CHAPTER XVI

MR. DABNEY OF _THE BALANCE_ MEETS MORE THAN HIS MATCH, AND FINDS A RESCUER

The breakfast table, which is the Wynnes' Upper House, setting the seal, or otherwise, upon schemes that have been comparatively idly adumbrated at other times and in other places, having decided that Grandmamma, who had leanings towards literary men, would like to meet an author, it was agreed that I should bring Mr. Dabney to dinner on Saturday.

"Can't we get any one better than that?" Lionel asked.

"Mr. Dabney is very nice," said Naomi.

"I daresay," said Lionel; "but he's not known. What's he written?"

"He's an editor," I explained. "His paper is _The Balance_, a very courageous influential organ. Frank writes for it."

"Oh yes," said Lionel, "but Grandmamma isn't going to get excited over that. What's an editor? The world's full of them. They've got one or two at Ludlow, I'll bet. What Grandmamma wants to meet is a fellow who writes books, novels. Can't you get hold of one of them? What about Jacobs? I shouldn't mind meeting him myself."

It was pointed out that we did not know Mr. Jacobs.

"Then we ought to," said Lionel. "What's the good of an editor anyway? Every paper seems to have a dozen of them. How would you like me to bring Plum Warner?--he's written loads of books."

Mr. Dabney, however, remained our only lion.

When the evening arrived, it looked as though Grandmamma and he were going to hit it off perfectly, and I began to feel quite happy about my introduction of this firebrand into the household.

"I hear that you are a writer," Grandmamma began, very graciously. "I always like literary company. Years ago I met both Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray."

I saw the lid of Lionel's left eye droop as he glanced at Naomi. Mrs. Wynne, I gathered, was employing a favourite opening.

Mr. Dabney expressed interest.

"There are no books like theirs now," Grandmamma continued. "I don't know what kind of books you write, but there are no books like those of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray."

Mr. Dabney began to say something.

"Personally," Grandmamma hurried on, "I prefer those of Mr. Dickens, but that perhaps is because me dear fawther used to read them to us aloud. He was a beautiful reader. There is no reading aloud to-day, Mr. Dabney; and, I fear, very little home life."

Here Grandmamma made a false move, and let her companion in, for he could never resist a comparison of the present and the past, to the detriment of the present.

"No," he said, "you are quite right." And such was the tension that Grandmamma's remarks had caused that the whole room was silent for him. "We are losing our hold on all that is most precious. Take London at this moment--look at the scores and scores of attractions to induce people to leave home in the evenings and break up the family circle--restaurants, concert rooms, entertainments, theatres. Look at the music halls. Do you know how many music halls there are in London and Greater London at this moment?"

"No," said Grandmamma sternly, "I have no notion. I have never entered one."

Lionel shot a glance at me which distinctly said, in his own deplorable idiom, "What price Alf Pinto?"

Mr. Dabney, I regret to say, intercepted the tail of it, and suddenly realised that he was straying from the wiser path of the passive listener. So he remarked, "Of course not," and brought the conversation back to Boz.

"Mr. Dickens," said Grandmamma, "did me the honour to converse with me in Manchester in the sixties. I was there with me dear husband on business, and we stayed in the same hotel as Mr. Dickens, and breakfasted at the same table. The toast was not good, and Mr. Dickens, I remember, compared it in his inimitable way to sawdust. It was a perfect simile. He was very droll. What particularly struck me about him was his eye--so bright and restless--and his quick ways. He seemed all nerves. In the course of our conversation I told him I had met Mr. Thackeray, but he was not interested. I remember another thing he said. In paying his bill he gave the waiter a very generous tip, which was the slang word with which me dear husband always used to describe a _douceur_. 'There,' Mr. Dickens said, as he gave it to the waiter, 'that's ----' How very stupid! I have forgotten what he said, but it was full of wit. 'There,' he said---- Dear me!"

"Never mind, Grandmamma," said Naomi, "you will think of it presently."

"But it was so droll and clever," said the old lady. "Surely, Alderley, dear, I have told you of it?"

"Oh yes, mother, many times," said Alderley; "but I can't for the life of me think of it at the moment. Strange, isn't it," he remarked to us all at large, "how often the loss of memory in one person seems to infect others--one forgets and all forget. We had a case in Chambers the other day."

Their father's stories having no particular sting in them, his children abandoned him to their mother, who listens devotedly, and we again fell into couples.

But it was useless to attempt disregard of old Mrs. Wynne. There was a feeling in the air that trouble lay ahead, and we all reserved one ear for her.

"And Mr. Thackeray?"--Mr. Dabney asked, with an appearance of the deepest interest.

"Mr. Thackeray," said Grandmamma, "I had met in London some years before. It was at a conversazione at the Royal Society's. Mr. Wynne and I were leaving at the same time as the great man,--and however you may consider his writings he was great physically,--and there was a little confusion about the cab. Mr. Thackeray thought it was his, and we thought it was ours. Me dear husband, who was the soul of courtesy, pressed him to take it; but Mr. Thackeray gave way, with the most charming bow to me. It was raining. A very tall man with a broad and kindly face--although capable of showing satire--and gold spectacles. He gave me a charming bow, and said, 'There will be another one for me directly.' I hope there was, for it was raining. Those were, however, his exact words: 'There will be another one for me directly.'"

Mr. Dabney expressed himself in suitable terms, and cast a swift glance at his hostess on his other side, as if seeking for relief. She was talking, as it happened, about a novel of the day in which little but the marital relation is discussed, and Mr. Dabney, on being drawn into the discussion, remarked sententiously, "The trouble with marriage is that while every woman is at heart a mother, every man is at heart a bachelor."

"What was that?" said Grandmamma, who is not really deaf, but when in a tight place likes to gain time by this harmless imposition. "What did Mr. Dabney say?" she repeated, appealing to Naomi.

Poor Mr. Dabney turned scarlet. To a mind of almost mischievous fearlessness is allied a shrinking sensitiveness and distaste for prominence of any kind, especially among people whom he does not know well.

"Oh, it was nothing, nothing," he said. "Merely a chance remark."

"I don't agree with you," replied Grandmamma severely, thus giving away her little ruse. "There is no trouble with marriage. It is very distressing to me to find this new attitude with regard to that state. When I was a girl we neither talked about incompatibility and temperament and all the rest of it, nor thought about them. We married. I have had to give up my library subscription entirely because they send me nothing nowadays but nauseous novels about husbands and wives who cannot get on together. I hope," she added, turning swiftly to Mr. Dabney, "that those are not the kind of books that you write."

"Oh no," said Mr. Dabney, "I don't write books at all."

"Not write books at all?" said Grandmamma. "I understood you were an author."

"No, dear," said Naomi, "not an author. Mr. Dabney is an editor. He edits a very interesting weekly paper, _The Balance_. He stimulates others to write."

"I never heard of the paper," said Grandmamma, who is too old to have any pity.

"I must show it to you," said Naomi. "Frank writes for it."

"Very well," said Grandmamma. "But I am disappointed. I thought that Mr. Dabney wrote books. The papers are growing steadily worse, and more and more unfit for general reading, especially in August. I hope," she said, turning to Mr. Dabney again, "you don't write any of those terrible letters about home life in August?"

Mr. Dabney said that he didn't, and Grandmamma began to soften down. "I am very fond of literary society," she said. "It is one of my great griefs that there is so little literary society in Ludlow. You are too young, of course, Mr. Dabney, but I am sure it will interest you to know that I knew personally both Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray."

Here a shudder ran round the table, and Lionel practically disappeared into his plate. I stole a glance at Mr. Dabney's face. Drops of perspiration were beginning to break out on his forehead.

"Mr. Dickens," the old lady continued remorselessly and all unconscious of the devastation she was causing, even at the sideboard, usually a stronghold of discreet impassivity, "Mr. Dickens I met at a hotel in Manchester in the sixties. I was there with me dear husband on business, and we breakfasted at the same table. Mr. Dickens was all nerves and fun. The toast was not good, and I remember he compared it in his inimitable way to sawdust."

Mr. Dabney ate feverishly.

"I remember also that he made a capital joke as he was giving the waiter a tip, as me dear husband always used to call a _douceur_. 'There,' he said----"

Mr. Dabney twisted a silver fork into the shape of a hair-pin.

It was, of course, Naomi who came to the rescue. "Grandmamma," she said, "we have a great surprise for you--the first dish of strawberries."

"So early!" said the old lady. "How very extravagant of you, but how very pleasant." She took one, and ate it slowly, while Mr. Dabney laid the ruined fork aside and assumed the expression of a reprieved assassin.

"'Doubtless,'" Grandmamma quoted, "'God could have made a better berry, but doubtless He never did.' Do you know," she asked Mr. Dabney, "who said that? It was a favourite quotation of me fawther's."

"Oh yes," said Mr. Dabney, who had been cutting it out of articles every June for years, "it was Bishop Berkeley."

The situation was saved, for Grandmamma talked exclusively of fruit for the rest of the meal. Ludlow, it seems, has some very beautiful gardens, especially Dr. Sworder's, which is famous for its figs. A southern aspect.

At one moment, however, we all went cold again, for Lionel, who is merciless, suddenly asked in a silence, "Didn't you once meet Thackeray, Grandmamma?"

Naomi, however, was too quick for him, and before the old lady could begin she had signalled to her mother to lead the way to the drawing-room.

By the time the evening ended, Mr. Dabney had quite recovered, and he was ready enough on the way home to laugh at his adventure. We talked Dickens long into the night; and there is no better subject. Mr. Dabney said one very interesting thing. "What I always wonder about Dickens," he said, "is how on earth did the man correct his proofs?" Because, as he went on to point out, between the time of writing and the time of correcting he must have thought of so many new descriptive touches, so many new creatures to add, so many new and adorable fantastic comments on life. How could he deny himself the joy of putting these in?--for there can be no pleasure like that of creation.

I went to bed still laughing--but I should not have laughed had I known what possible danger for me lay ahead, the product of that comic dinner conversation. Strange at what light and unconsidered moments the strongest mesh of the web of life may be spinning! We never know. Had Mr. Dabney not needed rescuing, and had Naomi not come to his rescue.