Tono Bungay | Page 7

governor or such-like portent in the
East Indies, and from her remains--in Mrs. Mackridge--I judge Lady
Impey was a very stupendous and crushing creature indeed. Lady
Impey had been of the Juno type, haughty, unapproachable, given to
irony and a caustic wit. Mrs. Mackridge had no wit, but she had
acquired the caustic voice and gestures along with the old satins and
trimmings of the great lady. When she told you it was a fine morning,
she seemed also to be telling you you were a fool and a low fool to boot;
when she was spoken to, she had a way of acknowledging your poor
tinkle of utterance with a voluminous, scornful "Haw!" that made you
want to burn her alive. She also had a way of saying "Indade!" with a
droop of the eyelids.
Mrs. Booch was a smaller woman, brown haired, with queer little curls
on either side of her face, large blue eyes and a small set of stereotyped
remarks that constituted her entire mental range. Mrs. Latude-Fernay
has left, oddly enough, no memory at all except her name and the effect
of a green-grey silk dress, all set with gold and blue buttons. I fancy she
was a large blonde. Then there was Miss Fison, the maid who served
both Lady Drew and Miss Somerville, and at the end of the table
opposite my mother, sat Rabbits the butler. Rabbits, for a butler, was an
unassuming man, and at tea he was not as you know butlers, but in a
morning coat and a black tie with blue spots. Still, he was large, with

side whiskers, even if his clean-shaven mouth was weak and little. I sat
among these people on a high, hard, early Gregorian chair, trying to
exist, like a feeble seedling amidst great rocks, and my mother sat with
an eye upon me, resolute to suppress the slightest manifestation of
vitality. It was hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these
rather over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful
restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be thrust in among
their dignities.
Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat it out perforce;
and day after day the talk was exactly the same.
"Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask.
"Sugar, Mrs. Latude-Fernay?"
The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They say,"
she would begin, issuing her proclamation--at least half her sentences
began "they say"--"sugar is fatt-an-ing, nowadays. Many of the best
people do not take it at all."
"Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits intelligently.
"Not with anything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing
repartee, and drank.
"What won't they say next?" said Miss Fison.
"They do say such things!" said Mrs. Booch.
"They say," said Mrs. Mackridge, inflexibly, "the doctors are not
recomm-an-ding it now."
My Mother: "No, ma'am?"
Mrs. Mackridge: "No, ma'am."
Then, to the table at large: "Poor Sir Roderick, before he died,
consumed great quan-ta-ties of sugar. I have sometimes fancied it may

have hastened his end."
This ended the first skirmish. A certain gloom of manner and a pause
was considered due to the sacred memory of Sir Roderick.
"George," said my mother, "don't kick the chair!"
Then, perhaps, Mrs. Booch would produce a favourite piece from her
repertoire. "The evenings are drawing out nicely," she would say, or if
the season was decadent, "How the evenings draw in!" It was an
invaluable remark to her; I do not know how she would have got along
without it.
My mother, who sat with her back to the window, would always
consider it due to Mrs. Booch to turn about and regard the evening in
the act of elongation or contraction, whichever phase it might be.
A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day
would ensue, and die away at last exhausted.
Mrs. Mackridge, perhaps, would reopen. She had many intelligent
habits; among others she read the paper--The Morning Post. The other
ladies would at times tackle that sheet, but only to read the births,
marriages, and deaths on the front page. It was, of course, the old
Morning Post that cost threepence, not the brisk coruscating young
thing of to-day. "They say," she would open, "that Lord Tweedums is
to go to Canada."
"Ah!" said Mr. Rabbits; "dew they?"
"Isn't he," said my mother, "the Earl of Slumgold's cousin?" She knew
he was; it was an entirely irrelevant and unnecessary remark, but still,
something to say.
"The same, ma'am," said Mrs. Mackridge. "They say he was
extremelay popular in New South Wales. They looked up to him
greatlay. I knew him, ma'am, as a young man. A very nice pleasant
young fella."

Interlude of respect.
"'Is predecessor," said Rabbits, who had