ve forgotten more than you ever knew. Talk is the cheapest thing in London, but knaves like Honeybun buy fools with it. Don’t you toss your head! You’ve made your pore dear mother cry, and you’ve taken away father’s appetite. A nice morning’s work. Now, listen! No more Honeybunning! You hear me?”
“Everybody in the house can hear you.”
“More sauce! You stand up, miss!”
They rose together, confronting each other. Quinney’s scrubby red hair was on end with rage; Posy’s small bosom heaved tumultuously. Of late the girl had taken to the wearing of cheap beads and blouses cut low in the neck. Ethel had lamentable taste, but, according to her mother, it was expedient that maidens should work out their own salvation in such matters without parental interference. Quinney scowled at the beads and the white, rounded neck.
“Take off that rubbish!”
“Ethel gave them to me.”
“Take ’em off quick! Mother, you see to it that she wears respectable collars!”
Posy removed two strings of large amethystine beads. Quinney took them and hurled them into the fireplace. Tears rolled down Posy’s blooming cheeks. She was unaccustomed to violence—a primitive weapon not to be despised by modern man.
“Them beads,” said Quinney, who reverted to the diction of his youth when excited, “is beastly—sinfully beastly! They stand for all that I despise; they stand for the cheap, trashy talk which you’ve been defilin’ your mind with. What you need is a good spankin’. Now, mother, I leave Miss Impudence with you. Mark well what I say. No more Honeybunning!”
II
It is significant that Quinney neglected his business that memorable morning in the interests of a child who was beginning to believe that she occupied a back seat in her father’s mind. After leaving the dining-room, he clapped on his hat, and betook himself straightway to St. James’s Square. There was only one man in all London to whom he could go for honest advice, and fortunately he happened to be in town for the season.
Lord Mel received him graciously.
Quinney stated his case quietly. During the course of the narrative Lord Mel smiled more than once, but his sympathies were entirely with the father, for he had endured, not too patiently, somewhat similar scenes with his own daughters. Moreover, he hated Honeybun, whom he had denounced in the Upper Chamber as a mischievous and unscrupulous demagogue.
Quinney ended upon a high note of interrogation:
“What shall I do with her, my lord?”
Lord Mel considered the question, trying to stand upright in the shoes of his former tenant. It is a hopeful sign of the times that such magnates do descend from their pedestals, and attempt, with a certain measure of success, to see eye to eye with the groundlings.
“I prescribe a change of diet, my dear fellow. We must both face the disconcerting fact that girls to-day need special treatment. Mrs. Honeybun is one of the Shrieking Sisterhood. I have heard her shriek—she does it effectively. Noise appeals to the very young. I suggest removing Posy from Orchard Street, and sending her to a carefully conducted boarding school, where plenty of fresh air and exercise will soon blow these ideas out of her pretty head. There are dozens of such schools scattered along our south coast.”
“Send her away from me and her mother?”
“Drastic, I admit, but you have put it admirably. ‘No more Honeybunning!’ Keep her in London, and she may Honeybun on the sly. Will you entrust this little matter of finding a suitable school to me?”
“Your lordship is a real friend.”
“I will speak to my lady.”
“Expense don’t matter,” said Quinney earnestly. “I want my daughter to have the best, because, my lord, as a young feller, I had the worst. No education at all! Posy’s a wonderful talker! She’d have downed me this morning if I’d let her. She talks like—like——”
“Like Honeybun, eh?”
“If I wasn’t sittin’ in your lordship’s library, I should damn that dirty dog!”
“Such fellows thrive on abuse. That is their weapon. We must use others—ridicule, for example. How old is your girl?”
“Nearly sixteen.”
“Good! You have nipped a cankered bud in time. You shall hear from me within twenty-four hours, Let me show you an interesting bit of Crown Derby bisque.” He paused, and added derisively: “You know, Quinney, there are moments when my things appeal to me tremendously. Persons are disappointing, but every day I discover fresh beauties in my china cabinets.”
“Same here,” said Quinney, with enthusiasm.
III
Accordingly, Posy was dispatched to a boarding school at Bexhill-on-Sea, kept by two gentlewomen of the right sort, sensible, up-to-date, highly-trained teachers, who ruled well and wisely over some twenty girls, the daughters, for the most part, of hard-working, professional men. Here we will leave Posy in good company. She was feeling sore and humiliated after an unconditional surrender; but her sense of impotence soon passed away. She loved her whimsical father and desired to please him, although she writhed—as he had writhed—under the heel of parental discipline. She began to study with assiduity, and was highly commended.
IV
Meanwhile, Susan and Quinney were left alone for the first time since Posy’s birth. Susan rejoiced in secret. She had her Joe to herself. Posy was in the habit of dusting the more valuable bits of china in the sanctuary, and cleaning the old glass. Susan undertook these small duties, and pottered in and out of the sanctuary at all hours. Quinney threw crumbs of talk to her, but he refused emphatically her timid request to serve him once more as a saleswoman. At his wish, she rarely entered the shop below. James Miggott was in charge of that. Quinney was engrossed with the buying and selling of “stuff”; he attended to an immense correspondence, writing all his letters in the sanctuary, where he could pause from his labours to suck fresh energy from the contemplation of his treasures. The prices he paid for some of them terrified Susan, although she knew that he made few mistakes and immense profits. She remarked that his reluctance to part with the finest specimens had become almost a monomania. There was a lacquer cabinet; in particular, standing upon a richly gilded Charles the Second stand. Quinney had paid eight hundred pounds for it, and he had been offered a thousand guineas within six months. He confessed to Susan that he couldn’t live without it. The cabinet was flanked by an incised lacquer screen, a miracle of Chinese workmanship. He refused a handsome profit on that. Susan asked herself:
“Does he worship these false gods? Would he miss that cabinet more than he would miss me?”
She noticed, too, that he was overworked. During his many absences from home letters would accumulate. To answer them he rose earlier and went to bed later, deaf to her remonstrance. He promised to engage a typist and stenographer—some day.
Nevertheless, this was a pleasant time, but it lasted only a few months. Mrs. Biddlecombe took to her bed again. Susan was summoned to Melchester. The old lady was really dying, but she took her time about it. Susan ministered to her till the end.
After the funeral, when she returned to Soho Square, a surprise awaited her. Quinney had fulfilled his promise. In the sanctuary, at a beautiful Carlton desk, sat Miss Mabel Dredge, a young and attractive woman, the typist and stenographer. Poor Susan experienced tearing pangs of jealousy when she beheld her, but Quinney’s treatment of the stranger was reassuring. Obviously, he regarded Miss Dredge as a machine.
And his unaffected delight over Susan’s return home was positively rejuvenating.