Tenterhooks | Page 5

to see it. But I want to. I've
been wanting to ever since. She said it at lunch today, and I do want to.
Lots of other boys go to the Zoo, and why shouldn't I? I want to see it
so much.'
'Edith, I must speak to Miss Townsend about this very seriously. In the

first place, people have got no right to talk about queer animals to the
boy at all--we all know what he is--and in such language! I should have
thought a girl like Miss Townsend, who has passed examinations in
Germany, and so forth, would have had more sense of her
responsibility--more tact. It shows a dreadful want of--I hardly know
what to think of it--the daughter of a clergyman, too!'
'It's all right, Bruce,' Edith laughed. 'Miss Townsend told me she had
been to see the Dame aux Camélias some time ago. She was
enthusiastic about it. Archie dear, I'll take you to the Zoological
Gardens and we'll see lots of other animals. And don't use that
expression.'
'What! Can't I see the da--'
'Mr Vincy,' announced the servant.
'I must go and dress,' said Bruce.
Vincy Wenham Vincy was always called by everyone simply Vincy.
Applied to him it seemed like a pet name. He had arrived at the right
moment, as he always did. He was very devoted to both Edith and
Bruce, and he was a confidant of both. He sometimes said to Edith that
he felt he was just what was wanted in the little home; an intimate
stranger coming in occasionally with a fresh atmosphere was often of
great value (as, for instance, now) in calming or averting storms.
Had anyone asked Vincy exactly what he was he would probably have
said he was an Observer, and really he did very little else, though after
he left Oxford he had taken to writing a little, and painting less. He was
very fair, the fairest person one could imagine over five years old. He
had pale silky hair, a minute fair moustache, very good features, a
single eyeglass, and the appearance, always, of having been very
recently taken out of a bandbox.
But when people fancied from this look of his that he was an
empty-headed fop they soon found themselves immensely mistaken.

He was thirty-eight, but looked a gilded youth of twenty; and was
sufficiently gilded (as he said), not perhaps exactly to be comfortable,
but to enable him to get about comfortably, and see those who were.
He had a number of relatives in high places, who bored him, and were
always trying to get him married. He had taken up various occupations
and travelled a good deal. But his greatest pleasure was the study of
people. There was nothing cold in his observation, nothing of the
cynical analyst. He was impulsive, though very quiet, immensely and
ardently sympathetic and almost too impressionable and enthusiastic. It
was not surprising that he was immensely popular generally, as well as
specially; he was so interested in everyone except himself.
No-one was ever a greater general favourite. There seemed to be no
type of person on whom he jarred. People who disagreed on every other
subject agreed in liking Vincy.
But he did not care in the least for acquaintances, and spent much
ingenuity in trying to avoid them; he only liked intimate friends, and of
all he had perhaps the Ottleys were his greatest favourites.
His affection for them dated from a summer they had spent in the same
hotel in France. He had become extraordinarily interested in them. He
delighted in Bruce, but had with Edith, of course, more mutual
understanding and intellectual sympathy, and though they met
constantly, his friendship with her had never been misunderstood.
Frivolous friends of his who did not know her might amuse themselves
by being humorous and flippant about Vincy's little Ottleys, but no-one
who had ever seen them together could possibly make a mistake. They
were an example of the absurdity of a tradition--'the world's' proneness
to calumny. Such friendships, when genuine, are never misconstrued.
Perhaps society is more often taken in the other way. But as a matter of
fact the truth on this subject, as on most others, is always known in
time. No-one had ever even tried to explain away the intimacy, though
Bruce had all the air of being unable to do without Vincy's society
sometimes cynically attributed to husbands in a different position.
Vincy was pleased with the story of the Mitchells that Edith told him,

and she was glad to hear that he knew the Mitchells and had been to the
house.
'How like you to know everyone. What did they do?'
'The night I was there they played games,' said Vincy. He spoke in a
soft, even voice.