BREAKFAST IN GROSVENOR SQUARE. STRAINED RELATIONS OF TWO SISTERS. A BATTLE INTERRUPTED. SAMARIA A GOOD-NATURED PLACE. WHO WAS TO PAY?

In a town-house of the Arkroyd order, a certain dramatic interest attaches to the morning meal that is not shared by any later one. Nobody knows who will come down to breakfast, except perhaps some confidential lady's-maid; and she won't tell, as often as not. So that the knights-harbingers of fresh toast and tea and coffee can always enjoy a little sport in the way of wagers as to who will take which, and which of the young ladies will be up—or down, which is the same thing—before ten. The pleasurable excitement which those who play cards feel, before they pick their packs up and know the worst, is akin to theirs, only less. Because the cards may be snapped up the moment it isn't a misdeal; while the tension is prolonged for the watcher who speculates beside a well-laid table as to whether the methylated will last out under the urn till one of the ladies appears to make tea, or will sputter and fizz and have to be taken out and refilled, and very likely the wick too short all the time!

Lunch is different. People make a point of lunch, or else declare off, and don't come home at all. Those who do not comply with this rule are Foolish Virgins—and serve them right! Our own experience, an extended one, points to the impossibility of being too late for breakfast. There may be a case—but!...

Anyhow, the same human interest does not attach to the question of who is, or isn't, coming to lunch. And as for tea, nobody cares a brass farthing; because you can get tea somewhere else. On the other hand, dinner is a serious matter, and you must make your mind up; and either come, or not.

This tedious excursion into the ethics of Breakfast is all owing to everybody coming down so late at 101, Grosvenor Square, on the morning after the last chapter. The story is, as it were, kept waiting, and may as well indulge in a few reflections. Samuel, the young man who brought the chessboard at Royd, had to wait, and seemed able to do so without change of countenance. He very likely reflected, for all that.

It may have struck Samuel, when Miss Arkroyd made her appearance first of those expected by him, that when this young lady said, "Oh, nobody!" on entering, she did not seem sorry, and picked up her share of the morning's post from her plate to read nearer the fire quite resignedly. It was getting colder again, and folk were pledging themselves not to wonder if the wind were to go round to the north.

Judith looked at the outside of her mother's and sister's letters. Sibyl's interested her most; and she looked them all through carefully, numerous though they were. Why does one look at the directions on other people's letters? So Judith thought to herself, as she got disgusted with the monotony of the text on Sibyl's, and her inability to suggest any emendations. She was very honourable, for she read nothing but a signature or two on the numerous postcards. She was, in fact, only acting under the impulse which prompts the least inquisitive of us all, when we have undertaken to post a letter for a friend, to read the address upon it carefully before we insert it into the inexorable box, and feel inside to see that it hasn't stuck. Judith did not answer the question she asked herself; yet her reading of the same address again and again called more for explanation than that of the letter-poster; for the latter may be put on his oath in the end, if a letter fails to reach.

There were so many to "Miss Sybil Arkroyd" that she had become confused over the spelling of the name by the time its owner's footstep was heard on the stairs. However, she wasn't going to pretend she hadn't been reading them. "There's one for you from Betty Inglis," she said incidentally; and picking up her own letters from the table, took them with her to read by the fire. It was a morning to make the hardiest give in to the temptation of a hundred-weight of best Wallsend, blazing. Judith enjoyed it; so much so that a sense of a russet Liberty serge, baking, crept into the atmosphere as she sought in vain for an inlet into an envelope cruelly gummed to its uttermost corner. When will envelope-makers have compassion for their customers' correspondents?

"You're scorching, Ju. Or you will be directly." So spoke Sibyl, reading a letter attentively, and speaking through her absorption as to a world without. "Who was that?... No—don't make the tea yet, Elphinstone. Coffee for me. You're coffee, I suppose, Ju?..."

"Yes, coffee. Who was what?"

"Who was that in your cab last night?... Well, you made noise enough! Of course I could hear! I'm not deaf." The letter is read by now, being short, and Sibyl has come out into the world to hear the answer to her question.

But Judith is deep in half-a-quire of illegibility, after an episode of a fork-point, and some impatience. "It's an old dress," she says, and then ignores Sibyl altogether for a term, in favour of the letter. Her eyebrows had moved in connection with the cab-inquiry, up to the point of detection by a sharp younger sister. "I had no cab, dear," she says at last. "I came in Mr. Challis's cab." This is quite a long time after.

"Has Mr. Challis a cab?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean, Sib."

Sibyl knows, but has become absorbed in a second letter. So she leaves her tongue, as her representative, to say fragmentarily, "Hansom-cab off the rank," and then retires altogether into the letter for a moment. However, she comes out presently to say, "The question is, was it Mr. Challis? I suppose it was, though, or it couldn't have been Mr. Challis's cab ... oh no!—I'm not finding fault. It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned."

The respectable domestics have been in momentary abeyance, and the conversation has been more suggestive than it would have been in their presence. The reappearance of Mr. Elphinstone, with the gist of two breakfasts, causes an automatic adjournment of the subject. The day's appointments make up the talk, during his presence.

But so late was the quorum of the total breakfast—in fact, it was doubtful whether two of the constituent cujusses would appear at all—that Sibyl got ample opportunity for resuming the conversation exactly where it left off, at least a quarter-of-an-hour having elapsed.

"It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned," she repeated. "As long as Marianne doesn't mind!" The Christian name may have been an intentional impertinence.

"There is nothing for Marianne to mind, Sibyl."

Sibyl changes her ground unscrupulously. "It doesn't matter to me as long as I'm not his wife. But a hansom-cab is a hansom-cab, and you know it as well as I do."

"I know it, dear." Judith speaks serenely. The attack is too puerile to call for resentment. "They try one's nerves and destroy one's skirts, getting in and out."

Sibyl's style has not been worthy of her Square, or Mr. Elphinstone. There was too much of the lowlier air of Seven Dials in the suggestion that a hansom-cab would promote an irregular flirtation to do more than provoke a smile. Charlotte Eldridge, even, would have condemned it as the bald scoff of inexperience.

But there was more maturity and force in Sibyl's next speech. "I want to know, are you going to tell the madre about it or not?" Judith flushed angrily as she answered her with: "I have told you, Sibyl, that as soon as there is something to tell, I will tell it at once to anyone it concerns. Mamma certainly!"

"How far has it gone?—that's what I want to find out."

"How far has what gone?"

"You needn't look so furious, Ju. Do let's talk quietly. You know perfectly well what I mean. This talk about a trial-performance." The imputation that Judith looked furious was a sporting venture. No doubt she felt furious, thought Sibyl; and how was she to know she didn't show it?

"I told you days ago there was no talk of a trial-performance."

Sibyl restrained herself visibly—too visibly for the prospects of peace. After some thirty seconds of self-command, she reworded her question mechanically. "The talk about something that was not to be a trial-performance." The forms of the court were complied with, without admission of previous lack of clearness. This was shown in a parti pris of facial immobility. A licked lip, a scratched nose, an eye-blink, would have marred its dramatic force.

"You needn't look so stony over it, Sib. There's no mystery of any sort, and I can tell you about it in three words. Alfred Challis is anxious ... what?"

"Nothing—go on!"

"Mr. Challis is anxious that I should get up enough of Aminta Torrington's part to give Mr. Magnus an idea.... No!—Sibyl. Mr. Magnus is not vulgar, and I think him picturesque. He smokes too many very large cigars perhaps, and they don't improve his complexion. But what objection there can possibly be to diamond shirt-studs...."

Sibyl interrupted. "You may just as well tell it all out, Ju. What do you mean by 'enough'?"

"What do I mean by enough? Do be intelligible, Dandelion dear!" Judith is patronizing.

"I wish you wouldn't call me by that hatefully foolish name. Yes—what do you mean by 'enough'? Does it mean that what Mr. Magnus has heard of what you can do isn't enough? That doesn't mean that he's heard nothing. And you know he hasn't."

Sibyl is really no match for her sister in the long run, and perhaps this is a sample of it—of a run long enough for her to get ruffled in. Judith's forbearance becomes exemplary. "Listen while tell I you," she says, imputing impatience, "what Mr. Magnus has heard; and then you can talk about it."

"Very well, go on!" snappishly.

"The suggestion came from Mr. Magnus. Alfred Challis ... certainly!—it's his name. Don't be absurd.... Alfred Challis may have talked to him—no doubt has—of my fitness for the part. And yesterday between the acts he asked us into his room, and made us read one of the scenes. Of course I was Aminta, and Alfred Challis was Moorsom. It was where they meet for the first time at the oculist's at Vienna, in the waiting-room...."

"Is that the kissing scene?"

"The kissing scene! Sibyl!—I'm sorry you read that manuscript...."

"You shouldn't have left it lying about."

"It was in my bedroom, child.... Well!—it certainly wasn't what you choose to call the kissing scene ... but it doesn't matter. I don't believe I should ever be able to make you understand how purely professional it all was. Mr. Magnus sat on the arm of a chair smoking, with his thumbs in his waistcoat, and said that sort of thing wouldn't go down with the public." Judith omitted Mr. Magnus's reason, which was that it wasn't half "schick" enough, thick enough; for it wasn't clear which he said, as his tongue interfered with his articulation.

Sibyl listened, chafing. When no more seemed to be coming, she elected to treat the communication as a confession forced from reluctant lips. "You see I was right, after all," she said. "And it was Mr. Challis in the cab." The discontinuity of semi-accusation was bewildering, and refutation hung fire for a moment. She ran on, giving her sister no chance. "I really must say, Judith, that I do not understand you at all. But you must go your own way. Do you suppose—can you suppose—that any member of your family would approve of what is going on, if they knew it?"

At this point the fact that Judith is really much the cooler of the two tells. "I don't know whom you mean, Sib," she says temperately, "by they. No member of my family is plural, that I know of ... well!—it isn't grammar, according to me. However, if you mean the madre, we shall very soon see; that is, if the thing doesn't turn out a flash in the pan. I shall tell her all about it at the proper time...."

"Meanwhile, hold my tongue, you mean? I'm not at all sure, Judith, that any other sister in my place wouldn't at once tell her mother all she knew about such goings on...."

"What are the goings on? I know of no goings on." "I do. This visit to the back slums of a theatre, alone; I mean unaccompanied by any other lady. The impropriety—yes! impropriety—of the whole thing...."

"Please don't make a scene, with Elphinstone every half-minute, and mamma just coming down. I never said we were alone. If you had asked me, I should have told you that Mrs. Eldridge was with us."

"Who's Mrs. Eldridge?"

"A very nice person, a friend of Marianne Challis. Her husband's in the Post Office. Madame Louise could dress her to look almost pretty, if her complexion were better. And propriety—oh dear!—the very pink! She rather bored me, in fact, because she wouldn't let it alone."

"And was this Mrs. Ostrich—or whatever her name is—satisfied?"

"Perfectly. She has known Alfred Challis since before his first wife died, and has the most absolute confidence in him."

"I don't fancy your Mrs. Ostrich. Where was Mr. Challis's wife all this time?... well!—this deceased wife's sister, anyhow."

"Sibyl! I won't talk to you. Marianne Challis was where we left her, in the stage-box. I don't suppose she left it, but I didn't ask her."

"And then did she and Mrs. Ostrich go home separately?"

"Eldridge. Marianne Challis and she went away together. They were not going home; Wimbledon's too far, where they are. I really don't know where they are staying."

"I'm not curious. But you and Mr. Challis drove home lovingly in a hansom, after acting lovers in a play! There!—you needn't fly out...."

Was it any wonder that Judith then lost her temper? For she had not flown out. The insinuation that she would do so was based on Sibyl's knowledge that she would have been perfectly justified in doing so. But now, she did lose her temper, subject to that disguise of self-command which tells for more than any outburst.

"You are taking too much on yourself, Sibyl. Mamma knows. At least, she knows Alfred Challis and his wife. They have dined here, and we agreed—mamma and I—to know nothing about the deceased wife's sister business. It may even be false from beginning to end.... Ask her, did you say? I should never dream of doing so.... And as for your other disgraceful—yes! disgraceful—speech just now...." "Well—it's true! You had been, and you know you had."

"Had been what?"

"Acting Moorhouse and Aminta Dorrington."

"That's not the way you put it. But I don't care about that. It's only your silliness and inexperience makes you say these things...."

"What is it you do care about, then?"

"I won't submit to be catechized, Sibyl. But I'll tell you. I do care about what the madre thinks—and papa. And I shall tell her.... I wonder who that can be?"

The "that" in question was a knock at the front door, one that expressed confidence that it was at the right house, and even that it would find someone at home—well-founded confidence in both cases. For the Miss Arkroyds, listening for the identity of the abnormal visitor—at ten o'clock in the morning!—only wait for a barely perceptible instalment of voice and footstep to exclaim jointly: "The Rector ... just fancy—what can he want?... In here, Elphinstone!" And it may be neither is sorry for the interruption. How very frequently a visitor is the resolution of a family discord! Judith, pale with suppressed anger, recovers her colour. Sibyl's flush of excitement dies.

It is the Rector of Royd, no doubt of that! And something equivalent to a breeze of fresh air, or the tide in an estuary, or the new crackle of a clean pine-wood fire—but not exactly any one of the three—comes into the room with him and his laugh. He has an effect that is usual with him. The under-housemaid, who has passed him on to Mr. Elphinstone, hopes she won't have done dusting when he comes out. Mr. Elphinstone is seriously hurt at his having breakfasted three hours ago and now refusing food, which would have promoted their intercourse; and the young ladies are not sorry, on inquiry, to hear that her ladyship is not coming down, but will have her breakfast upstairs, because thereby they will have the Rev. Athelstan all to themselves longer.

However, they chorus sorrow which they don't feel about their mother; and affect an equally hypocritical satisfaction at a probable appearance of their father, which they don't believe in.

"You'll see papa will come in presently and say he never heard the bell." Thus Judith, who shows her pack by adding: "Now do let's talk and be comfortable till he comes." All right—nem. con.!

"I think you the most profligate and dissipated family in London and Westminster.... Come nearer the fire? Not if I know it. Both you girls are scorching.... Well now! What was it last night?" "They went to 'Ibsen.'" Judith summarizes, abruptly. Sibyl says: "And you went to the Megatherium," rather as a counter-accusation than a contribution of fact. The visitor looks quickly from the one to the other. Whatever he notes, he passes it by.

"I've been to 'Ibsen,'" he says, "and know all about it. The people commit suicide. What was the other play?"

"A stupid thing. I really hardly made out what it was about. But the author's a friend of the people I went with. You remember Mr. Challis, Mr. Taylor? I brought him to tea at the Rectory."

"Of course. I thought him such a shy customer. But I met him after that. We had quite a chat."

"Oh yes—I remember he talked about it to me. I'm afraid you found him a great heathen."

"Absolutely." Mr. Taylor laughs cheerfully over Alfred Challis's heathenism. "But a very good Christian for all that. I shouldn't say so to the Bishop, though. He never came to church, and I wasn't sorry...."

"Do take care, Mr. Taylor. We shall tell the Bishop."

"... Not on his account, you know—on my own. He would have convicted me of plagiarism. I took all his ideas for my sermon."

This was incidental chat, leading to nothing. Then followed inquiry, overdue, about the Rector's establishment, especially his locum tenens at Royd, the reporting of whom brought disquiet to his face. His hearers knew he was making the best of it; he was not a good actor. This led naturally to conversation about his own temporary locus tenendus in his friend's behalf, and so to the miserable tragedy of the drunkard's death in the canal-lock. Now it was well over four months since either young lady had done any slumming in the Tallack Street quarter: indeed, their visits there soon lost the charm of novelty, so neither recollected its inhabitants off-hand. The description failed to identify, until Mr. Taylor mentioned the unhappy Uncle Bob by name, first heard by him at the inquest. Then a recollection struck Judith.

"That must have been the man that said he was 'mine truly, Robert Steptoe,'" said she. "How very shocking!" The horror of the story of course increased tenfold the moment a nexus was established. Reminiscence, at work in Sibyl's mind, caused her to strike in upon Mr. Taylor's continuation of his narrative; on which he arrested it to hear what she was going to say. She said: "Never mind, go on!" till pressed to take her turn first; then said: "Wasn't that the blind beggar and the little girl—the same family, I mean?" "Exactly. I was just coming to them." And then the Rev. Athelstan proceeded with a full account of poor Jim's sad plight in the Hospital, and of how the little girl had been a great source of anxiety to Addie Fossett. He contrived to assign the whole of the activities on Lizarann's behalf to that lady; having, indeed, a most happy impersonal faculty of narration, which detailed the facts without his own connection with them.

"They are really the reason of my coming here this morning," said he in conclusion. "I dare say you have both been wondering what it was all about. However, it's that. This poor fellow, Jim Coupland, oughtn't to be allowed to sell matches in the streets. And although he makes a good deal by what is really begging in disguise...."

"He makes three times what he would at any trade." Sibyl speaks positively; she always knows things.

"But he's putting it all by for the child." The clergyman justifies Jim, promptly.

"Please go on with what you were saying, Mr. Taylor!" Judith speaks. "'Although he makes a good deal by what is really begging in disguise'...."

"He might be dissuaded from it even if the loss of his foot—poor fellow!—should make it more lucrative."

"I don't see how." This is Sibyl, naturally. The Rector makes a mental note that she is always in opposition. Her sister says nothing, and he resumes:

"You remember the story of the asker?" Sibyl remembers it with a snap, and "Of course!—go on!" Judith, more slowly, thinks she remembers, and then—oh yes!—she remembers now. The speaker continues: "You know the child isn't seven, and doesn't the least realize about her father. She has been indoctrinated from babyhood with a false idea of some employment he has; he's as professional to her as the turncock or lamplighter. But he—poor chap!—is most anxious she should never know the truth. Yesterday he consented to not seeing the child for another six weeks—although he's longing for her, day and night—because he wants to spare her the knowledge of his stump. He's convinced that a wooden leg will be a great joke between them, and is devising shifts by which it may be concealed from his 'little lass,' as he calls her, that it is ever taken off. And yesterday, after swearing me, as it were, into the conspiracy for the child's deception, he ended up with an earnest request that I would never 'let on' about his being a 'cadging varmint.' I pointed out to him the utter uselessness of the attempt, and that it must fail in the end, and that the longer the knowledge is put off, the more painful it will be when it comes. I suspect he would give it up, to spare her. But he would have to be provided for, somehow."

"Have to be!" Sibyl's tone suggests impatient protest against Jim's case being made a claim on Society. The whole duty of a Christian includes a liberal amount of slumming; but it must be distinctly understood to be Christianity, not bald equity. Athelstan Taylor didn't feel analytical on the subject. He knew he would have "had to" cross the road between Jerusalem and Jericho if he had happened to come up before the Samaritan, or else that he would have been miserable all night about the man that had fallen among thieves and come to grief. He was like that at school, you see. Such an awfully good-natured chap! Probably Samaria was an awfully good-natured place. Anyhow, he didn't see his way to discussing the point this morning. He made a concession:

"Well—suppose we say it would be a pleasure to do it! You would feel it so if you knew the child. Really that infant's pluck when that poor madman was flourishing that horrible knife about...."

"But you didn't tell us about that." Both ladies speak. Indeed, Mr. Taylor had slurred over a great deal of his adventure, merely saying he was passing the house and had given what assistance he could, with very little detail till he got to Uncle Bob's escape.

"I never saw such a courageous child in my life. Addie Fossett's got her at the Schoolhouse now. She got a bad chill that night, and we've been very uneasy about her. Perhaps we are both of us given to fidgeting about coughs and temperatures and things. However!" This isolated word expresses, as briefly as possible, dismissal of the subject as material for depression, with retention of it as stimulus to action.

Judith is only languidly interested. "What do you think of doing, Mr. Taylor?" she says absently. Her mind is on the playhouse, yesterday.

"I'm not very clear about details, but if Jim will be tractable, and do as he's told, there ought to be some arrangement possible. He admits that he has some money in the savings-bank, and the Carriers' Co. that ran over him ... yes!—I've seen the manager ... are inclined to be liberal in the matter of compensation; and then there's...." Here a hesitation comes in.

"There's papa, of course." Both ladies agree about their parent, as a sort of fons et origo nummorum. Mr. Taylor had better talk to him about it. Mr. Elphinstone, after thirty-five years in the family, has no scruple about showing that he overhears conversation, and subinforms Miss Arkroyd that Sir Murgatroyd is imminent. Pending the baronet, the conversation is general, then drifts towards the Great Idea. Sibyl becomes gracious—points with pride to a mountain of letters on the subject that she will have to answer before she goes out. Mr. Elphinstone has restricted them to a clear spot on the breakfast-table, without presuming to fold or envelope. Miss Arkroyd detracts from their glory. Most of them are from artists who want to make designs for the cripples to execute, or from cripples who can do nothing at present, but would take three-and-sixpence a week during apprenticeship. Sibyl is indignant. The letters are the exact contrary of what Judith alleges. It is easy to sneer, but read what Mr. Brewdover says. There's his letter! But Judith says she isn't prepared to take up her parable on the subject—doesn't know enough about the matter. No doubt it's all right! She withdraws an incipient yawn, and Sibyl says something sotto voce, possibly that Judith might just as well have held her tongue.

Athelstan Taylor, writing of this interview to his friend Gus later, said: "I was glad at this point that the Bart. came in, apologetic—as I didn't fancy having to make peace between those two girls. Why need well-brought-up young women to be so quarrelsome—without the excuse of Alcoholism? They are rather a disappointment—those two—they used to be so nice as kids. I must say the old boy is my favourite of the family still—he was quite exemplary about this poor sailor chap—said, if I was convinced, that was enough for him, and I had only to say how much would be wanted. Her ladyship was very good too—do her justice!—promised to come and see poor Jim at the Hospital; and I think will keep her promise." He added a postscript next day: "Lady Arkroyd's visit came off this morning, and passed off without ructions. I was rather nervous, because her ladyship thinks it her duty to get up a sort of theologico-ethico-moral-goody steam because I'm there—and poor Jim is such a terrible and appalling example of theoretical irreligion that I was on tenterhooks."