CHAPTER III

APOLOGISES FOR AN OLD-FASHIONED ATMOSPHERE

As soon as dinner was over Uncle Percival retired with Mr. Bleeker into the library, from which retreat there issued immediately the shrill piping of the flute.  Mr. Bleeker, with an untouched glass of sherry at his elbow and an unlighted cigar in his hand, sank back into the placid after-dinner reverie which is found in the rare cases when old age has encountered a faultless digestion.  The happiest part of his life was spent in the pleasant state between waking and sleeping, while as yet the flavour of his favourite dishes still lingered in his mouth—­just as the most blissful moments known to Uncle Percival were those in which he piped his cherished airs upon his antiquated instrument.  The eldest member of the Wilde family was very old indeed—­had in fact successfully rounded some years ago the critical point of his eightieth birthday, and there was the zest of a second childhood in the animation with which he had revived the single accomplishment of his early youth.  That youth was now more vivid to his requickened memory than the present was to his enfeebled faculties.  The past had become a veritable obsession in his mind, and when he fingered the old flute strength came back to his half-palsied hands and breath returned to his shrunken little body.  His own music was the one sound he heard in all its distinctness, and he hung upon it with an enjoyment which was almost doting in its childish delight.

So the fluting went on merrily, while Mrs. Payne and Mrs. Bleeker, after fidgeting a moment in the drawing-room, decided that they would return for a word or two with Angela.  “It is really the only place in the house where one can escape Percival’s music,” declared Mrs. Payne, who frankly confessed that she had reached the time of life when to bore her was the chief offence society could commit, “so, besides the comfort I afford dear Angela, it is much the pleasantest place for me to pass the evening.  I’ve always been a merciful woman my child,” she pursued shaking her little flat, false gray curls above her painted wrinkles, “for never in my life have I cast a stone at anyone who amused me; but as for Percival and his flute!  Well, I won’t say a disagreeable word on the subject, but I honestly think that a passion at his age is absolutely indecent.”

She was so grotesquely gorgeous with her winking diamonds and her old point lace, which yawned over her lean neck, that the distinction she had always aimed at seemed achieved at last by an ironic exaggeration.

“At least it is a perfectly harmless passion,” suggested her husband, a beautiful old man of seventy gracious years.

“Harmless!” gasped Mrs. Payne.  “Why, it has wrecked the nerves of the entire family, has given me Saint Vitus’ dance, has kept Laura awake for nights, has reduced Angela to hysterics, and you actually have the face to tell me it is harmless!  Judged by its effects, I consider it quite as reprehensible as a taste for cards or a fancy for a chorus girl.  Those are vices at least that belong to our century and to civilisation, but a flute is nothing less than a relic of barbarism.”