The Unbearable Bassington | Page 4

length; there had been
occasions when she had extensively occupied the strictly limited span
allotted to the platform oratory of a group of speakers of whom Henry
Greech had been an impatient unit. He might see eye to eye with her on
the leading questions of the day, but he persistently wore mental
blinkers as far as her estimable qualities were concerned, and the
mention of her name was a skilful lure drawn across the trail of his
discourse; if Francesca had to listen to his eloquence on any subject she
much preferred that it should be a disparagement of Eliza Barnet rather
than the prevention of destitution.
"I've no doubt she means well," said Henry, "but it would be a good
thing if she could be induced to keep her own personality a little more
in the background, and not to imagine that she is the necessary

mouthpiece of all the progressive thought in the countryside. I fancy
Canon Besomley must have had her in his mind when he said that some
people came into the world to shake empires and others to move
amendments."
Francesca laughed with genuine amusement.
"I suppose she is really wonderfully well up in all the subjects she talks
about," was her provocative comment.
Henry grew possibly conscious of the fact that he was being drawn out
on the subject of Eliza Barnet, and he presently turned on to a more
personal topic.
"From the general air of tranquillity about the house I presume Comus
has gone back to Thaleby," he observed.
"Yes," said Francesca, "he went back yesterday. Of course, I'm very
fond of him, but I bear the separation well. When he's here it's rather
like having a live volcano in the house, a volcano that in its quietest
moments asks incessant questions and uses strong scent."
"It is only a temporary respite," said Henry; "in a year or two he will be
leaving school, and then what?"
Francesca closed her eyes with the air of one who seeks to shut out a
distressing vision. She was not fond of looking intimately at the future
in the presence of another person, especially when the future was
draped in doubtfully auspicious colours.
"And then what?" persisted Henry.
"Then I suppose he will be upon my hands."
"Exactly."
"Don't sit there looking judicial. I'm quite ready to listen to suggestions
if you've any to make."
"In the case of any ordinary boy," said Henry, "I might make lots of
suggestions as to the finding of suitable employment. From what we
know of Comus it would be rather a waste of time for either of us to
look for jobs which he wouldn't look at when we'd got them for him."
"He must do something," said Francesca.
"I know he must; but he never will. At least, he'll never stick to
anything. The most hopeful thing to do with him will be to marry him
to an heiress. That would solve the financial side of his problem. If he
had unlimited money at his disposal, he might go into the wilds
somewhere and shoot big game. I never know what the big game have

done to deserve it, but they do help to deflect the destructive energies
of some of our social misfits."
Henry, who never killed anything larger or fiercer than a trout, was
scornfully superior on the subject of big game shooting.
Francesca brightened at the matrimonial suggestion. "I don't know
about an heiress," she said reflectively. "There's Emmeline Chetrof of
course. One could hardly call her an heiress, but she's got a comfortable
little income of her own and I suppose something more will come to
her from her grandmother. Then, of course, you know this house goes
to her when she marries."
"That would be very convenient," said Henry, probably following a line
of thought that his sister had trodden many hundreds of times before
him. "Do she and Comus hit it off at all well together?"
"Oh, well enough in boy and girl fashion," said Francesca. "I must
arrange for them to see more of each other in future. By the way, that
little brother of hers that she dotes on, Lancelot, goes to Thaleby this
term. I'll write and tell Comus to be specially kind to him; that will be a
sure way to Emmeline's heart. Comus has been made a prefect, you
know. Heaven knows why."
"It can only be for prominence in games," sniffed Henry; "I think we
may safely leave work and conduct out of the question."
Comus was not a favourite with his uncle.
Francesca had turned to her writing cabinet and was hastily scribbling a
letter to her son in which the delicate health, timid disposition and other
inevitable attributes of the new boy were brought