<h2><SPAN name="page21"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>TEA</h2>
<p>James Cushat-Prinkly was a young man who had always had a
settled conviction that one of these days he would marry; up to
the age of thirty-four he had done nothing to justify that
conviction. He liked and admired a great many women
collectively and dispassionately without singling out one for
especial matrimonial consideration, just as one might admire the
Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak as
one’s own private property. His lack of initiative in
this matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the
sentimentally-minded women-folk of his home circle; his mother,
his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate
matronly friends regarded his dilatory approach to the married
state with a disapproval that was far from being
inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched
with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised
terriers concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being
who may be reasonably considered likely to take them for a
walk. No decent-souled mortal can long resist the pleading
of several pairs of walk-beseeching dog-eyes; James
Cushat-Prinkly was not sufficiently obstinate or indifferent to
home influences to disregard the obviously expressed wish of his
family that he should become enamoured of some nice marriageable
girl, and when his Uncle Jules departed this life and bequeathed
him a comfortable little legacy it really seemed the correct
thing to do to set about discovering some one to share it with
him. The process of discovery was carried on more by the
force of suggestion and the weight of public opinion than by any
initiative of his own; a clear working majority of his female
relatives and the aforesaid matronly friends had pitched on Joan
Sebastable as the most suitable young woman in his range of
acquaintance to whom he might propose marriage, and James became
gradually accustomed to the idea that he and Joan would go
together through the prescribed stages of congratulations,
present-receiving, Norwegian or Mediterranean hotels, and
eventual domesticity. It was necessary, however to ask the
lady what she thought about the matter; the family had so far
conducted and directed the flirtation with ability and
discretion, but the actual proposal would have to be an
individual effort.</p>
<p>Cushat-Prinkly walked across the Park towards the Sebastable
residence in a frame of mind that was moderately
complacent. As the thing was going to be done he was glad
to feel that he was going to get it settled and off his mind that
afternoon. Proposing marriage, even to a nice girl like
Joan, was a rather irksome business, but one could not have a
honeymoon in Minorca and a subsequent life of married happiness
without such preliminary. He wondered what Minorca was
really like as a place to stop in; in his mind’s eye it was
an island in perpetual half-mourning, with black or white Minorca
hens running all over it. Probably it would not be a bit
like that when one came to examine it. People who had been
in Russia had told him that they did not remember having seen any
Muscovy ducks there, so it was possible that there would be no
Minorca fowls on the island.</p>
<p>His Mediterranean musings were interrupted by the sound of a
clock striking the half-hour. Half-past four. A frown
of dissatisfaction settled on his face. He would arrive at
the Sebastable mansion just at the hour of afternoon tea.
Joan would be seated at a low table, spread with an array of
silver kettles and cream-jugs and delicate porcelain tea-cups,
behind which her voice would tinkle pleasantly in a series of
little friendly questions about weak or strong tea, how much, if
any, sugar, milk, cream, and so forth. “Is it one
lump? I forgot. You do take milk, don’t
you? Would you like some more hot water, if it’s too
strong?”</p>
<p>Cushat-Prinkly had read of such things in scores of novels,
and hundreds of actual experiences had told him that they were
true to life. Thousands of women, at this solemn afternoon
hour, were sitting behind dainty porcelain and silver fittings,
with their voices tinkling pleasantly in a cascade of solicitous
little questions. Cushat-Prinkly detested the whole system
of afternoon tea. According to his theory of life a woman
should lie on a divan or couch, talking with incomparable charm
or looking unutterable thoughts, or merely silent as a thing to
be looked on, and from behind a silken curtain a small Nubian
page should silently bring in a tray with cups and dainties, to
be accepted silently, as a matter of course, without drawn-out
chatter about cream and sugar and hot water. If one’s
soul was really enslaved at one’s mistress’s feet how
could one talk coherently about weakened tea?
Cushat-Prinkly had never expounded his views on the subject to
his mother; all her life she had been accustomed to tinkle
pleasantly at tea-time behind dainty porcelain and silver, and if
he had spoken to her about divans and Nubian pages she would have
urged him to take a week’s holiday at the seaside.
Now, as he passed through a tangle of small streets that led
indirectly to the elegant Mayfair terrace for which he was bound,
a horror at the idea of confronting Joan Sebastable at her
tea-table seized on him. A momentary deliverance presented
itself; on one floor of a narrow little house at the noisier end
of Esquimault Street lived Rhoda Ellam, a sort of remote cousin,
who made a living by creating hats out of costly materials.
The hats really looked as if they had come from Paris; the
cheques she got for them unfortunately never looked as if they
were going to Paris. However, Rhoda appeared to find life
amusing and to have a fairly good time in spite of her straitened
circumstances. Cushat-Prinkly decided to climb up to her
floor and defer by half-an-hour or so the important business
which lay before him; by spinning out his visit he could contrive
to reach the Sebastable mansion after the last vestiges of dainty
porcelain had been cleared away.</p>
<p>Rhoda welcomed him into a room that seemed to do duty as
workshop, sitting-room, and kitchen combined, and to be
wonderfully clean and comfortable at the same time.</p>
<p>“I’m having a picnic meal,” she
announced. “There’s caviare in that jar at your
elbow. Begin on that brown bread-and-butter while I cut
some more. Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind
you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.”</p>
<p>She made no other allusion to food, but talked amusingly and
made her visitor talk amusingly too. At the same time she
cut the bread-and-butter with a masterly skill and produced red
pepper and sliced lemon, where so many women would merely have
produced reasons and regrets for not having any.
Cushat-Prinkly found that he was enjoying an excellent tea
without having to answer as many questions about it as a Minister
for Agriculture might be called on to reply to during an outbreak
of cattle plague.</p>
<p>“And now tell me why you have come to see me,”
said Rhoda suddenly. “You arouse not merely my
curiosity but my business instincts. I hope you’ve
come about hats. I heard that you had come into a legacy
the other day, and, of course, it struck me that it would be a
beautiful and desirable thing for you to celebrate the event by
buying brilliantly expensive hats for all your sisters.
They may not have said anything about it, but I feel sure the
same idea has occurred to them. Of course, with Goodwood on
us, I am rather rushed just now, but in my business we’re
accustomed to that; we live in a series of rushes—like the
infant Moses.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t come about hats,” said her
visitor. “In fact, I don’t think I really came
about anything. I was passing and I just thought I’d
look in and see you. Since I’ve been sitting talking
to you, however, a rather important idea has occurred to
me. If you’ll forget Goodwood for a moment and listen
to me, I’ll tell you what it is.”</p>
<p>Some forty minutes later James Cushat-Prinkly returned to the
bosom of his family, bearing an important piece of news.</p>
<p>“I’m engaged to be married,” he
announced.</p>
<p>A rapturous outbreak of congratulation and self-applause broke
out.</p>
<p>“Ah, we knew! We saw it coming! We foretold
it weeks ago!”</p>
<p>“I’ll bet you didn’t,” said
Cushat-Prinkly. “If any one had told me at lunch-time
to-day that I was going to ask Rhoda Ellam to marry me and that
she was going to accept me I would have laughed at the
idea.”</p>
<p>The romantic suddenness of the affair in some measure
compensated James’s women-folk for the ruthless negation of
all their patient effort and skilled diplomacy. It was
rather trying to have to deflect their enthusiasm at a
moment’s notice from Joan Sebastable to Rhoda Ellam; but,
after all, it was James’s wife who was in question, and his
tastes had some claim to be considered.</p>
<p>On a September afternoon of the same year, after the honeymoon
in Minorca had ended, Cushat-Prinkly came into the drawing-room
of his new house in Granchester Square. Rhoda was seated at
a low table, behind a service of dainty porcelain and gleaming
silver. There was a pleasant tinkling note in her voice as
she handed him a cup.</p>
<p>“You like it weaker than that, don’t you?
Shall I put some more hot water to it? No?”</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />